Childlike vs Childish: Mary’s Meme-ification

Melodramatic, selfish, pouty Mary Musgrove is the only Persuasion (2022) character who says anything meaningful about Regency womanhood that is congruous with gender expectations today. Her lines in Carrie Cracknell’s adaptation are like Reductress captions, with just a little less of the same satirical punch.…

December 4, 2022
“You assume just because I hate something I don’t want to do it?”

Following Katherine Voyles’ insightful essay about why nobody can seem to agree on what the 2022 adaptation of Persuasion is supposed to do , this essay explores another question: why do we all keep watching Austen film adaptations, even when we don’t like them? The…

September 12, 2022
Carrie Cracknell’s Anne Elliot is a Girl with a Rabbit

As Katherine Voyles’ insightful essay on the discourse around Persuasion (2022) demonstrates, historical inaccuracy has been pegged as one of Carrie Cracknell’s unforgivable misdeeds, especially related to the use of contemporary language and even the protagonist’s bangs . Yet when I finally watched the film,…

September 5, 2022
(Not) Persuadable: The Discourse About Persuasion

The conventional wisdom around the most recent cinematic take on Jane Austen’s Persuasion (2022) hardened almost immediately. Too Fleabag- y, too Bridgerton -y, and not Austen-y or Persuasion -y enough to tempt me was the consensus. I focus here mainly on U.S. based publications and…

August 29, 2022
In the Eye of the Beholder: Georgiana and her Portrait

If season two of Sanditon showed us anything, it is that the eyes are easily deceived. After a season full of emotional manipulation through gaslighting and rakes disguised as men of gentility, the final episode retained a few surprises, including the revelation that Charles Lockhart…

July 26, 2022
Vial Treatment: Gaslighting and Sisterhood in Sanditon

Gaslighting is the through line and ultimate source of tension in season two of Sanditon . This psychological manipulation is present in Captain Lennox’s abuse of Mr. Parker’s trust and the financial entrapment that threatens to sap Sanditon dry, one more in a series of…

May 18, 2022
Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of): A Review

What would happen if Mr. Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth was not delivered? Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) , written and directed by Isobel McArthur, asks the audience to reflect on our unacknowledged erasure of servants as characters in novels, plays, and other cultural representations. Not…

November 30, 2021
لوگ کیا کہیںگے / Log Kya Kahenge

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), describes a society whose members, constantly fearing the loss of personal reputation, ask themselves this question like a reprimand: What will people say? The title’s timeless alliteration also displays how words shape reputation’s near relation–memory. Soniah Kamal’s Unmarriageable (2019),…

January 12, 2021