By JULIE M. BRADFORD
With “Emma,” “Persuasion” and “Sense and Sensibility” entertaining big crowds at the Varsity Theater and International Cinema, students have been able to get a taste of English society in the early 1800s.
At a lecture Wednesday before the showing of “Persuasion” at the International Cinema, Gideon Burton, assistant professor of English, spoke on “Jane Austen, Literature and Film.” He asked the audience if there was a division along gender lines concerning who enjoys Austen’s novels.
“Are these novels and movies ‘chick-flicks’ or do others enjoy them?” Burton asked.
The audience laughed after they looked around and noticed the majority of the crowd was females.
Some guys do enjoy these movie adaptations of Austen’s novels. Alex Berthrong, a sophomore from Oakland, Calif., majoring in zoology, was forced to see “Pride and Prejudice” by his mother, but loved it.
“I liked how Austen developed the characters and their interactions. This takes the place of the action found in other movies,” Berthrong said. “It is so easy to see those same qualities in our society today and it’s funny because that’s just how we are.”
“`Emma’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ are my favorites. The characters in `Emma’ were more developed than ‘Sense and Sensibility,'” Berthrong said. “Like `Emma’ college life provides many matchmakings and it is funny to see these matches not work out just like in the movie.”
Gideon also prefered “Emma” over “Sense and Sensibility,” even though all of the movies had similar approaches, he said.
“Austen’s wit succeeds best in `Emma.'” Gideon said. “It’s a delight for the audience to watch Emma control other people’s lives.”
Girls are more prone to like these stories, but guys can appreciate them also, Berthrong said.
Jared Frank, a junior from Bloomington, Ind., majoring in advertising, found the movies to be creative and enjoyed the writer’s intuitiveness, but suffered from Jane Austen overkill.
“I found the stories extremely similar and not very realistic,” Frank said. “It gives girls unrealistic expectations about life and marriage.”
Frank suggested the reactions to these films would be different on other college campuses than at BYU.
“There is such an emphasis on marriage here and girls in particular like to be the matchmaker, just like `Emma,'” Frank said. “Girls always put themselves in the place of the main heroine and get too emotional in to the movie.”
Frank indicated that because Austen never married, she may have taken out her frustrations on the male characters in her stories.
“She always makes the female characters highly developed but the guys are minor characters,” Frank said. “Possibly the situations portrayed in the novels happened to Austen.”
Alan Brown, a junior from Alta Loma, Calif., majoring in teaching English as a second language, also felt that Austen portrayed herself through her characters.
“You always see the story through the female character’s eyes and the males are seen as very flat characters,” Brown said. “I couldn’t really relate to any of the guy characters.”
Peter Schaumann, a sophomore from Claremont, Calif., majoring in accounting has never seen the Jane Austen stories.
“I am going to find out if these movies are really `chick-flicks’ and I am very interested in seeing them. If they are just for girls though, then I might not see anymore,” Schaumann said.
