Clemson University TigerPrints All Theses Theses 8-2014 Silver Hair on the Silver Screen: Adaptations of Jane Austen's Older Women Hilary Richards Clemson University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons, and the Gender and Sexuality Commons Recommended Citation Richards, Hilary, "Silver Hair on the Silver Screen: Adaptations of Jane Austen's Older Women" (2014). All Theses. 1910. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/1910 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. SILVER HAIR ON THE SILVER SCREEN: ADAPTATIONS OF JANE AUSTEN’S OLDER WOMEN A Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of Clemson University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts English by Hilary Richards August 2014 Accepted by: Dr. Erin Goss, Committee Chair Dr. Elizabeth Rivlin Dr. Sean Morey ABSTRACT Three adaptations of Jane Austen novels were produced between 1995 and 1999. These late 90s films represented a set of romantic comedies created in the style of heritage cinema. In adapting Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Mansfield Park, filmmakers reshaped the older women supporting characters in order to better fit the generic conventions of romantic comedies. Romantic comedies of the 1990s relied on a narrow view of the marriage plot whereby the focus in wholly on the courtship process of a predominately affluent, white, heterosexual couple.