'[H]andsome, clever, and rich': Andrew Davies’ Emma (1996) Ana Daniela Coelho, University of Lisbon Abstract Jane Austen (1775–1817) is not only a paradigmatic example in adaptation studies but also one of the most complex cultural phenomena of our times. The countless adaptations in various media and a seemingly never-ending interest in everything Austen-related have led to a popular construction of both Austen and her work that is equally defined by the existing body of adaptations and subsequent new recreations. Although academics in the field are now exploring this and other related phenomena, scholarly attention is rarely bestowed on the role of the screenwriter in the process. This article explores the importance of such role by considering Andrew Davies, whose work on Austen and in other heritage adaptations is proof of how one screenwriter’s vision has contributed to the contemporary image of Austen. In particular, I focus my attention on Emma/Emma, whom Jane Austen reportedly described as ‘a heroine no one but myself will much like’. My article aims at discussing the importance of the screenwriter in modelling Emma’s character to modern audiences. Especially known for BBC’s Pride and Prejudice (1995), his work on ITV’s Emma (1996) is just as meaningful and even more challenging, if less recognized. By analysing Davies’ Emma/Emma I will argue how his interpretation influenced subsequent adaptations of the 1816 novel and heroine, thus reshaping them for a twenty-first-century audience. Keywords Andrew Davies Jane Austen adaptation 1 EMMA is one of Jane Austen’s great novels. Many would argue it is her finest, but it posed many difficulties in adapting it for television. (Birtwistle and Conklin 1996) When writing Emma (1816), Jane Austen reportedly described its unlikeliness as a favourite among her readers. According to her first biography, published in 1869 (second extended edition in 1871) and more than 50 years after her death by her nephew James Austen-Leigh, the then-experienced novelist had some reservations as to the reception of her fourth published work: She was very fond of Emma, but did not reckon on her being a general favourite; for, when commencing that work, she said, ‘I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like’. (1871/2016: 241) The quotation has now become so frequent, and often misapplied, that it has in some degree mangled the interpretation of Emma, both the character and the novel. Even so, and despite its second-hand nature, its accurateness seems to be confirmed by another very similar remark made by its author. In one of her own letters, on the occasion of the publication of Emma, Austen writes: […] whatever may be my wishes for its’ success, I am very strongly haunted by the idea that those Readers who have preferred P&P. [Pride and Prejudice] it will appear inferior in wit, & to those who have preferred MP. [Mansfield Park] very inferior in good Sense. (Le Faye 2011: 319) 2 Although Austen’s comment seems to echo her nephew’s account, its context should not be overlooked. Austen was addressing the Librarian at Carlton House, James Stanier Clarke, who had informed her earlier that year that a dedication to the Prince Regent, the future George IV and a reported admirer of her novels, would be well received (Le Faye 2011: 308–09). It is by now impossible to ascertain whether Austen’s unwillingness to praise her novel originates in her nervousness in the face of an aristocratic reader such as the Prince Regent, or whether it reveals a more begrudging politeness in the face of a dedication that was nearly imposed upon her. In fact, in almost all surviving letters addressed to the Prince Regent’s librarian, Austen claims her modesty as an authoress, an attitude that seems to originate in Clarke’s tendency to suggest themes or characters for her future works. And even if Austen’s dislike of the future George IV is generally accepted (Sheehan 2006), the prospect of the dedication seems, at the very least, to have caused her a considerable amount of anxiety (Le Faye 2011: 318). Either way, such conditions were bound to make any consideration of the novel’s quality modest. Austen’s reserve also speaks to Emma’s uniqueness among the other novels in her moderately short body of work. In general terms, it emerges as a more mature novel when compared to her previously published works, particularly Sense and Sensibility (Austen 1811) and Pride and Prejudice (Austen 1813). A general tendency among critics is to divide Austen’s novels into two groups: Emma, together with Persuasion (Austen 1818) and Mansfield Park (Austen 1814), belonging to a darker set, in opposition to her earlier though later revised works, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Northanger Abbey (Austen 1818). Others, like the influential Marilyn Butler, go so far as to acknowledge it as ‘the greatest novel of the period’ (1975: 250). Such distinctiveness has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been transferred to screen adaptations of Emma, where the reputation of its heroine as a less empathetic character seems to have haunted her 3 adaptors, determined to prove her a true Austen heroine in the model of Elizabeth Bennett or the Dashwood sisters. ITV’s 1996 Emma is a particularly valuable example of how the process of adapting Emma is revealing of Austen’s composite reconstruction. Austen’s afterlife goes beyond the materiality of her reduced work and the scarce (and often biased) surviving biographical detail: it includes the many adaptations of both her work and her life, having created an apparently fixed image of Austen as a source of unproblematic, romantic stories taking place in a idealized past. ITV’s Emma shows us how each adaptation tries to find its place in this very particular construct. One of the lesser known of Emma’s screen versions – it is somewhat forgotten between the other two recent adaptations of the novel, Miramax’s 1996 film and BBC’s 2009 series – the production of ITV’s television film stands as a significant moment in the evolution of how this novel and this heroine’s singularity is successfully adapted on-screen. Following fast on BBC’s major success, Pride and Prejudice (1995), this ITV production aimed at becoming the new costume drama hit by enrolling several members of the latter crew, including acclaimed screenwriter Andrew Davies, as well as creating a winning cast list by combining a number of experienced actors, such as Bernard Hepton, with rising stars Mark Strong and Kate Beckinsale. This article will therefore trace the backstory of adapting Emma on- screen by re-acknowledging the importance of this particular production, allowing for a better understanding of how this very unique Austen heroine has been adapted for new audiences. In a time when Austen has been appropriated by popular culture in ways perhaps unrivalled by any other writer other than Shakespeare, this distinctiveness is all the more significant: Emma’s apparent relative shortcomings make its contemporary adaptations even more challenging and their subsequent analysis more meaningful. As had been the case with Pride and Prejudice, the way in which Davies’ script re- 4 interpreted Austen’s work would both update the novel and the heroine to a 90s’ audience and influence subsequent re-creations of Emma. From Austen, 1775–1817, to Austen 2.0 Before focusing on Davies’s Emma, it is worth recognizing that an analysis of any Austen adaptation today means taking into consideration not only the adapted work and the adaptation itself – including a number of issues connected to the process of adapting – but also Austen herself as a popular literary commodity. Invoking Jane Austen’s name today summons an array of different but interconnected concepts, interwoven by threads of both traditional literary criticism and postmodern popular culture. From the first half of the twentieth century, when her place in the literary canon was not a given fact, to her twenty-first-century status as a popular cultural icon, much has happened to shape Jane Austen’s multiple afterlives. Over the last 100 years Austen has been re-interpreted, both critically and creatively, with an unprecedented degree of simultaneity: a process that has been crucially shaped by adaptations of her work. On the one hand, her body of work has now been granted centre-stage in the history of the novel and in the literary canon. On the other hand, her widespread popularity in contemporaneity, materializing in all sorts of objects from online videogames and spin-off novels to teacups and romantic self-help guides, turns her into a distinctive case in literary studies in general and in adaptation circles in particular. This double, and sometimes paradoxical, condition has led John Wiltshire in Recreating Jane Austen to contrast Jane Austen, the author of the texts, to “‘Jane Austen’”, a ‘cultural image’ and ‘the object of idealizing and romantic fantasy’ (2004: 10). Claire Harmon also analyses this particular evolution in Jane’s Fame, ‘Jane AustenTM’, noting that Austen is ‘A genuinely popular author as well as a great one, she 5 has come to exist, more obviously than any other English writer, in several mutually exclusive spheres at once’ (2009: 243). The fact remains that this re-interpreted Jane Austen could not, in several aspects, be more at odds with the ‘real’ author and her works, the most obvious paradox being her appropriation by the romance industry when both her works and surviving biographical data openly oppose, and often criticize, such commodification. The complexity of Austen’s authorial identity, as recognized by Wiltshire’s ‘Jane Austen’ and Harmon’s ‘Jane AustenTM’ is thus cultivated by a potent combination of the adaptations based on Austen’s literary production and her (scarce) biographical facts.