eBranch Blog

February 21, 2008

Jane Austen on PBS

Masterpiece starts off 2008 with The Complete Jane Austen on PBS. Productions of her six novels are being shown along with a film biography called Miss Austen Regrets.

Inspired to read one of her novels or listen to the audiobook? Harris County Public Library has them available.

Persuasion (airs January 13)
Persuasion, Jane Austen's last complete novel, is a social satire of England's landed gentry and a romantic tale of love lost and renewed. Having been persuaded 8 years earlier to refuse a poor naval officer, Anne Elliot has resigned herself to a life devoted to her selfish father. Upon Captain Wentworth's return, Anne must endure his courting a rash young girl, and the tumult of emotions that well up inside her upon his return.

Northanger Abbey (airs January 20)
Jane Austen's first novel tells the story of Catherine Morland, the very ideal of a nice girl. But her naive heroine is also in possession of an overactive imagination, fueled by her obsession with gothic novels. When Catherine meets Henry Tilney, she's instantly smitten. But when she's invited to his home, the sinister Northanger Abbey, she learns not to interpret the world through the pages of lurid thrillers.

Mansfield Park (airs January 27)
From its sharply satiric opening sentence, Mansfield Park deals with money and marriage, and how strongly they affect each other. Shy, fragile Fanny Price is the consummate "poor relation." Sent to live with her wealthy uncle Thomas, she clashes with his spoiled, selfish daughters and falls in love with his son. Their lives are further complicated by the arrival of a pair of witty, sophisticated Londoners, whose flair for flirtation collides with the quiet, conservative country ways of Mansfield Park.Written several years after the early manuscripts that eventually became Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park retains Austen's familiar compassion and humor but offers a far more complex exploration of moral choices and their emotional consequences.

Pride and Prejudice (airs February 10, 17 & 24)
Jane Austen's elegant novel reveals her complex view of the human condition. The story centers around the charming and vibrant Elizabeth Bennett, one of five sisters whose family circumstance dictates that they marry well, and the misunderstandings that can result--sometimes hilariously--from hasty judgements.

Emma (airs March 23)
Beautiful, clever, rich, and well-meaning, Emma Woodhouse thinks she knows best. She can't resist orchestrating other people's lives, and convinced that she's not destined to find true love herself, she instead devotes herself to playing Cupid for others. Absolutely nothing goes according to plan, and Emma ultimately discovers that she understands the feelings of others as little as she does her own heart.

Sense and Sensibility (airs March 30 & April 6)
With Mr. Dashwood's death, his wife and two daughters, Elinor and Marianne, must accustom themselves to genteel poverty. When Marianne meets the man of her dreams, everyone expects a marriage; unaccountably, he rejects her, with devastating effect. It falls to Elinor, the sensible elder sister, to pick up the pieces, while harboring a secret longing of her own. In Sense and Sensibility , the warmth between two very different sisters contrasts with Austen's deliciously precise observation of vanity, selfishness and snobbery.