로제마 감독의 『맨스필드 파크』 : 페미니즘과 탈식민주의의 영향

Abstract

In this article, I analyze Canadian director Patricia Rozema’s 1999 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. By including elements of feminism and post-colonialism in her adaptation, Rozema changed three important aspects of Austen’s novel. I offer an analysis of the film in light of those changes. The film version turns Fanny Price from the shy, diffident, and quiet heroine of the novel whose love for Edmund goes unrequited to an intelligent, active, and 1990s politically-aware attitude girl who enjoys Edmund’s reciprocated love. This change weakens Austen’s main theme of Fanny’s growth from a shy girl to a lady of Mansfield Park. The film version also changes two important rejections in the novel: Fanny’s rejection of the performance of Lover’s Vows and her rejection of Henry’s marriage proposal. Since these two rejections in the novel suggested Fanny’s moral victory and also her proper judgment of Henry’s past immorality and dissipation, the film’s changes blur the meaning and importance of these two episodes. Finally, Rozema’s film version offers a postcolonial critique of Sir Thomas who owns sugar plantations in Antigua, turning him into a greasy character, a colonizing instigator, and a kind of slave holder of Fanny. Austen’s Sir Thomas who has some problems in the education of his sons and daughters, is a responsible family head. In the novel, he adopted Fanny to protect his sons from a would-be marriage between cousins, but by the end, declares Fanny to be his real daughter; his awakening paralleled Fanny’s development. Rozema’s changes underscore postcolonial critiques in the novel, but by overemphasizing those elements, the film suffers. In my analysis, I conclude that Rozema’s feminist and postcolonial spin on Austen’s novel weaken Austen’s core themes of the growth and awakening of both Fanny and Sir Thomas, however fast-paced and interesting the final product.