| Description |
In recent years, films based on Jane Austen novels have achieved popular and critical success, despite the historical confines of most of these movies. To understand one of the reasons for their popularity, I looked to the roots of two of her last novels, Mansfield Park and Persuasion. Both of these novels follow the story of Cinderella, with which readers both in the Nineteenth Century and today would be familiar. To understand how and why Austen employed the Cinderella story, I examined the three central relationships in Mansfield Park and Persuasion, exploring the similarities and crucial differences between Austen's novels and the story of Cinderella. In employing this story, which involves three main relationships between Cinderella and her stepmother, her stepsisters, and her "prince charming, Austen creates a universality in these novels, which all readers can relate to. In the universality of these novels, readers identify with the heroines, and thereby understand their own lives. In altering the traditional tale of Cinderella, however, Austen breaks the extremes of fairytales, adding realism to these novels. Through her addition of social reality, Austen forces readers to move beyond their initial identification with the heroines to question and change their own relationships and social structures. In her use of the Cinderella story, her introduction of reality, and her universal themes of relationships, Austen creates timeless novels which all people can appreciate and identify with. |
