Given the spate of Jane Austen adaptations, one could be forgiven for anticipating diminishing returnsfrom Mansfield Park, a novel that is widely viewed as the author's least satisfying and most intractablymoralistic work.But that would be to reckon without the contribution of Canadian director Patricia Rozema who,disdaining a purist approach, offers some smart and suggestive variations on the usual Regency rituals.Rozema's previous features have all dealt with meek, repressed female protagonists who are initiated into newsocial and cultural worlds, before attaining self-sufficiency. In this respect, Austen's Fanny, who arrives atMansfield Park a timid and socially unsure young woman only to become an indispensable member of thehousehold, would seem to be another variant on Rozema's heroines.Yet the Fanny of Rozema's film is resolutely all the things the Fanny of the novel is not: vivacious, artistic,even sexy—a self-confessed "wild beast." This Fanny is, in fact, something of a hybrid of Austen's heroine andthe novelist herself. In Fanny, Rozema creates a screen heroine we can root for, and a film that stands alongsidethe rest of her oeuvre as a paean to female artistic and romantic independence. Austen's Fanny, as theunimpeachable repository of older, High Tory values, must strike modern sensibilities as something of a prig.Rozema's heroine, on the other hand, is a modern woman oppressed by an antiquated patriarchal society.To throw this theme into sharper relief, Rozema has chosen to make the slavery issue explicit. Rozema'spoint is that Mansfield Park, and the amorous escapades of its wealthy inhabitants, are founded on and sustainedby this debased form of exploitation. This is certainly an intriguing opening-out of the novel, but in doing so thefilm appropriates the moral high ground in a way that further distances it from the delicacy and ambiguity ofAusten's insights.
56. What is the major point of this article?
(A) Austen＇s novels have often been adapted into films.
(B) Austen＇s protagonist in Mansfield Park is a carrier of traditional patriarchal values.
(C) Rozema＇s film is completely different from Austen＇s original novel.
(D) Rozema＇s Fanny is vivacious.
(E) Rozema has brought up the issue of slavery in her film.