Northanger Nights
JJ Feild as Henry Tilney
Henry Tilney has quite a following, it seems, on both sides of the Atlantic - so I will be taking extra care with my modern version. At this stage I envisage him as more of a Mark Knightley than a Rick Wentworth, although there’ll definitely be a ‘dark’ side to him …
And Catherine? Unlike the original, she won’t be 17 years old during the story. We’ll meet her at that age in the prologue, but the rest of Northanger Nights will take place when she’s 21. It’s a case of getting the balance right between her being young enough to find the big bad world an eye-opener, but not too young for the heroine of an adult fiction novel.
There are other challenges too:
* Too many siblings for comfort among the main characters - Morlands, Tilneys and Thorpes. It was perfectly natural in Austen’s time to spend so much time with your brother or sister, but not today. And yet there needs to be something to make Isabella ambitious for John, and Henry protective of Eleanor.
* No sign of Henry being interested in any other women - in my opinion, a modern romantic hero needs to show some signs of a previous and/or current love life.
* The intrigue around Catherine and Mr & Mrs Allen - I read a fascinating article (pre-reading for the 2010 JASNA conference - wish I’d gone!) about the heirs to the fortune of Ralph Allen, a famous benefactor in 18th-century Bath. They were rumoured to be a couple from the country, so giving Catherine’s chaperones in Bath the name ‘Allen’ would have had particular significance at the time. But what can take the place of this intrigue today?
I read Northanger Abbey again recently and found it hugely enjoyable and really funny. Follow that, as they say!
You can see another photo of JJ Feild here.
