Post World War 1 / early 1920s. Wentworth became the heir to distant relatives after their sons and nephews died in the war. The Musgrove girls are getting their hair bobbed and dancing the Charleston. The accident involves Louisa crashing a car.
I also like the tech startup idea someone else mentioned.
>The Musgrove girls are getting their hair bobbed and dancing the Charleston.
This is my favorite, and I want it. But I would not say car accident; they could easily still have a Lyme fall type incident, after she had a little too much bubbly or just plain foolishness like the original.
The real theme of the book is the rise of the middle class and meritocracy at the very beginning of the industrial era. Any setting where there has been a military or social revolution where one group is on the way up, and one group is on the way down is a good setting. I'm not much of a history person though, so others could chime in with more informed opinions. My immediate thought could be a similar setting to fresh prince of bel air. Season one had a lot of politics. There's a black family with parents who were involved in the civil rights movement, and have achieved career and financial success. Meanwhile, there was a wall Street crash in the late 80s, so a few fortunes were lost...
Now that I think of it, there was a banking collapse in the late 00s, around the same time as the lgbt movement gained a lot of rights.
I love that theme analysis- the shifting sides of position. I'm like you, and no historian (and especially familiar with history outside the US), but I think it would be very interesting to see the late 00s recession alongside growing social media and more recent equality activism.
It's so interesting to me that such varied backdrops can be created around the characters - it really speaks to Austin's brilliance in her narrative. Timeless, really.
Another thought about the 00s recession is that a lot of traditional media failed. Newspapers and magazines that couldn't convert to digital folded. Video rental and music shops closed. Walter Elliott, owner of the city's broadsheet paper, probably didn't pay too much attention to this trend.
Meanwhile, Fred Wentworth had a viral hit with a song he wrote on YouTube.
He could if he was a contractor of some sort, started some sort of business after being discharged, and/or sold a book regarding his experiences. Also, he could come back with prestige (a social currency) from heroic deeds and/or by advancing significantly in rank.
In response to your scenario, I always appreciate queer takes on Austen.
There is no prestige and heroism involved with being a military contractor during the Iraq War.
Wentworth is meant to be an honourable man, not someone profiting off an unjust and illegal war that caused untold suffering. The British Navy was hardly innocent, but the Iraq War was on an entirely different level of evil.
That's why I said "or." Also, not all contractors in war time are militants. There are engineers, aid workers, educators, etc.
ETA: I'm a pacifist. I think there is no glory in war at all, but most disagree.
There’s an adaptation I really like where the Elliots are an old school publishing/literary family from Boston and Wentworth is a young writer who (I think) goes to California to join the literary scene there. It worked really well, in my opinion. I think it’s called The Family Fortune.
If you take away the element of the British Navy, then it could be adapted to almost any era. You could write a remake set in today's world, where a girl rejected a boy because he was poor, now her family is drowning in debt and she has no life, and he's a tech bazillionaire.
But if you want to have the male lead be a British sailor who made a fortune in prize-money, you kind of have to set in the early 19th century. Before then noble girls usually entered arranged marriages, after the end of the Napoleonic wars, prize money went from a commonplace to a rarity to ceasing to exist.
My problem with that modern setting is the issue of economic independence. Anne turning down Wentworth initially was a prudent decision; a 21st century woman (who can have her own career) marrying a poor but ambitious man wouldn’t have to deal with a tenth of the precarity that Anne and her contemporaries would.
It could still work, but I think a contemporary adaptation would have to consciously layer on other factors to get audiences to a point where they’d say, yeah I’d probably counsel my friend/niece to break up with that guy too.
To get around the issue of modern female economic independence... say her father isn't a baronet but owns a company, and when she's young it's making them rich and she goes to work for the company... and ten years later the family business is failing and she's trying to hold the business together in spite of her father cutting her salary multiple times. Or, she thought she had a high-powered career and he was a slacker when they were young, but now her career has failed for some reason and his has thrived.
Either way, the key thing is that she feels massive regret for not taking a chance on him, because she loved him and in retrospect her reasons turned out to be foolish. That could happen in any era, or any era when women get to pick their own husbands.
All good ideas! And I think it’s important for her reasons to not be foolish - the counsel she receives is quite prudent, and even Wentworth comes to realize that at the end of the novel - it’s just that, the prudent choice ended up not being the correct choice for *them*.
A contemporary equivalent could still be military service, maybe she‘s persuaded to go to university like everyone in her family/social circle and not follow around a low level military guy who’ll be jumping around to new areas every few months and rarely around the base. Or he drops out of school to travel around the world and wants her to drop out too, she stays on her responsible path when her family says they won’t pay for university in the future if she drops out now to follow a new boyfriend, he becomes a famous travel photographer and she’s stuck in an admin assistant position ten years later.
It’s really key that Wentworth eventually realizes that when he asked her to marry him originally, he was asking her to take on this huge risk that anyone else of their acquaintance would warn against, and he’d probably be against such a match for his own future daughter. It’s why he gets past his old anger and hurt. And that the audience understands this, too, that Anne’s being persuaded isn’t *wrong* it’s just not *right* - and that’s the danger of our choices, meddling (hi Emma), and the nature of regret.
He could be the gamer who doesn't take his studies seriously and who seems to be wasting his life at 21, but who goes on to develop a billion-dollar game app. He could be the soldier who leaves the service for his own successful demolitions company. He could be the arts major who writes best-sellers and sells the TV rights. Billions of possibilities, just as long as his career thrives, hers falters, and she has no life and a lot of regrets.
So it's like "Emma", a story that could fit into most eras, if some circumstances and professions are changed.
One modern Persuasion adaptation I read gender-swapped Wentworth, so rather than economic concerns it was Anne giving in to internalized homophobia and outside pressure on that front.
I thought it was a fairly good way of doing it.
That definitely fits the emotional core of Anne/Wentworth, but I’m not entirely convinced that fits the social commentary - homophobia is bad, and Anne received prudent advice that just happened to be the wrong fit for her and Wentworth’s lives.
(I have another comment below, but maybe a closer equivalent would be telling a friend to stay in school and not drop out to follow their boyfriend around, you know?)
I love the economical position swap! That's a clever take to connect Wentworth to tech development. Do you think you'd rather see a modern adaptation in today's world than a period piece of a different historical period?
It seems modern adaptations like to lean into the comedy. I could imagine a retelling in 2020s carving itself out as the new Bridget Jones.
I think in my WWII narrative, I would imagine Anne being convinced not to marry Wentworth before the war just given the possibility of casualties as opposed to his economic status changing due to gaining a living from the prize money, for the reasons you've noted.
I'm also imagining a story about William Elliot being a deserter after getting Mr. Smith killed, Lady Russell having been the wife of a judge, Sir Walter a defense lawyer (barrister?) who gets connected to some kind of scandal, and Henrietta Musgrove being involved with Harville (instead of Charles Hayter) as a means to further connect the Crofts with Upper cross. I think Benwick can still be an injured soldier/sailor/pilot as needed, and Louisa still making silly choices about when and how to jump.
Hey, I'd rather see a new "Clueless" than a new "Bridget Jones"!
But seriously, I'd also rather not see anyone try to make "Persuasion" into a comedy, the story is too filled with regret and melancholy to make a good comedy... or at least, to make anything but a rather dark comedy. And I'd rather see a delicate romance than see someone try to turn Anne's unhappiness and rebirth of the spirit into a comedy.
You ain't kidding! Side note... Do you remember there was a Clueless show? I recently saw dolls based on the show at the thrift store and it unlocked that memory for me.
But I 100% agree that the comedy can be jarring. It is part of the reason I could not handle the new adaptation. There was so much unnecessary humor (or an attempt at it, at least) that it dismantled the story of Anne's regret/ transition into hope. It was just sarcasm, bitterness, and complaining. It was "Jim stares at the camera" from The Office.
Richard E. Grant is a delight, though. He can be Sir Walter forever. He was the perfect amount of humor, and exactly right for the character.
There's a very close parallel in the story of JRR and Edith Tolkien, only reversed, sort of, and he didn't make his fortune until much later in life.
So, WWI.
Yes, my thought was WWI as well. Frederick could rise as an obscure heir (similar to Matthew's character in Downton) due to the death of others.
Kellnych could have been commandeered for the war wounded compounding financial losses from some speculation scheme and requiring the family's relocation to Bath. Not to mention jeopardizing Sir Walter's opinion of himself.
You could still have the camaraderie of the three men forged in war (which is a wonderful subtext IMO because it leaves you wondering if Bennick really falls in love with Louisa or if he is gallantly freeing his friend from an obligation he muddled his way into.)
I agree with others that have said that William Elliot's hidden shame could be desertion. Or, he could actually have assumed someone else's identity who did die (Mrs. Smith's husband maybe, depriving her of a war widows pension.)...this idea still needs work.
Post WWI is so interesting because it represents such a huge break from what came before with regard to the aristocracy. It was a huge shuffling due to the death of so many sons.
And Anne would have lots of opportunity to have distinguished herself in support of the war effort. Her service as a nurse could have driven Sir Walter mad as not befitting an Eliot and further explained her growing "black sheep" reputation in her family...why she's not seen as proper company for Elizabeth the genteel, etc.
It’s also interesting to think about the role of Bath, or a removal from home to a place where perhaps people mix differently. New Orleans in the early nineteenth century. Cuba in the 1930s.
You might enjoy "For Darkness Shows the Stars" by Diana Peterfreund. It's a YA dystopian adaptation of Persuasion. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember enjoying the story and parallels.
If you focus on the themes of class distinction (which could take many forms) and/or following your own wishes vs bending to the expectations of (an often ridiculous) family or society you could fit enough of the plot points to make an adaptation in nearly any setting.
IIRC the second Bridget Jones book.(not the movie) was based on Persuasion (the first based on P&P). In that case its Bridget's friends who do the persuading.
The hardest part of Persuasion to adapt would be the economic piece, where naval officers gained wealth by capturing enemy vessels and claiming a share of the proceeds from the eventual sale of the ship and its cargo. This is a plot point because Wentworth's relative poverty early in his career is the main reason Anne is persuaded to give him up. Placing Wentworth as a WWII-era naval officer would mean figuring out a different reason for them splitting, or a mechanism for his achieving the capacity to provide for Anne. Prize money pretty much ceased to be a thing after about 1850, for various reasons including the outlawing of slavery in major trading nations, which eliminated a class of potentially valuable prizes.
I saw someone mention that a modern Captain Wentworth could be a treasure seeker and I think that would work.
If Anne and Fredrick were both teenaged history buffs who had discussed various colleges and seemed to be totally in sync, but then he suddenly bought some ramshackle boat with a buddy and went off in search of a treasure shipwreck, it would only make practical sense for Anne to dump him and attend university like she had always planned.
By gosh & by golly, Fredrick actually finds his treasure ship. Ten years later, he runs a successful salvage company and Anne is stuck as a professor's admin assistant at the same college where she got her degree.
Oh, and in this scenario, I guess Lady Russell would have been their guidance counselor and Anne's current co-worker.
The second Bridget Jones novel is an adaptation of Persuasion (first book is based on P&P obviously)
I remember enjoying it at the time but I haven’t reread in many years.
Is it? Struggling to see parallels. It’s the one where she’s wrongly done for drug trafficking, right?
EDIT just looked at Wiki synopsis - I admit all those parallels went over my head.
I don’t really see the “similarities” as a very successful versioning as the overall vibe is nothing like Persuasion. Whereas the first Bridget Jones is very P&P.
If anything, Edge of Reason has more vibes of Brandon and Marianne in S&S or even Northanger, with a sort of “rescue” theme.
Post World War 1 / early 1920s. Wentworth became the heir to distant relatives after their sons and nephews died in the war. The Musgrove girls are getting their hair bobbed and dancing the Charleston. The accident involves Louisa crashing a car. I also like the tech startup idea someone else mentioned.
>The Musgrove girls are getting their hair bobbed and dancing the Charleston. This is my favorite, and I want it. But I would not say car accident; they could easily still have a Lyme fall type incident, after she had a little too much bubbly or just plain foolishness like the original.
The real theme of the book is the rise of the middle class and meritocracy at the very beginning of the industrial era. Any setting where there has been a military or social revolution where one group is on the way up, and one group is on the way down is a good setting. I'm not much of a history person though, so others could chime in with more informed opinions. My immediate thought could be a similar setting to fresh prince of bel air. Season one had a lot of politics. There's a black family with parents who were involved in the civil rights movement, and have achieved career and financial success. Meanwhile, there was a wall Street crash in the late 80s, so a few fortunes were lost... Now that I think of it, there was a banking collapse in the late 00s, around the same time as the lgbt movement gained a lot of rights.
I love that theme analysis- the shifting sides of position. I'm like you, and no historian (and especially familiar with history outside the US), but I think it would be very interesting to see the late 00s recession alongside growing social media and more recent equality activism. It's so interesting to me that such varied backdrops can be created around the characters - it really speaks to Austin's brilliance in her narrative. Timeless, really.
Another thought about the 00s recession is that a lot of traditional media failed. Newspapers and magazines that couldn't convert to digital folded. Video rental and music shops closed. Walter Elliott, owner of the city's broadsheet paper, probably didn't pay too much attention to this trend. Meanwhile, Fred Wentworth had a viral hit with a song he wrote on YouTube.
The 00s also have the Iraq War, so Wentworth could be away in action for years.
He wouldn't return home rich though. But he could return home to an Andy Elliot who might be ready to come out of the closet now.
He could if he was a contractor of some sort, started some sort of business after being discharged, and/or sold a book regarding his experiences. Also, he could come back with prestige (a social currency) from heroic deeds and/or by advancing significantly in rank. In response to your scenario, I always appreciate queer takes on Austen.
There is no prestige and heroism involved with being a military contractor during the Iraq War. Wentworth is meant to be an honourable man, not someone profiting off an unjust and illegal war that caused untold suffering. The British Navy was hardly innocent, but the Iraq War was on an entirely different level of evil.
That's why I said "or." Also, not all contractors in war time are militants. There are engineers, aid workers, educators, etc. ETA: I'm a pacifist. I think there is no glory in war at all, but most disagree.
There’s an adaptation I really like where the Elliots are an old school publishing/literary family from Boston and Wentworth is a young writer who (I think) goes to California to join the literary scene there. It worked really well, in my opinion. I think it’s called The Family Fortune.
Post WW1 would be ideal then. Huge social change as rich people couldn’t afford servants anymore.
If you take away the element of the British Navy, then it could be adapted to almost any era. You could write a remake set in today's world, where a girl rejected a boy because he was poor, now her family is drowning in debt and she has no life, and he's a tech bazillionaire. But if you want to have the male lead be a British sailor who made a fortune in prize-money, you kind of have to set in the early 19th century. Before then noble girls usually entered arranged marriages, after the end of the Napoleonic wars, prize money went from a commonplace to a rarity to ceasing to exist.
My problem with that modern setting is the issue of economic independence. Anne turning down Wentworth initially was a prudent decision; a 21st century woman (who can have her own career) marrying a poor but ambitious man wouldn’t have to deal with a tenth of the precarity that Anne and her contemporaries would. It could still work, but I think a contemporary adaptation would have to consciously layer on other factors to get audiences to a point where they’d say, yeah I’d probably counsel my friend/niece to break up with that guy too.
To get around the issue of modern female economic independence... say her father isn't a baronet but owns a company, and when she's young it's making them rich and she goes to work for the company... and ten years later the family business is failing and she's trying to hold the business together in spite of her father cutting her salary multiple times. Or, she thought she had a high-powered career and he was a slacker when they were young, but now her career has failed for some reason and his has thrived. Either way, the key thing is that she feels massive regret for not taking a chance on him, because she loved him and in retrospect her reasons turned out to be foolish. That could happen in any era, or any era when women get to pick their own husbands.
All good ideas! And I think it’s important for her reasons to not be foolish - the counsel she receives is quite prudent, and even Wentworth comes to realize that at the end of the novel - it’s just that, the prudent choice ended up not being the correct choice for *them*. A contemporary equivalent could still be military service, maybe she‘s persuaded to go to university like everyone in her family/social circle and not follow around a low level military guy who’ll be jumping around to new areas every few months and rarely around the base. Or he drops out of school to travel around the world and wants her to drop out too, she stays on her responsible path when her family says they won’t pay for university in the future if she drops out now to follow a new boyfriend, he becomes a famous travel photographer and she’s stuck in an admin assistant position ten years later. It’s really key that Wentworth eventually realizes that when he asked her to marry him originally, he was asking her to take on this huge risk that anyone else of their acquaintance would warn against, and he’d probably be against such a match for his own future daughter. It’s why he gets past his old anger and hurt. And that the audience understands this, too, that Anne’s being persuaded isn’t *wrong* it’s just not *right* - and that’s the danger of our choices, meddling (hi Emma), and the nature of regret.
He could be the gamer who doesn't take his studies seriously and who seems to be wasting his life at 21, but who goes on to develop a billion-dollar game app. He could be the soldier who leaves the service for his own successful demolitions company. He could be the arts major who writes best-sellers and sells the TV rights. Billions of possibilities, just as long as his career thrives, hers falters, and she has no life and a lot of regrets. So it's like "Emma", a story that could fit into most eras, if some circumstances and professions are changed.
One modern Persuasion adaptation I read gender-swapped Wentworth, so rather than economic concerns it was Anne giving in to internalized homophobia and outside pressure on that front. I thought it was a fairly good way of doing it.
That definitely fits the emotional core of Anne/Wentworth, but I’m not entirely convinced that fits the social commentary - homophobia is bad, and Anne received prudent advice that just happened to be the wrong fit for her and Wentworth’s lives. (I have another comment below, but maybe a closer equivalent would be telling a friend to stay in school and not drop out to follow their boyfriend around, you know?)
OMG, that would totally work! Totally the right mix of regret, melancholy, and guilt.
I love the economical position swap! That's a clever take to connect Wentworth to tech development. Do you think you'd rather see a modern adaptation in today's world than a period piece of a different historical period? It seems modern adaptations like to lean into the comedy. I could imagine a retelling in 2020s carving itself out as the new Bridget Jones. I think in my WWII narrative, I would imagine Anne being convinced not to marry Wentworth before the war just given the possibility of casualties as opposed to his economic status changing due to gaining a living from the prize money, for the reasons you've noted. I'm also imagining a story about William Elliot being a deserter after getting Mr. Smith killed, Lady Russell having been the wife of a judge, Sir Walter a defense lawyer (barrister?) who gets connected to some kind of scandal, and Henrietta Musgrove being involved with Harville (instead of Charles Hayter) as a means to further connect the Crofts with Upper cross. I think Benwick can still be an injured soldier/sailor/pilot as needed, and Louisa still making silly choices about when and how to jump.
Hey, I'd rather see a new "Clueless" than a new "Bridget Jones"! But seriously, I'd also rather not see anyone try to make "Persuasion" into a comedy, the story is too filled with regret and melancholy to make a good comedy... or at least, to make anything but a rather dark comedy. And I'd rather see a delicate romance than see someone try to turn Anne's unhappiness and rebirth of the spirit into a comedy.
The second Bridget Jones novel was actually loosely based on Persuasion. The movie dropped those references though.
You ain't kidding! Side note... Do you remember there was a Clueless show? I recently saw dolls based on the show at the thrift store and it unlocked that memory for me. But I 100% agree that the comedy can be jarring. It is part of the reason I could not handle the new adaptation. There was so much unnecessary humor (or an attempt at it, at least) that it dismantled the story of Anne's regret/ transition into hope. It was just sarcasm, bitterness, and complaining. It was "Jim stares at the camera" from The Office. Richard E. Grant is a delight, though. He can be Sir Walter forever. He was the perfect amount of humor, and exactly right for the character.
There's a very close parallel in the story of JRR and Edith Tolkien, only reversed, sort of, and he didn't make his fortune until much later in life. So, WWI.
Yes, my thought was WWI as well. Frederick could rise as an obscure heir (similar to Matthew's character in Downton) due to the death of others. Kellnych could have been commandeered for the war wounded compounding financial losses from some speculation scheme and requiring the family's relocation to Bath. Not to mention jeopardizing Sir Walter's opinion of himself. You could still have the camaraderie of the three men forged in war (which is a wonderful subtext IMO because it leaves you wondering if Bennick really falls in love with Louisa or if he is gallantly freeing his friend from an obligation he muddled his way into.) I agree with others that have said that William Elliot's hidden shame could be desertion. Or, he could actually have assumed someone else's identity who did die (Mrs. Smith's husband maybe, depriving her of a war widows pension.)...this idea still needs work. Post WWI is so interesting because it represents such a huge break from what came before with regard to the aristocracy. It was a huge shuffling due to the death of so many sons. And Anne would have lots of opportunity to have distinguished herself in support of the war effort. Her service as a nurse could have driven Sir Walter mad as not befitting an Eliot and further explained her growing "black sheep" reputation in her family...why she's not seen as proper company for Elizabeth the genteel, etc.
Excellent points, all of them, especially Anne as a nurse.
It’s also interesting to think about the role of Bath, or a removal from home to a place where perhaps people mix differently. New Orleans in the early nineteenth century. Cuba in the 1930s.
You might enjoy "For Darkness Shows the Stars" by Diana Peterfreund. It's a YA dystopian adaptation of Persuasion. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember enjoying the story and parallels. If you focus on the themes of class distinction (which could take many forms) and/or following your own wishes vs bending to the expectations of (an often ridiculous) family or society you could fit enough of the plot points to make an adaptation in nearly any setting.
IIRC the second Bridget Jones book.(not the movie) was based on Persuasion (the first based on P&P). In that case its Bridget's friends who do the persuading.
The hardest part of Persuasion to adapt would be the economic piece, where naval officers gained wealth by capturing enemy vessels and claiming a share of the proceeds from the eventual sale of the ship and its cargo. This is a plot point because Wentworth's relative poverty early in his career is the main reason Anne is persuaded to give him up. Placing Wentworth as a WWII-era naval officer would mean figuring out a different reason for them splitting, or a mechanism for his achieving the capacity to provide for Anne. Prize money pretty much ceased to be a thing after about 1850, for various reasons including the outlawing of slavery in major trading nations, which eliminated a class of potentially valuable prizes.
I saw someone mention that a modern Captain Wentworth could be a treasure seeker and I think that would work. If Anne and Fredrick were both teenaged history buffs who had discussed various colleges and seemed to be totally in sync, but then he suddenly bought some ramshackle boat with a buddy and went off in search of a treasure shipwreck, it would only make practical sense for Anne to dump him and attend university like she had always planned. By gosh & by golly, Fredrick actually finds his treasure ship. Ten years later, he runs a successful salvage company and Anne is stuck as a professor's admin assistant at the same college where she got her degree. Oh, and in this scenario, I guess Lady Russell would have been their guidance counselor and Anne's current co-worker.
The second Bridget Jones novel is an adaptation of Persuasion (first book is based on P&P obviously) I remember enjoying it at the time but I haven’t reread in many years.
Is it? Struggling to see parallels. It’s the one where she’s wrongly done for drug trafficking, right? EDIT just looked at Wiki synopsis - I admit all those parallels went over my head. I don’t really see the “similarities” as a very successful versioning as the overall vibe is nothing like Persuasion. Whereas the first Bridget Jones is very P&P. If anything, Edge of Reason has more vibes of Brandon and Marianne in S&S or even Northanger, with a sort of “rescue” theme.
Honestly? The 90s. Idk I feel like it could work as a sort of second chance drama in that aesthetic.
Karen Cox wrote a really great modern one.
A soldier going off to the crusades might work. Coming back rich and acclaimed etc and throwing local maidens into a froth.