Mansfield Park

  I have just finished reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park for the first time. I'm not sure if I properly digested it as a gulped it down while I was sick all last week, but I enjoyed it and am continually reminded of what a great writer Miss Austen really was. She always lets the reader feel and understand the emotions and gestures of her characters without the reader being told about them. They are subtle hints under the main narrative. I watched the 1999 and 2007 versions of the movie with Mum at about the same time. I must say the 1999 version was so much better. In fact I didn't even finish watching the newest version it was that painful.

  To begin with, the actor of Fanny very nice and pretty but so not Jane Austen. She had short hair and wore it down in a loose messy style very attractive in a modern girl but Fanny lived in Regency times and was not a poor peasant who had recently had all her hair cut off because of some illness.

Billie Piper as Fanny Price

 In both movies she is a little too boisterous for a very shy girl of strong principles.But I suppose they knew no other way of making her likable enough! 

 Frances O'Connor as Fanny Price

  I do think Frances did much better as Fanny.

Two actors from Emma as the Edmunds!

Johnny Lee Miller as Edmund Bertram

Mr. Knightly! 

Blake Ritson as Edmund Bertram

And Mr. Elton.....

  No Blake Ritson is too sorrowful looking too much like Mr. Elton to fit the role for me though he's one of the only ones in the movie who has regency style hair.

   So the 1999 version of the movie is definitely my favorite!!  But the book has so much more than both, the movies condensed it and combined some of the events of the book and omitted some others.