Very like Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (the 1995 free adaptation of Emma, starring and narrated by Alice Silverstone as Cher Horowitz), Ruby in Paradise is an updated “young lady’s entrance into world:” Ruby dramatizes a teenage heroine’s struggle to discover what is and to make a good place for herself in world that can put her at serious risk. The 87 film is beautifully picturesque, and filled with thoughtful conversations taken from Austen’s book. The beauty of the 87 and 07 Northanger films lie in their visual recreation of female gothic dreams. Beguiled by Austen’s parody of Ann Radcliffe’s 1790s gothic romances and allusion to the imprisoned dying bleeding nun of Matthew Lewis’s 1796 horror gothic, The Monk, all three gothicize Austen’s book. So when asked to write about the recent Austen movies for Jane Austen Today, I decided to write about how all three Northanger Abbeys films enriched our experience of Austen’s novel. She also went on and on about how the PBS people cut the 07 Northanger so crudely (constantly clipping as they went and omitting a nude and playful episodes), that she had not time to divulge why it is so cheering and unbearably touching when at the film’s close hero and heroine fall over one another in their eagerness to kiss and hug tight at last.

She has spread abroad a notion the 87 Northanger is completely bad. Rumor (who Virgil told us long ago is not to be trusted) has committed yet further mischief. But it seems that a free adaptation, the 1993 independent Ruby in Paradise (directed and written by Victor Nunez), has been effaced from Public Memory. Many may have heard of the 1987 BBC Northanger Abbey (directed by Giles Foster, written by Maggie Wadey). All who have been faithfully watching the Jane Austen movie festival on PBS this year know at least something of the most recent: the 2007 WBGH/Granada Northanger Abbey (directed by Jon Jones, written by Andrew Davies). The other day a friend told me that many people do not know there is a third Northanger Abbey movie. Welcome, Ellen, and thank you for writing this post for Jane Austen’s World and Jane Austen Today. After reading one of Ellen’s posts, you will never quite view a Jane Austen movie adaptation or read her novels in the same way again.

For Jane Austen’s World and Jane Austen Today, Ellen chose to write a comparative piece on the Northanger Abbey. If you haven’t come across her timelines of Jane Austen’s novels, I highly recommend that you visit her website. The author of this guest post, Professor Ellen Moody, needs almost no introduction.

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