The Online Bildungsroman

How the traditional novel has been adapted to changes in technology and delivery of material to create a new adventure in literature for young adults.

Pilgrimmage to the Bronté Parsonage in Howarth. Image NMJoyce2015

Earlier this year as part of a historical research study tour, I made something of a literary pilgrimage to the North of England. Not only did I swoon about the grounds of Pemberley aka Chatsworth House, but whilst visiting the Bronté Parsonage in Howarth, I may have done a little Kate Bush-Wuthering Heights dance in the gardens overlooking the moors. I also developed a certain wetness of eye as I stood in Charlotte Bronté’s bedroom and considered that my all-time forever favourite book Jane Eyre had been written at this desk. 

In Paris a week later I bought a French version of the novel. Of course I can’t actually read it – my French is borderline offensive beyond a poorly pronounced bon wee – but that is not the point. My Grandmother gave me my first copy of Jane Eyre for my ninth birthday. Since then I have been able to re-experience my initial reading of Jane Eyre and subsequent explorations of other ‘classics’ such as Pride and Prejudice beyond the pages of a  book held in my hands. A quick look at the Jane Eyre Wikipedia page shows a century of almost 100 different adaptations. More than half are straight(ish) novel to film, radio, television and theatre productions including ballet, symphony and opera! The rest are sequels, remakes, re-tellings, prequels, spin-offs and most recently, a modernised webseries.

I have seen or read just six of these adaptations but cannot count the times I have read the original Bronté version, of which I now own in eight different forms, paper and electronic. To a similar degree the same applies to Jane Austen’s novels, even more so since the BBC television series starring a dripping wet Charles Firth as Darcy twenty years ago. (Pride and Prejudice, 1995) From the time that Charlotte Bronté sat in her tiny Howarth room two centuries ago to coax forth Jane Eyre, the physical form and reader consumption of the novel has changed so significantly that it is possible none of the three Bronté sisters would recognise it today.

My French edition of Jane Eyre and my Parisian bedroom. Image NMJoyce2105.

I say possible but I think it unlikely, for at the core of all these adaptations are bildungsroman journeys of learning and growth that form the foundation of so much Young Adult fiction.[1] That such foundational structures translate so well to myriad adaptive forms is what I consider here. Not only how changes in technology and delivery of the material affect the reading experience of young adults, but how awareness of the original source material informs the reader’s experience and how the nature of reading augmented or changed.

I mentioned earlier the existence of a modernised web series for Jane Eyre. The same exists for Pride and Prejudice, in the form of The Lizzie Bennett Diaries: 3 minute video logs (vlog) published weekly on You Tube throughout 2012. (MacLeod, 2013) Are the millions of viewers of these series aware of the original source material? Does it matter if they’re not? It seems unlikely that given the growth of Jane Austen as an industry in her own right anyone could not be aware of the novel’s existence. Since Pride and Prejudice re-appeared on the BBC twenty years ago in yet another television series adaption, public interest in all things Jane Austen has become almost manic in its intensity. According to Professor Deborah Cartmell her students are shocked when they read the novel for the first time, only to find that the now-famous Colin Firth scene is nowhere to be found in Austen’s work. (Barber, 2015) The act of referring to my own brief visit to Chatsworth as a ‘pilgrimage to Pemberley’ is indicative of the effect of good marketing and a dripping-wet Darcy.

David Buchbinder considers that a lack of awareness of the “the presence of an originary text” will result in a hermeneutic treatment of it. That is – a closed system of meaning in its own right that fails to recognise the text as an adaptation. (Buchbinder, 2011, p.128) By shifting the text into a new mode, for instance a serialised vlog set in contemporary America that positions Lizzie Bennett as a media student talking directly to “her fans”, viewers can draw new meaning from the online ‘lessons’ while the foundational bildungsroman messages remain. Whilst Lizzie learns through experience about the folly of pride and prejudice in a contemporary setting, she directly instructs her audience in the very modern danger of sharing “too much” online. Ilana Snyder notes that young people take meaning from books, but that “they also have to make sense of screen based, digital texts, located on the Web [and so] they need opportunities to learn how to take meaning from increasingly significant cultural forms such as [the Web].” (Snyder, 2004) The existence of further vlogs attached to the Lizzie Bennett franchise, ostensibly produced by Lizzie’s younger sister Lydia – caught up in an online “sex-tape” scandal – reinforces the lesson.  Slickly scripted, produced and acted, the vlogs offer an online space for young people to safely discuss each episode, watch them repeatedly, and gain immediate peer feedback. The reader dialogue has widened from a solitary one between author, text and author, to now include direct interaction with the characters themselves as well as other viewers.

Tarlyn in the Chatsworth House gift shop, with the bust of Darcy, based on 

actor Matthew Macfadyen from the 2005 moive. ImageNMJoyce2015. 

Not satisfied with the relationship between author, text and reader, young readers have stepped outside the hermeneutic closed system to incorporate the production of their shared responses to the material. Google “Twilight fanfiction” and about 1,640,000 results are found. Multiply that five times and you get the Harry Potter result. Leisha Jones describes the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer as “a heteronormative, just-say-no way through girlness for the ordinary middle-class white girl” that at the same time is consumed by girls who deconstruct the series with productions of their own, actively constructing the bildungsroman narrative as a process, rather than product. (Jones, 2011, p.440). Jones considers that “the electronic bildungsroman... [hails] a reader who is also a writer... for whom the goal is the educational process itself more than resolutions or maturation.” (p.447) Angela Thomas describes fanfic writers as “active manipulators and designers of original texts, using given cultural artefacts as... a launching point from which to develop...originality.” (Thomas, 2007, p. 138) Young readers are not only taking meaning from the original text but are building on it and creating their own; incorporating within their learning the new reading environment that now includes almost constant access to some kind of screen-based activity.

For a long time, the on-going argument has been “which is better – the book or the movie?” What is clear however is that new forms could and should be added to the debate: “which is better – the book or the movie or the fanfic or the vlog?” Snyder claims that “the novel and cinema have privileged the narrative as the key form of cultural expression of the modern age.” (n.p.) This would appear to be backed up by a recent online infographic that shows an aggregate of the critical reception of books compared to that of the equivalent film adaption. (ShortList Magazine, 2015) Overwhelmingly the preference was for the book version. Of the 52 listed, I identified 19 that could reasonably be considered Young Adult.[2] These include three Harry Potter, all of the Twilight series, The Hobbit and LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring, the first in the Hunger Games series, and Sense and Sensibility. Only two – LOTR and Sense and Sensibility – were considered more ‘popular’ in the film form than the book. Why this might be the case lies in the restrictive nature of the question: it gives only two choices.

Instead of offering a simple binary choice of book/film, by expanding the text options available for young adults from which to take meaning, space is created to experience a greater range of opportunities to fulfil their own bildungsroman. In a piece for The Guardian TheBookAddictedGirl describes her experience of seeing the film Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters. (2013) She prepares well beforehand, re-reads the original text and takes notes. When she attends the viewing she even takes a notebook with her “ready to jot down...thoughts as the film played out.” The result? “The film...seriously blew [her] away.” (n.p.) Nevertheless she remains “so much more in love with the book than the film.” She describes the same feeling during the Hunger Games film – “They got almost everything right but still... it didn’t have the same feel to it.” Her objection is based on participation – “Films let you observe everything. Books? Books let you feel everything.” Yet here she is, producing her own text in response to the film. The piece appears online and other young adults respond to her views, agreeing or disagreeing and in the process creating a new form of text.

When new technologies are added to equation, TheBookAddictedGirl – and by extension all young adult readers - could be given a further outlet for the feelings evoked by reading the book. The skills developed in reader response by creating fanfic or reviews or their own vlogs, can only improve the ability to create meaning from multiple texts. So the question “which is better” is moot – all forms are relevant and complement one another.

Adaptations, in all their myriad forms, allow young adults to experience texts as more than a novel presented in standard narrative form. Awareness or lack therefore, of the existence of an original source informs the reader response. Thomas urges educators to “recognize the value of writing fan fiction and participating in the texts of popular culture.” (p.162) I would broaden that cohort to encompass the reader and author. The wealth of original material that can grow from borrowed sources, and in the process create a journey of learning and adventure for young adults, is infinite in its potential.

Post Script

As it so happens, within the last 24 hours of writing, Stephanie Myers has responded to criticism of the Twilight series by producing a re-write of the first volume to mark the tenth anniversary of its publishing. (Guardian, 2015) In the new version, Myers has swapped the genders of Belle and Edward. Now the vampire is Edyth Cullen and the human is Beau Swan. Undoubtedly this will produce not only millions more webpages of fan-fic and online discussion, but just as many dollars for Myers’ bank account.

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[1] From Jones, “The bildungsroman as picture or novel of formation, learning, maturation, and enlightenment arises from the tradition of bildung, a theological and philosophical education/cultivation of citizenship.” (p. 445)

[2] Including 5 that could also be considered children’s lit:  Alice in Wonderland, Charlotte’s Web, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Where the Wild Things Are and Charlie and the Chocolate Factor.

Bibliography

Austen, J., & Kinsley, J. (1990). Pride and prejudice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Barber, N. (2015). Pride and Prejudice at 20: The scene that changed everything. Bbc.com. Retrieved 7 October 2015, from http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150922-pride-and-prejudice-at-20-the-scene-that-changed-everything

Bronté, C., & Davies, S. (2006). Jane Eyre. London: Penguin Books.

Buchbinder, D. (2011). From Wizard to Wicked. In K.  Mallan & C.  Bradford, Contemporary Children's Literature and Film (1st ed., pp. 127-145). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Courtland, M., & Gambell, T. (2000). Young adolescents meet literature. Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press.

Jones, L. (2011). Contemporary Bildungsromans and the Prosumer Girl. Criticism, 53(3), 439-469. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/crt.2011.0027

MacLeod, H. (2013). The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Pemberley Digital. Retrieved 7 October 2015, from http://www.pemberleydigital.com/the-lizzie-bennet-diaries/

Pride and Prejudice. (1995). UK.

Pride and Prejudice. (2005). UK.

ShortList Magazine,. (2015). Books Vs Films: The Infographic. Retrieved 7 October 2015, from http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/books-vs-films-the-infographic

Snyder, I. (2004). 2004. In A.  Adams & S.  Brindley, Teaching English with ICT (1st ed., p. np). London: University Press & McGraw Hill.

The Guardian,. (2015). Stephenie Meyer swaps genders of lovers in new Twilight novel. Retrieved 7 October 2015, from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/06/stephenie-meyer-swaps-genders-in-new-twilight-novel

TheBookAddictedGirl,. (2013). Are books better than films?. Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/06/discussion-books-better-than-films-adaptations

Thomas, A. (2007). Blurring anf Breaking through the Boudaries of Narrative, Literacy, and Identity in Adolescent Fan Fiction. In A New Literacies Sampler (1st ed., pp. 137-163). New York: Peter Lang.