Jane Austen Goes to Prom: How Young Adult Novel Adaptations of Austen Center the Teenage Girl and Embody a Modern Form of Fandom (2016)

Undergraduate: Gertrude Becker

Faculty Advisor: James Thompson
Department: English & Comparative Literature

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My research focuses on an aspect of the Jane Austen fandom that is often overlooked: Young Adult novels that adapt Austen into modern times. In particular, I examine versions of Pride & Prejudice set in modern American high schools. These novels work in a particular and predictable way, revealing in doing so what the modern authors consider to be the ¿¿¿bare bones¿¿¿ of the original work: a love story between a lower status Elizabeth and a higher status Darcy. Each work translates questions of social class into issues of popularity, while the path to marriage is translated into a journey towards dating. Additionally, as the novels highlight and validate teenage girlhood, the works utilize classic teenage events such as house parties and Prom in order to manage social interactions and move the story to its happy conclusion. In this presentation, I will examine how these specific theme and plot translations are carried out before considering the process as a whole in the case study of Prom & Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg. Next, I will consider the three main explanations for and purpose of these books: while they have purported uses for education, it is also their commercial potential and function as storytelling playgrounds that make these Young Adult adaptations both useful and inevitable creations. In all of these purposes and predictable contents, the Young Adult Jane Austen book adaptations use Jane Austen to center the teenage girl while reflecting a modern form of fandom.