It is far more useful to consider adaptations recreated stories that further engage the reader by

evoking the text of the novel and enrich the wealth of artefacts pertaining to an author, Jane
Austen in this case. Recreation acknowledges the fact that changes need to made, and they are
desirable too considering medium-specific requirements. It also implies that adaptations are in
fact interpretations of the source text by the filmmakers.

Adaptations have been often accused of reflecting our times rather than that of the adapted text.
However, considering Gadamer’s view that we can grasp the past only through the present, we
may understand why most adaptations have modern times flavour. This is why adaptations are
seen to “negotiate the past/present divide by re-creating the source text – as well as its author,
historical context and, […], a series of intertexts” (Aragay 23). Filmmakers translate the past and
present it in a digestible way. In Pride and Prejudice (1995) when Elizabeth learns from Jane’s
letter about Lydia’s elopement, she utters an extra line included by the scriptwriter to emphasize
the consequences an elopement of that kind had in that time: “She is lost forever, and our whole
family must partake of her ruin and disgrace” (Pride and Prejudice Ep. 5).

The use of modern perspectives to portray scenes from classics is seen by Whelehan to serve the
producers and not the viewers. In her view, filmmakers are “tempted to portray a scene from a
late twentieth-century perspective in order to sustain the adapter’s sense of what is authentic to
the text” (13). Filmmakers do not portray scenes from a modern perspective to clarify various
aspects of the source text, but also because that is what they see as the norm. Whelehan
illustrates her view by pointing out that both Pride and Prejudice (1995) and Sense and
Sensibility (1996) add something to the story, a fetishized Darcy in the first case, and a feminist
context in the second, simply because producers/directors considered the film more authentic
with these elements included.