Taking a Trojan Horse to the Classics by Griselda Heppel
When I’m reading a book review or looking at notices of coming play performances, there’s one word that tells me I need read no further. I know at once that this novel or this performance is not for me.
I know I'm repeating myself here (see Mary Bennett above), but I would rather writers thought up their own gripping plots and created their own emotionally complex characters. I don’t want to read The Mill on the Floss from the point of view of Tom Tulliver. Or Uriah Heep’s version of David Copperfield.
The word is ‘reimagining’.
Instead of the writer’s creating his or her own original work of art in novel or play form, they have piggy-backed on a classic, taken over the well-defined characters (saves the effort of creating their own), invented new plotlines and generally ‘updated’ the story to add ‘freshness’ and ‘relevance’ for today. A particular favourite at the moment is to go for a minor character – Mary Bennett, say – and retell Jane Austen’s great novel from her point of view. The result is a kind of Cosy Classics in which readers are duped into thinking they’re being given a new, original story when much of it is simply borrowed finery from an infinitely greater creator.
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| The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. Told through the eyes of Maggie, NOT Tom Tulliver. Published by The Jenson Society, NY, 1910 -https://archive.org/ details/worksofgeorgeeli03elio,Public Domain, https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14985642 |
What’s the harm, you may ask? If people enjoy these ‘takes’ on the classics, why shouldn’t authors do this?
Call me a spoilsport but I care about the originals, and I worry that this mania for reimagining them will fix in readers’/viewers’ minds inaccurate versions of Shakespeare, Austen, Brontës, Dickens and others.
The Summer 2026 issue of The Author contains an article by Tanika Gupta, a playwright who, as well as penning her own plays, is a great fan of reimaginings, in which she adapts classics ‘into a world shaped by empire and migration.’ In her BBC Radio version of A Doll’s House, for instance, Nora becomes Niru, ‘a young Bengali woman in a mixed marriage with an English colonial administrator who… embodied the entitlement and arrogance of the Raj. His control over Niru mirrored Britain’s control over India.’
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| Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House Adapted by Tanika Gupta |
I can see how this would work. Gupta is clearly an accomplished writer and doubtless produces a powerful result.
But the blurring of cultures and historical periods troubles me. For one thing, A Doll’s House isn’t even British, it’s by Henrik Ibsen. Norway didn’t have an empire, so it seems rather hard on that country’s greatest playwright to tack criticism of the British Raj on to his play. For another, the shock value of A Doll’s House remains to this day: though the position of women as chattels (in the west at least) is no longer what it was in 1879, Nora’s rebellion against the patriarchy still strikes a chord. How can you overwrite the play’s strong feminist theme with an anti-colonial one without shifting the focus away from Ibsen’s original message? According to Gupta, her version of A Doll’s House is now studied on the GCSE curriculum. I only hope students are introduced to Ibsen’s play at the same time, or how will they understand that he, not she, is the original author?
The same goes for Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, each given a similar British colonial treatment by Gupta, who admits that the process allows her ‘to smuggle in the histories, politics and lived experiences’ of the UK’s South Asian communities. Adaptation, for her ‘becomes a Trojan horse.’
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| A replica of the Trojan Horse, used in the 2004 film, Troy. By Fredrik Posse -Self-photographed, Copyrighted free use,https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1574215 |
Which is rather an unsettling image.
More so, perhaps, than Gupta intends.
Find out more about Griselda Heppel here:
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Comments
A quick internet search shows that there is a slew of 'Jane Austen' wannabees, producing 'other sister' novels that show every sign of being rubbish, but -- rubbish has always been with us. It doesn't mean that everything in that line is rubbish.
I recently read a novel told from the POV of Mary Bennett, and it was intelligent and entertaining. The novelist - I am very sorry that my ageing brain can't recall her name -- had worked to understand the period and Mary's character, and how it had been formed by her time and circumstance. Much as any writer would do, whatever their characters and setting. She couldn't just 'take' Mary, as Mary is barely there in the original. The novel made some points about the assumptions made by Austen. Which, I take it, is the point of the better written of such novels. Nothing is set in stone. We all make assumptions about our own society: mostly, that we are right, and things will go on like this forever. The assumptions we are making now are also wrong.
And this 'stealing' of plots and characters is a long established genre. Writers for years have been taking pot-shots at each other like this, adapting plot and characters to be sarky. Isn't Bill's Shylock a skit on Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta'? Didn't Sheridan's comedies originally satirise other plays?
Yes, Ibsen's 'Doll's House' is Norwegian, but it's become an established Western text, often performed in Britain and studied as a comment on feminism. That being so, I think it's fair game for Tanika Gupta to use:- 'Oh, you're all fired up about the unfairness to women at this time-- how about your unfairness to India?'
Do you really think students will become confused and think a play by Henrik Ibsen is actually British? -- Oh, come on. Do we dare not make any commentary on Moliere's attitudes, or Boccaccio's, or Tolstoy's, in case students think they were British? -- Any students who make that mistake weren't interested or listening anyway.
I don't want to enrage you, but I've been hugely enjoying 'Epic: the Musical' on-line, which is the story of Odysseus, told as a modern musical and brought to life by animation. When Athena helps Telemachus defeat a suitor, he exclaims, "That's sick!" The god Hermes whirls in, dons sunglasses and changes his tunic for a ringmaster's top hat and tails. Why not? He's a god. He isn't bound by time and place.
I love it. I love that this 5,000 years old tale (and the rest) is still being told, in new ways -- which means, the original was read with close attention, and thought about, and re-interpreted. While a story is being re-told, it's not forgotten.
Nor do I think Shylock is a skit on the Jew of Malta; rather both characters merely reproduce the negative racial stereotype in two very different plays.
And yes, I do think GCSE students will assume A Doll's House is by Tanik Gupta, unless they are introduced to Ibsen's play as well. How else will they know? Which is why I wrote that I hope they ARE informed about its origin.
Epic the Musical sounds a scream. Not enraging. I love jokey retellings of the myths (see my Ante's Inferno).
The Wooden Horse is a great story to be used metaphorically as you have done here and I was put in mind of the real life account by Eric Williams, who successfully escaped from Stalag Luft 3 with two other POWs by means of a wooden vaulting horse.
I know the story well, having been enthralled by it as an eleven year old primary school reader, but I won't go into detail here. If you've never met it, Reading Challenge Faves will tell you all you need to know.