She had no way of knowing, of course, but Jane Austen created a brilliant means of exposing lazy American high school students who attempt to avoid reading
Sense and Sensibility and instead watch the Ang Lee film adaptation. If a student ignorant of British spelling just watched the film and then attempted to write the paper based on what Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet did on their TV screen, this student could easily write a paper that refers to “Mr. Edward Ferris” instead of “Mr. Edward Ferrars.” After all, why would an American assume that this character’s name had an “R” in it?
I know that a marginally intelligent student would doublecheck the spelling of the names on IMDb, but my theory more concerns the full-on idiots. Surely there’s been at least one kid in some English class somewhere who attempted to pass off their less-than-Cliffs Notes version of the book in a paper and got the name wrong, thus opening themselves up to ridicule and deserved punishment, right?
