Why do some great novels resist adaptation?

Yesterday I watched two Czechoslovakian films: Alice and When the Cat Comes (both of which I recommend). As I was watching Alice, Jan Švankmajer’s wonderfully dark and disturbing adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I thought about classic novels that were adapted for the screen over and over again. 

And I thought, why are some great novels so much harder to adapt than others? 

I’m not talking about novels with an odd structure, an obvious challenge such as Moby Dick or The Sound and the Fury or One Hundred Years of Solitude. I’m also not talking about faithful adaptations—you can’t accuse me of being a purist—just film or TV adaptations that can stand on their own as works of art. Like Jan Švankmajer’s Alice. Or Dr Strangelove. Or Ran.

But clearly some novels seem to resist adaptation. Take Don Quixote for instance. This is one of the most important novels in the world, this is a novel that has been adapted a million times, and yet—perhaps I am ignorant—there is not a single adaptation that is considered a good film of Don Quixote. BFI has an article called “The troubled history of Don Quixote on film”, about the failures of Orson Welles and Walt Disney and Terry Gilliam to bring it (successfully) to the screen. Terry Gilliam in the end managed to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in 2019, but it’s not successful, is it? Critic score of 66% and audience score of 59% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Anna Karenina, another favourite novel of mine, also doesn’t seem to work well on the screen. The challenge of the depth of Tolstoy’s characters is not the only reason. The 1972 adaptation of War and Peace, with Anthony Hopkins as Pierre, demonstrates that it’s possible to convey the depth of characters and the conflicts between them—the only flaw of that version is Natasha (many people love the Soviet version, but it’s only because they seem to be fine with Sergei Bondarchuk stripping away all psychological and philosophical depth and character development). But there is not a single good adaptation of Anna Karenina* and I have seen six different ones: Greta Garbo (1935), Vivien Leigh (1948), Tatiana Samoilova (1967), Sophie Marceau (1997), Keira Knightley (2012), and Vittoria Puccini (2013). There is always something wrong—with Anna or Vronsky or Karenin or all of them—not to mention that the Levin strand is almost always reduced to a mere subplot. 

But I guess the complexity of Tolstoy’s characters is the main reason. Filmmakers tend to go for a simpler version. 

Wuthering Heights is another hard one. Jane Eyre has an excellent adaptation in 2006, with Ruth Wilson as Jane and Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester. Some people seem to like the 2011 film with Mia Wasikowska, for some reason. But Wuthering Heights has not had a single good adaptation—we all agree, yes? The news of the version currently in the works doesn’t particularly cheer anyone up either. How could Emerald Fennel possibly cast Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff? Madness. 

My favourite Emma: Kate Beckinsale. 

The case of Jane Austen is easier to understand. Almost all of her novels have had a good adaptation: Lady Susan has a brilliant adaptation in 2016, confusingly named Love and Friendship; Northanger Abbey has been adapted only once** in 2007, with Felicity Jones, which seems popular enough; Sense and Sensibility has the Oscar-winning film in 1995 with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet; Pride and Prejudice has the 1995 series, with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, leading to the Austen craze and the whole Janeite industry (though there are, oddly, some people who prefer the Keira Knightley film); Emma has a great adaptation in 1996 with Kate Beckinsale, which is my favourite, though the consensus is that the best one is Clueless; Persuasion has a celebrated version, also in 1995, with Amanda Root as Anne Elliot and Ciarán Hinds as Captain Wentworth. All filmmakers have left to do is to “ruin” them with some “subversive” adaptations, like Netflix has done with Persuasion and presumably will do again with Pride and Prejudice (well, for those who like that sort of thing, that’s the sort of thing they like). 

The one Jane Austen novel that has not had a good adaptation is Mansfield Park. But that is not hard to understand: modern filmmakers cannot handle a morally serious and sombre Jane Austen novel and a heroine so unlike the Strong Female Character trope of Hollywood—Fanny Price, strong in a different way, is not a girlboss or a kickass heroine—filmmakers keep feeling a misplaced urge to “improve” on the book.  

But I do wonder why Wuthering Heights hasn’t got a good adaptation. Is it only because filmmakers keep sanitising and romanticising the story? Or is there some fierce, intense quality to Emily Bronte’s story that makes it impossible to work on the screen? 

But I suppose people are going to attempt again and again. 

** Addendum: There is also a version in 1987 that I did not know about. Thanks, Brian. 

* updated on 13/6/2025: I have now watched a wonderful adaptation of Anna Karenina from 1977. 

Wonderland and Looking-Glass land

Note: people who haven't read the books, or read them a long time ago and forgot a lot, should skip this post.



Let's compare the 2 worlds that Alice visits in her dreams.
The weirdness and illogicality of Wonderland:
- It exists so far down the rabbit-hole that the fall doesn't seem to ever come to an end, and the tunnel is full of cupboards and bookshelves.
- Eating and drinking certain things can make Alice change size.
- Animals and birds can talk.
- Alice's memory is mixed up.
- There are creatures such as Dodo, Mock Turtle, Gryphon.
- The Caucus-race is a race in a circle in which the runners begin when they like and leave off when they like, so nobody can win and everyone gets a prize.
- There's a Cheshire cat that talks, grins from ear and ear and can appear or disappear.
- The Duchess's baby turns into a pig.
- The Mad Hatter offers to Alice the wine he doesn't have.
- A watch shows what day it is, but doesn't tell time.
- Time is a person.
- The Mad Hatter asks a riddle that has no answer.
- The Dormouse tells a story of 3 sisters that live at the bottom of a treacle-well.
- Some creatures are playing cards, and their queen is the Queen of Hearts.
- 3 playing cards paint white flowers red.
- They play a game of croquet in which the balls are live hedgehogs and the mallets are flamingos.
- The Mock Turtle studies Reeling and Writhing; Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision; Drawling, Stretching and Fainting in Coils. 10 hours on the 1st day, 9 on the 2nd, and so on- lessons lessen day by day.
- The Lobster quadrille is a dance in which the creatures dance with lobsters and then throw them as far as possible out to sea.
- The Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse say 3 different dates, the jurors write down all 3, then add them up and reduce them to shillings and pence.
- The King wants a verdict before getting evidence, and argues that if the letter isn't written in the Knave's hand, it must mean the Knave imitates someone else's, and if the letter isn't signed, it makes the matter worse as it means the Knave must mean some mischief, otherwise he would just sign his own name.
- Sentence 1st, verdict afterwards.

Now, the weirdness and illogicality of the Looking-Glass land:
- It exists on the other side of the mirror.
- Alice at the beginning is large and invisible, and can move the chess pieces about.
- Chess pieces, animals, birds and flowers can talk.
- The text is written in a way that can only be read when held up to a mirror.
- There are words such as "brillig", "slithy", "toves", "gyre", "gimble", "wabe", "mimsy", "borogoves", etc. (in the poem "Jabberwocky").
- In the house, Alice floats in the air all the way out.
- The space changes, Alice tries different ways to go the hill or to the Red Queen but always goes back to the house, and only succeeds when walking in the opposite direction.
- The country is a large chessboard, the story is based on a game of chess, and the characters, including Alice, are chess pieces and pawns.
- Alice runs with the Red Queen, faster and faster, until she's out of breath, only to find herself at the same spot.
- She's given a cookie when thirsty.
- Tickets are about the same size as people.
- A man's dressed entirely in white paper.
- There are creatures such as Rocking-horse-fly, Snap-dragon-fly, Bread-and-butter-fly, Humpty Dumpty (egg-shaped), Unicorn.
- In a part of the woods, the creatures forget their own names.
- When the road diverges, there are 2 sign posts pointing in the same direction.
- Tweedledum and Tweedledee have a fake fight.
- The White Queen says: jam every other day- so the rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.
- The punishment comes before the crime.
- The White Queen screams 1st and gets her finger pricked later.
- Sudden change of space: all of a sudden Alice finds herself in a shop, with a Sheep instead of the White Queen, and then suddenly finds herself in a boat, and again finds herself in the shop.
- Things flow about in the shop- whenever Alice stares at a shelf, it becomes empty and the others around it become full.
- The Sheep works with 14 pairs of needles at once.
- Fivepence for 1 egg, twopence for 2.
- The egg turns into Humpty Dumpty.
- Words mean whatever Humpty Dumpty chooses them to mean.
- Humpty Dumpty complains that he can't recognise people by the face, who all look the same.
- Alice has to hand the cake around 1st, and cut it afterwards.
- When 1 knight hits the other, he knocks him off his horse, and if he misses, he tumbles off himself.
- The White Knight carries a box upside-down, so the rain can't get in.
- The horse has anklets round his feet to guard against sharks' bites.
- A crown suddenly appears on Alice's head.
- The 2 queens invite each other to Alice's party.
- Alice and a mutton are introduced to each other.
- The queens shrink to the size of dolls.

The Looking-Glass land appears stranger, messier, more complex and confusing, with all the sudden, unexpected changes. But is it really chaotic? When we list the characteristics of the 2 worlds, which I know is dull and ruins (some of) the fun, that gives us a little distance and helps us see them more clearly. And it turns out that the Looking-Glass land is really not so chaotic after all. 
Let's look at this passage in Symbolic Logic, written by Lewis Carroll, as Charles Lutwidge Dogdson: 

"The writers, and editors, of the Logical text-books which run in the ordinary grooves——to whom I shall hereafter refer by the (I hope inoffensive) title “The Logicians”——take, on this subject, what seems to me to be a more humble position than is at all necessary. They speak of the Copula of a Proposition “with bated breath”, almost as if it were a living, conscious Entity, capable of declaring for itself what it chose to mean, and that we, poor human creatures, had nothing to do but to ascertain what was its sovereign will and pleasure, and submit to it.
In opposition to this view, I maintain that any writer of a book is fully authorised in attaching any meaning he likes to any word or phrase he intends to use. If I find an author saying, at the beginning of his book, “Let it be understood that by the word ‘black’ I shall always mean ‘white’, and that by the word ‘white’ I shall always mean ‘black’,” I meekly accept his ruling, however injudicious I may think it.
And so, with regard to the question whether a Proposition is or is not to be understood as asserting the existence of its Subject, I maintain that every writer may adopt his own rule, provided of course that it is consistent with itself and with the accepted facts of Logic." 

That passage is often quoted to discuss Humpty Dumpty's talk about the meaning of words, but I'd like to talk about something else: whereas things in Wonderland seem to be random and apparently the only rule Alice discovers is that eating and drinking may make her change in size, the Looking-Glass land has rules and logic, just different (wrong rules and bad logic we say), so once Alice learns what the rules are, she can count on them to operate consistently as the rules in the real world, and then she can function. It doesn't matter what the rules are and how ridiculous they sound, the point is that there are rules, and they are consistent. It's when everything is random that it's unpredictable and difficult.

How to approach Lewis Carroll's Alice books- For dummies, and Let's play Lewis Carroll's Word Ladder game

Going around the internet, I'm baffled by many readers' response to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. How can they read those books that way? I mean, do they need guidelines? 
Let me help. 
- Treat them as fairy tales. 
- Don't expect a plot; don't cling to assumptions about what (Victorian) novels should do or shouldn't do. 
- Don't look for an explicit moral message; don't expect Alice to learn something (Who are you? The Duchess? "And the moral of that is..."). 
- Focus on language; enjoy the logic games, word play, puns... and the characters; just have fun. 
- Don't expect the books to be exactly like the adaptations and resent them for not being so. 
- Separate Lewis Carroll from Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, i.e. get rid of all the theories about his sexuality.
What do I see when reading the Alice books? I see a logical, mathematical mind combined with a rich imagination and love of the grotesque. Being a logician that is also interested in language, Lewis Carroll notices, and jokes about, the illogicality of the English language. And he's an inventor- he makes up words and creates worlds and invents games. What a pity it is to read books as brilliant and delightful and complex as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and see them as nothing but products of a diseased mind! Sigh. 




Come to think of it, these are of course "rules" for approaching novels in general, not just Lewis Carroll's Alice books. 




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For fun: 
Do you know that Lewis Carroll invented the Word Ladder game? 
Examples: 
- CAT 
COT 
DOT
DOG
- HEAD 
HEAL 
TEAL 
TELL 
TALL 
TAIL
(My solution, btw, is different from his: 
HEAD 
HEAL 
HELL 
HALL 
TALL 
TAIL)
- APE 
APT 
OPT 
OAT 
MAT 
MAN 
The Wikipedia page quotes Nabokov as saying "some of my records are: hate—love in three, lass—male in four, and live—dead in five (with "lend" in the middle)". 
From HATE to LOVE. The solution I got: 
HATE 
GATE 
GAVE 
GIVE 
LIVE 
LOVE 
Too long. Shorter: 
HATE 
HAVE 
CAVE 
COVE 
LOVE 
Finally I came up with something shorter: 
HATE 
LATE 
LAVE 
LOVE 
Not bad, hmm? 
How do you go from LIVE to DEAD? 
The solution I got was: 
LIVE 
LINE 
LANE 
LAND 
LEND 
LEAD 
DEAD 
Too long, I think. A bit googling gave me another solution: 
LIVE 
LOVE 
LORE 
LORD 
LOAD 
LEAD 
DEAD 
The number of steps is the same. Could you find a shorter solution?