Annals of Austen
Jane Austen's Long and Productive Afterlife
by Sarah Seltzer
It's been more than a decade since the dawn
of Austenmania. Back in the mid-�90s, we were up to our empire
waists in Jane Austen film adaptations, meaty magazine think pieces,
and contemporary novels that paid homage to (or ripped off, depending
on your attitude) Austen's most popular works. Since then, our
collective obsession with the foremother of chick lit has only grown
stronger. Fans and scholars continue to debate
whether Ms. Austen was a spirited critic of society, a believer in
true love, a matron with a sharp tongue, or all three, and this
summer�s pseudo-biopic Becoming Jane, starring Anne
Hathaway, has only fed the frenzy. Its clich�d romance plot
seems to suggest that Austen�s genius�and in particular,
the plot of Pride and Prejudice�derived from her thwarted love
for a handsome young man. Of course, many purists aren't
pleased.
But it's hard to tarnish an icon as pervasively shiny as Austen. Here�s a look back at the 200-year-old literary legacy that's energized dozens of female (and a few sympathetic male) writers, filmmakers, and critics to create responses to her work: an empire of Jane-spiration.
Leading Ladies
The unofficial kickoff of the modern Austen frenzy was 1995's five-hour A&E Pride and Prejudice miniseries, in which writer Andrew Davies turned the male gaze on its head by focusing his lens on the hero, Mr. Darcy. Diving into a lake, bathing, fencing, scowling in frustrated desire: The camera drank in his every smoldering move. The result? Stardom for dreamy Colin Firth and a long period of Darcy-mania for women worldwide. That year also saw thinking-woman's favorite Emma Thompson pen an Oscar-winning screen adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, in which she also starred, and which also introduced Americans to a gal named Kate Winslet.
Several female auteurs took
more liberties with the source material. Clueless, Amy
Heckerling�s hip retelling of Emma in high school,
introduced Austen's story about a naive matchmaker to a new
generation (along with the irritating "As if!"). Patricia
Rozema invigorated Mansfield Park in 1999 by turning limp
Fanny Price into a fiery writer. (But even Rozema�s feminist
influence couldn't save Fanny from Austen's original ending�a
marriage between cousins.)
In 2004, Pride and Prejudice went Bollywood in the form of Gurinder Chadha's Bride and Prejudice; the film transposed Austen's British romance to an American hotel heir and an Indian farmer's daughter, who sing and dance their way through cultural misunderstanding. Chadha drews parallels between the conventions of Bollywood cinema and those of Regency British society with the joy of a lifelong fan. Hot on Bride's heels came Joe Wright's 2005 P&P adaptation, which garnered an Oscar nod for Kiera Knightley. But Wright's film pissed off diehards, who felt that Knightley's girlish, less sarcastic Lizzy Bennett was a cop-out, as was the movie's gooey, misty ending.
2007 will bring a BBC
version of Sense and Sensibility, penned by Andrew Davies, who
has promised to sex it up. We're
holding our collective breaths.
Sassy Scribes
The most popular of these
literary descendants, though, is a slightly more subtle
tribute: Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary.
Like Lizzy Bennett, Bridget is torn between a charming cad and a
stiff guy named Darcy. The novel began an unending chick-lit
avalanche, but it's a cut above most of its imitators, with
references to highbrow literature and an unknowingly witty heroine.
In the movie adaptation, Mark Darcy is played by Colin Firth himself.
Fielding knows how to work a good gimmick: Her sequel takes its plot
from Persuasion.
Bodice Rippers
Austen�s novels are famous for their economy, summing up side plots in a few words and describing desire in oblique phrases. Modern attitudes about restraint being what they are, it's no surprise that writers have leaped forward to fill in the blanks themselves. Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen is a novelty book that adds hilariously raunchy moments to the Austen oeuvre--all in pitch-perfect imitation of her style.
More serious Jane wannabes have proliferated in the past few years. Some writers attempt to beef up back stories from Austen's novels and fragments, and continue the sagas of minor characters through several generations. Younger siblings and romantic rivals get their due in titles like The Third Sister: A Sequel to Sense and Sensibility and Jane Fairfax: A Novel to Complement Emma. And since none of Austen's novels progress beyond the altar, new sequels show up nearly every year, trying to imagine what those cunningly contrived marriages actually looked like. According to web authority Pemberley.com, there are about 50 Pride and Prejudice sequels and spinoffs alone. Some feature Darcy pleasuring his wife beneath the sheets, while others are more properly elliptical.
Virginia Woolf once compared Austen to Shakespeare for the way they both wrote without inserting their personalities and biases into the story. Today, that comparison extends further--Austen's stories, like Shakespeare's plays, can be transported to California high schools (and cultures even further away from England than the exotic US) and still work seamlessly. Despite the hundreds of artists and writers who have taken liberties with her texts, Austen's specter refuses to diminish. If history is any indication, fans have nothing to fear from Anne Hathaway.
Bitch Magazine #37, "Singular vs. Plural issue," Fall 2007 | p.96