JANE AUSTEN HAS TURNED INTO THE HEROINE OF HER OWN STORY
200 years after her death, she’s become a global brand
Two hundred years ago, on July 18, 1817, Jane Austen slipped away from the world, taken by a mysterious illness when she was just 41 years old. But could anyone be more alive? Two centuries after her death, the beloved British novelist who gave us Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy — the timeless, feisty, perfectly mismatched lovers of Pride and Prejudice — is as vital as any author who ever lived.
Rather than fade away like some antique English rose turned to dust, Austen remains robust, revered, widely read, reinvented by contemporary novelists, a darling of Hollywood You could even say she’s a global brand.
The “spinster” author who spun literary gold out of marriage, money, society, love and the foibles of human nature in a mere handful of Regency novels ( including Emma, Sense and Sensibility and Per
suasion), is up there with Shakespeare at the top of the pantheon, says Paula Byrne, British author of The Genius of Jane Austen: Her Love of Theatre and Why She Works in Hollywood.
“The more I reread her and the older I get, the more I’m utterly convinced of her genius,” says Byrne.
Curtis Sittenfeld, author of last year’s best- selling Eligible, an update of Pride
and Prejudice set in Cincinnati amid the world of reality TV, texting and hookup sex, says all of Austen’s novels “are wonderful in their way,” but P& P ( which has sold more than 20 million copies) is her favorite.
“It’s the one where all the things she does well come together perfectly: The sly character development, the entertaining dialogue, a plot that has real momentum, the romantic or sexual tension, the class commentary.”
Sittenfeld spent two pleasurable years “climbing inside Pride and Prejudice” to create her 21st century companion to a book many consider the template for every romance novel since.
“I think as a writer it’s the ultimate compliment that your book is so alive we’re still having a conversation about it 200 years later,” Sittenfeld says. “It’s a huge tribute to Jane Austen.”
Why, in 2017, do we love her so? Why does she endure?
1 SHE’S MODERN
Look no further than authors like Sittenfeld, or Helen Fielding ( Bridget Jones’s Diary) or Kathleen A. Flynn, whose clever 2017 debut novel The Jane Austen Project sends a time- traveling team ( think a modern Lizzie and Mr. Darcy) back to 1815 England to meet Austen and perhaps change the course of literary history. “Even though she isn’t that modern in a lot of ways — her world is very different from ours — we feel that she collapses the difference between our time and hers,” says Flynn, an editor at The New York Times. “We feel she’s right here with us. She has such insight into people.” In Eligible, Sittenfeld turns Austen’s 1813 classic into a chick- lit satire, with Liz a 38- year- old magazine writer and Dr. Darcy a snooty neurosurgeon. “Her themes are timeless,” Sittenfeld says of Austen. “Her characters are concerned about economic security, they’re concerned about finding romantic love, which is a timeless concern. They’re concerned about their relationships with their family.”
Austen recognizes the limits of women’s lives in the late 18th century, but her heroines are no shrinking violets. Cashpoor Elizabeth Bennet says “no” to wealthy Mr. Darcy’s marriage proposal the first time ( unthinkable!) before she recognizes she’s been blinded by her own prejudice.
“Her heroines make mistakes and recognize their mistakes and are always growing,” says Byrne.
Sittenfeld calls Austen an “implicit” feminist. Flynn says she’s a “covert” feminist; Austen never “rants about how bad it is to be a woman,” but she believes relationships between men and women should be equal.
Byrne is more forthright. “Of course she’s a feminist!”
3 SHE’S A COMEDIC GENIUS
In The Genius of Jane Austen, Byrne makes the case that Austen’s comic gifts can be overlooked, and that she is a realist, an “anti- sentimentalist” mistaken for a romantic.
Sittenfeld says Austen’s humor lies in the “sharpness” of her observations. “She allows you to mock some of her characters and then sincerely root for them.”
Think of insufferable Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. “She’s scathing about the clergy,” Byrne says. “She has a wonderful, unique, satirical wit.”
4 SHE’S OLDFASHIONED
We may consider her modern, but she transports us to a time that was more codified, elegant, romantic and English.
“There’s a certain idea associated with Jane Austen from the movies, something very genteel, with the English countryside and carriages and sheep,” Flynn notes with a laugh. “But when you think about how Regency England was, it really was kind of squalid and harsh.”
Perhaps all those ruffled skirts were knee- deep in mud, but rules were rules. “A very important part of her appeal is the idea of restraint,” Flynn notes.
And then there is the sheer escapism she offers from our own mad world. “I think we’re oversensitized by sex and violence, and she represents a world where there is decorum, a code of behavior and morals,” Byrne says.
5 MR. DARCY, MR. DARCY, MR. DARCY!
Otherwise known as Colin Firth, he of the dripping shirt in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. When he emerged from a pond in a body- hugging, wet white camise, a whole new generation went ga- ga for the moody squire.
“I think you cannot underestimate Colin Firth’s role in making Jane Austen feel alive today,” says Sittenfeld. “For a lot of people, the relationship between Lizzie and Darcy is the ideal of witty banter and the ideal of unspoken attraction. In real life, there’s a lack of witty banter and unspoken attraction. We have to find it somewhere!”
6 SHE DIED YOUNG AND LEFT A SMALL BODY OF NEARLY PERFECT NOVELS
Austen’s cause of death still is a mystery. What we do know is that with her life snuffed out at 41, the writing stopped.
“I think it’s the saddest thing,” Byrne says. “We all regret that she didn’t write more novels. One shudders to think what she would have done had she lived.”
THERE’S NEVER ENOUGH ‘ PRIDE’