Filmbook: Sympathy for Jane Austen

A couple weeks ago I rewatched the second half of "Becoming Jane" because it was on TV and one of my roommates was watching. I never wrote about it here, so thank goodness I dug up an email from 2007 in which I reviewed it thus:

I don't think I've seen another movie recently that fit my expectations so exactly. It was kind of sweet, kind of silly, kind of sad and kind of ridiculous. Anne Hathaway does a really good job, but the whole thing is kind of bleh... I had read it is kind of depressing, but... well, it's depressing for those women, but hey, it's not the 19th century any more, so great!

There was also a bit in there about the relative attractiveness of James McAvoy but I have deleted it because that is not the topic of this blog.


Now that I have leveled up and unlocked more feelings I see that this movie is, in fact, extremely depressing, particularly when (like my roommate) you don't know anything about Austen's life. (She kept asking me what was going to happen and I wouldn't tell her.) For all the sisters' lives in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE are constrained, they at least have some small thrilling adventures that don't end in humiliation and resignation. And all this over a relationship we aren't 100 percent sure that Austen actually had.

My first title for this post was "Breaking: Writer had hard life," but that's not really my point. In some ways, Austen's life was hard, but to figure out how she felt about it would take more research than I have done -- and what's extant? The letters? Letters tell all versions of the truth. But what a bizarre premise for a romantic drama, even one that probably looked like a balance-sheet shoo-in with the Jane Austen name attached. I couldn't even entertain it as an enjoyably sad movie.

I guess it's possible that I am attributing too many 21st-century expectations to Miss Austen (I wrote Ms. first! and then I deleted it), that the freedoms I take for granted would even be something she would want if given the chance. Of course she would want to leave her parents' house, I think, and live alone. And leave the house in the company of a non-related male without being considered "ruined." (By this standard, and this standard alone, I trashed my reputation at about age 8 riding bikes with my best friend at the time. He's a lawyer now! And I am still a writer.) And marry someone without thinking about the economics of the arrangement. Etc.


Mostly I felt, as I felt the last time I watched "Becoming Jane," happy that I live in the 21st century, and also guilty for feeling that way.