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Sigh.....

I don't know if you've been paying any attention to the ballyhoo surrounding the upcoming release of the new movie about Jane Austen, Becoming Jane?

The theory behind the film is that Our Miss Austen, cooped up in her oppressive, smothering, provincial little corner of Hampshire, never knew what it meant to Love until she met the dashing, roguish Tom Lefroy, who in the space of a short but memorable time, lit her fuse or launched her balloon or unmoored her ship or whatever metaphor you care to use. After her brief but passionate encounter with M. Lefroy, Jane (it's "Jane" now) was able to let down her hair and start cranking out her novels on the subject of the Divine Pash because at last she Really Knew What It Was Like.

Only one trouble with the idea - it's complete and utter rot.

It's quite true that Austen had a brief flirtation with Lefroy, enough of one that his family packed him off to Ireland as a result. (Indeed, poor Jane was quite embarassed about this.) But the whole She-Couldn't-Write-Of-Love-Til-She'd-Experienced-Love-And-Tom-Was-Her-Tutor thing is utterly unsupported by any available evidence.

Personally, I believe this is another manifestation of a certain resentment against Austen that smolders among some people. They recognize that she was intelligent, observant and witty. They see that she was a woman living in an age still dominated by patriarchal prejudices. They see that she led a largely provincial existence, her immediate family living a shabby-genteel life on the lower edge of the gentry. And given these circs, they naturally assume that Austen should have been rebelling like billy-o. The trouble is that she didn't. Austen was no Romantic like the rising contemperary poets. She was no cauldron of seething anger and repressed desires. Rayther, she was really quite conservative and, horibile dictu, was happy with her lot in life!

I think this utterly baffles many modern readers and scholars and, as I say, breeds resentment. So they start looking for secret codes, suppressed evidence, hints of the Imprisoned Artiste, indicators of Cries for Help, something, anything, to explain how a stodgy, contented, conservative could possibly write with such insight about human interactions. From what I've read, this movie is simply another example of such fantasizing.

Oh, well. I suppose it's better than the canard that not only were Austen and her sister Cassandra lesbians, they were incestuous lesbians. (Don't laugh - there are people who believe this.)

Needless to say, I'm not going to bother with the flick.