Becoming Jane News Roundup: We Got Your Made Up Story Right Here Edition

With the official U.S. release less than a week away, the coverage is ramping up for Becoming Jane, and we expect it to reach fever pitch in the next couple of weeks. Several Sunday newspapers have devoted feature articles to Jane and Janeites (more on that in other posts).

The Washington Post, not fooled for a minute by the Made Up Story, asked some prominent Austen fans and scholars about the fictionalized aspects of the film.

Jan Fergus teaches a course titled “Jane Austen and Popular Culture in the 21st Century” at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. She’s written two Austen biographies. But will Friday find Fergus at the multiplex? Not likely: “I would not be able to sit through what looks like a tissue of fabrications and nonsense.”

Ouch! That’ll leave a mark.

“It was very . . . daunting,” says director Julian Jarrold diplomatically. “Austen fans can be quite passionate. We had various communiques with the Jane Austen Society. They were afraid we would dumb her down or turn her into a chick-lit writer.”

Or turn her into Marianne Dashwood. Which is pretty much what happened.

The press materials released with the movie hedge any bets: The film “spins the few known facts” of a “seemingly brief” and “apparently rapid” romance into a “boldly imagined” love story about Austen and the man who “perhaps, might have stolen her heart” and “awakened” her talent.

Grrrrrrrrr.

“The idea that Tom Lefroy sparked Jane’s brilliance is totally foolish,” says Deirdre Le Faye, author of “Jane Austen: A Family Record.” “She came from a very smart family. By the time she met Tom she was already an accomplished writer.”

Huzzah!

Lest you think he is being an overly prissy academic, Honan, who also wrote a biography of William Shakespeare, points out that he saw the movie “Shakespeare in Love” six times.

“[That movie] has irony to it,” Honan says. “It laughs at itself. No one would walk out of it wondering if Shakespeare had really had an affair with a woman named Viola.” It has irony where “Becoming Jane” has sentimental earnestness, something that Honan says could easily confuse Austen neophytes.

Bless you, sir. Bless you.

Just ask the Jane Austen Society in London, where the film opened in March. Its members have already begun receiving queries from viewers anxious to learn about Austen suitor Mr. Wisley.

Well, yeah, because he was a pretty interesting character. Completely made up, of course, but interesting.

Movie quality aside, there is also the likelihood that the film will draw popular attention to Austen — the woman, not just her work. “Yes, it’s a blend of fact and fiction,” says Marsha Huff, president of the Jane Austen Society of North America. “But hopefully some people will be inspired to dig a little deeper and find out which parts are true.”

We hope so, too. (And in fact JASNA has provided a page of such information. More on this later.)

Therein lies a quandary. When your entire career is spent toiling in relative obscurity, studying the life and slim six novels of a dead writer, how do you react to your one moment in the spotlight? Do you quibble about factual liberties taken? Or do you excuse its foibles in the name of “Please, oh please allow Jane one clandestine affair!”

As Alert Janeite Sara, who sent us this link (as did Alert Janeite Josie), said, “Quibble? We aren’t talking about a change in hair color here.”

Jarrold not surprisingly insists that it’s possible to do both. “We have this image of Jane Austen as a middle-aged spinster,” the director says. “But there was a time when she was young and vibrant.” Veracity aside, he says, “in terms of human relationships, [the story line is] true.” In some ways the idea of a stoically teary-eyed Jane makes us appreciate the happy-ended worlds of her heroines even more.

We would have appreciated seeing a happy Jane flirting and dancing, not feeding the pigs and doing things that had us saying, “But Jane would never DO that.”

Even the doubting Le Faye hopes some good can come from the film. But, says the author: “It still ought to be marketed with a health warning.”

Yes, “Hide the razor blades before viewing.”

Alert Janeite Kirsten sent us a link to an article in The Seattle Times, which takes the clever (some would say brave) tack of reviewing the film as a letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra.

Last night I spent a pleasant evening in the company of friends, and attended something called a “motion picture,” held in a somewhat faded establishment where all manner of odd foodstuffs was served — and, by all evidence, left on the floor at evening’s end. Imagine my surprise when the entertainment — something of a theatrical production, yet somehow projected onto a wall with flickering light — bore a surprising resemblance to my own life.

It was called, curiously, “Becoming Jane.” (Indeed, was I not known as Jane from the day I entered this world?) In the role of your correspondent was a lovely young lady, Miss Anne Hathaway, whom I believe to be of American extraction; surely the dulcet tones of her voice have never been heard in north Hampshire. She is most pretty indeed and possessed of much charm and abundant hair, and I found myself most flattered, even as I failed to recognize a word she said.

HA! Despite Miss Austen’s avowed distaste for text language and similar abominations (see the article), we must add, “pwn3d!”

The San Francisco Chronicle has an interview with Anne Hathaway, much of which is unremarkable and repeats things written in previous articles. We found one bit worthy of remark, however.

” ‘Mansfield Park’ – funny enough, Jane Austen said herself (it was after ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ had come out) she thought it was a story that everyone would love, and no one was really into it,” Hathaway says. “She was very upset by the reaction, so when she wrote ‘Emma,’ she said, ‘I’m going to write a heroine that no one will like but myself,’ and that’s the one that everyone loved.”

That’s a very interesting leap of logic, but we’re not at all sure that Jane Austen wrote Emma in retaliation for lack of attention to Mansfield Park.

The Boston Globe has a rundown of some of the better adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, for the newbies. Of Persuasion 1995:

One of the finest of all Austen adaptations is also the least seen.

Yep.