Happy Birthday, Jane!
By Karyn Bowman
I never realized how disappointed I was in the lack of Jane Austen works until I was reading the novel Ladies With Options in which one character laments a lack of new novels from Austen.
I agreed with that statement so deeply that I, too, felt the loss. But when a life is so short (Austen lived only 41 years) it is easy to see how so few novels could be completed. Considering how difficult it was to get a novel published in those days by a lady writer, the task seems almost impossible.
And yet there were women writers at the time. Mrs. Radcliffe was known for her gothic novels that were devoured by the multitudes. Austen had her as a guide point of what could happen. But her direction of writing was completely different, focusing on the dramas that can take place in the small villages.
The 16th of December is Austen’s birthday and I am choosing to remember the writer who influences my own works though we do not write in the same style or about the same subjects. Yet I feel akin to her, hoping to have as lively as a mind that never seemed to stop. Whenever I do biographical research o the woman, I find there are many sides to her. She had been called a silly flirt, a devoted aunt, a brilliant writer, and unlucky in love.
We know there was a broken engagement on her part, a possible tendre with Tom Lefroy and a mysterious start of a relationship in Lyme Regis that ended with the man’s untimely death. We know that her sister Cassandra burned the majority of their letters and that family members wrote memoirs about Jane.
And yet there is so little we do not know.
Over the years, fans of her work have invaded Hollywood and created beautiful and well done films based on her books. But there is one novel that has been ignored and it might be my favorite because the main character is delightfully deceptive and selfish. Lady Susan is told through letters about a young widow who seeks to marry off her daughter to a rich lord and find herself a suitable situation.
In my mind I see Kate Winslet as Susan, knowing that she would sink her teeth in to this villain who is destined to win out against her enemies who are just as self-absorbed and think they are on the side of goodness. Surely Emma Thompson would make a great script and find a great part for herself and a number of friends, including Alan Rickman.
For now it is only a hope.
Karyn Bowman is also known as Mom Goes to the Movies and wrote for the Daily Journal as their movie reviewer for over seven years. She lives in Kankakee County with her outdoor writer husband and four children.
