It is a truth universally acknowledged ...

I've been just itching since last night to post about Jane Austen.

Last evening (Sunday, that would be) I watched the movie "Becoming Jane" before it was time for the excellent PBS series (which is ending after this season) "Foyle's War."

Let's disregard for a moment that James McAvoy is not only a good actor but is the cutest thing to hit the screen since ... who? I don't know; he's that cute. I also absolutely loved him in "The Last King of Scotland."

Also, I guess it would have been beyond the realm of the possible for the film makers to have cast someone who was small and rather plain to portray Jane Austen, who was in fact small and rather plain. So they went with the happy medium and cast the tall and striking Anne Hathaway.
But my point is not so much about the movie itself - which I liked better than that insipid 2005 film version of "Pride and Prejudice" - but more about the reaction to it. (I always read the online reviews of a movie after I watch it.)

I can see where people were all up in arms about the film intimating that Austen's life experiences contributed to her novels. Say what? A writer taking situations and quotes from real life? What an alarming notion!

This film comes right out and portrays a secret, passionate love affair that Austen had before she even wrote, or while she was writing, "Pride & Prejudice." That's were McAvoy comes in (woo-hoo).

Now, I have always noticed that whereas in her later books, Austen seems to have more of a grip on romantic love, in "P&P" she seems to be rather clueless (hey, that's a pun, seeing as how "Clueless" is a modern twist on Austen's "Emma").

But she does use one thought that I read in a letter she wrote to her sister - at the end, when Elizabeth asks Darcy about his loving her when he know so little of actual good about her. She says something about Lefroy in her letter.

... unless his regard, which appeared to spring from knowing nothing of me at first ...

I love the book; it's brilliant social commentary, and very clever, but about actual love it is rather limited. Move on to her later novels, especially "Persuasion" (my second favorite, after "P&P"), and she's got it down.

So obviously somewhere along the line she felt love and probably was loved in return. Whether it was about Tom Lefroy (played by McAvoy), I can't say. They met before she finished "P&P," as far as anyone knows.

But you know? Someone destroyed nearly all her letters - but saved a few for posterity. It is hard, given her keen sense of the ironic and the sardonic, to assess from the few references to Lefroy in the surviving letters what precisely their relationship was.

I don't think it's a big leap from the fact that she writes in "P&P" about a couple (allegedly) fleeing to Scotland to marry against social convention and then being accepted back into the family to a situation that she might have herself faced (and which is depicted in the film).

Did Jane Austen have some side that we're not able to know about? The Regency period in England, although full of social conventions, was not all that puritanical. I give you Lady Caroline Lamb, the The Princess of Wales (another Caroline) and Emma Hamilton (Horatio Nelson's girlfriend).

Well, none of these were the daughters of country parsons, you might say. And not everyone followed the fashion of filmy dress (in some cases, even wet down to become more clingy, I've read), even if they could afford to. But this is another digression.

"Imagination is everything."

Well, no ... imagination is one thing. Building on what you know, or your base, and using your imagination is everything (if you're a writer, that is). Take "Star Wars," "Lord of the Rings," and the Harry Potter books. They're all about the same thing - good vs evil - but each author used his or her imagination to build on that base.

Would Austen have given up her writing to run off with her lover? I think the question is rather whether he would have made her stop writing. Would someone of that strength of character really have fallen in love with someone who did not respect her as a writer?

While I don't feel entirely comfortable transposing my 20th century sensibilities onto a 19th century woman, I rather doubt that she would have.