Why we care
We are aware that there is a constituency of Janeites (and outside observers with agendas of their own) who read our rants about the various films being produced and say, “Oh, there goes old Negative Mags again.” We are continually frustrated by our inability to properly express our opinion on the matter.
We suggest that those wondering about our oft-expressed suspicion towards BECOMING JANE might read this post at Sorrow at Sills Bend.
The more forgiveable, because somehow natural, mistake is thinking or assuming that those novels, so accurate and perceptive about social systems, so psychologically powerful, and so full of personal brilliance and magnetism, must contain clues about the inner life of the person who wrote them. It is like with Shakespeare. The historical record doesn’t satisfy our curiosity so we look for biographical imprints in the works, and about things in the works that seem real & urgent to us - the romance plots in Austen’s novels - we think “you couldn’t write this well unless from personal experience”.
The other misapprehension is not so blameless. It involves suppressing & ignoring all the tons and tons of evidence about the hard-earned professionalism, the deliberateness, of Austen’s writing career, in favour of seeing it as some sort of freak of nature. This thing about an LCR implies that before it, she was not a writer, but after it, she was: without it she might never have picked up a pen.
Anyone who spends any length of time looking over all her writings, or with one of the many good biographies around, will see that Austen was an accomplished writer well before she was out of her teens, that she was extremely literate and had a sophisticated understanding of the conventions of the courtship novel genre, and that she was determined to be a professional writer, for financial reasons as well as artistic ones. To pretend all this doesn’t matter, or that it matters less than Austen’s private erotic life, is a horrible devaluation of what this woman writer’s career means.
Hear, hear! Go read the rest of this thoughtfully expressed and very well-written post, minus the snark and rantings one might read here. 
It’s not that we are against the movies. We love the intersection of Jane Austen’s life and work with pop culture–that’s why we started this blog, after all, to catalog it. We are delighted with the idea of movies about Jane Austen and adapting her works, and we are aware that there are many Janeites who are perfectly satisfied with the recent productions. We just wish that the filmmakers tried harder to satisfy both the Jane Austen fans and those who could not care less about her, but only go to the films to see the flavor-of-the-month starring in it.
We don’t expect to change everyone’s mind. We hope only to encourage critical thinking and commentary.
ETA corrections rendered impossible last night by computer malfunctions!
April 4th, 2006 at 1:10 am
VERY TRUE INDEED.
It’s kind of a shame that Emily Auerbach already wrote “Searching for Jane Austen” and the brilliant chapter about “Touching her up and Putting her down”. She would rip that one (”Becoming Jane”) into pieces, starting with the awful habit of calling her “Jane”.
Can you imagine “Shakespeare in Love” could have been “William in Love”??
April 4th, 2006 at 3:54 am
Some say, there goes old Negative Mags again, others say that if Jane Austen was alive and well she would be writing a blog full of trademark acerbic wit, pretty much like this one. You weren’t frozen in ice for a couple of centuries, were you, Mags?
April 4th, 2006 at 8:33 am
starting with the awful habit of calling her “Jane”.
I call James Joyce “Cousin Seamus.” (My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Joyce.) And I occasionally refer to Shakespeare as Willy.
April 4th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
I dont understand anything about the article?? What d they say about Becoming Jane?
April 4th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
Tangentially speaking…
This snippet startled me for a moment and then reminded of something I’ve thought of raising with cultists before: It’s even a little in doubt that Lizzy could fall in love (despite her “romantic” nature by comparison with, say, Charlotte).
April 4th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
@Mags: I’m not pedantic in general about calling her “Jane” or Shakespeare “Bill” or whatever. I just think it is significant how many “official” books, articles, etc. refer to a grown up woman and serious writer as “Jane”. This would never happen to, say Charles Dickens or someone like that. Just saying…
April 7th, 2006 at 10:02 am
JuliaB:
I’ve been thinking about this since I read your comment last night and I think this is more of a societal issue than one of misogyny or condescension. While it is common to refer to a man by just his last name, it is uncommon and would have once been thought rude to refer to a woman that way. I think this may be somewhat ingrained into us, whether we are conscious of it or not. Combining that with the fact that many scholarly books and articles are written by people who feel genuine affection for their subject, I do not find it surprising that JA is often referred to as Jane. From an affectionate viewpoint, “Miss Austen” would feel too cold and “Austen” might feel too bizarre.