Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link to a column by Mikita Brottman at the Huffington Post, in which she registers her complaints about the recent spate of Jane Austen adaptations, books, etc. While she certainly is entitled to her opinion, we think she paints the phenomenon with much too broad a brush.

There’s no point trying to understand what it is about Jane Austen that’s so compelling to today’s women, because Jane Austen™ has very little to do with Jane Austen. Jane Austen™ is a retro fantasy creation, a sassy, ironic, independent woman. Jane Austen™ is all about social snubs, overheard conversations, implied relationships, and signifiers of status, especially hair and clothes. Jane Austen™ thrives in social enclaves full of privileged women obsessed with material wealth, class distinctions, and, always, the underlying mating dance. Exactly like He’s Just Not That Into You.

In the world of Jane Austen™ the women who win may not be perfectly beautiful, but they’re witty, smart, and well dressed. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the actress who plays Jane Austen in Becoming Jane, the voluptuous Hathaway, is best known as the star of The Princess Diaries, since Jane Austen™ is essentially The Princess Diaries for grownups.

Actually, Becoming Jane is Jane Austen for overly romantic fourteen-year-olds. Try again.

It may be a lovely fantasy, but I suspect the historical Jane Austen would be Just Not That Into It.

Certainly there are some “Jane Austen fans” (and we use the term loosely) who like the novels and films and books for the pretty people and pretty clothes, but there are plenty of us who are real, serious Jane Austen fans, who can quote the novels chapter and verse, who have read and digested 200 years of scholarship about her work, but who don’t take it all so darned seriously that we can’t have a little fun with it. What else have we spent the past three and half years (longer, really, on our personal blog) blogging about if not the fun, pop culture aspects of being a Janeite? Not that all of the Jane Austen Brand™ (and please to stop stealing our schtick without at least acknowledging it) products are of the best quality, and Jane knows we’re the first to point that out. And that’s the whole point: you can’t paint the modern Jane Austen phenomenon with such a broad brush, and you can’t write about it in 1000 words, either.