Jane Austen, Freemale
Maggie Stratton opines that a modern version of one of Jane Austen’s novels would have to take into consideration the “freemale.”
But should there be any appetite left for an updating of Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion or the like, any 21st century interpretation would have some very different social realities to address. The 2008 Mr Bingleys in want of a wife would, according to the latest statistics, have to contend with growing numbers of single women in possession of their own good fortune, career and comfortable lifestyle, who have no desire to give up their independence.
This new breed of woman has been labelled the Freemale – a woman who is happily asserting that life can be good without a man.
New? Sounds very like Jane Austen herself, actually.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:08 am
The article “Why boy-meets-girl doesn’t always mean happily-ever-after” is very interesting, thank you for posting the link and comment. And yet to complete P&P update we must also tell something about a modern male. He is like Mr. Darcy but without Pemberly and ten thousand a year. So the opening of an updated P&P must be a sort of:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a very bad fortune must be in a want of a freemale”.
As to the Jane Austen’s idea of “happily-ever-after” I always notice it is taken much seriously all over and even critically. To me it sounds like one of her jokes. Let us not forget that Jane Austen died at a comparatively early age having been at the beginning of her writing career and in one or other of her future works she might have revealed her imagination of “happily-ever-after”.
Thanks