Becoming Jane By Angela Fox

Becoming Jane

Film explores Jane Austen’s own romantic evolution

By Angela Fox

Jane Austen’s novels were certainly popular during her lifetime, but 190 years after her death her works have more fans than their author could ever have imagined – thanks to Hollywood. For decades, filmmakers have delighted in adapting Austen’s novels for the screen and audiences have embraced the cinematic versions of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park with equal enthusiasm.

Becoming Jane, the latest cinematic spin on Austen, however, turns on Austen herself rather than one of her books. Happily, it is as witty, romantic and sophisticated a tale as any the celebrated 18th century novelist ever spun herself. It’s also probably completely imaginary, but then romance is rarely rooted in fact, as anyone who has ever been in love well knows.

The film takes the sketchy details of a real-life acquaintanceship of Austen and an Irish lawyer Tom Lefroy and paints a plausible star-crossed scenario that begs the question of whether this relationship inspired Jane, the spinster daughter of a poor country clergyman, to become writer that she did. All along the way, the film ingeniously evokes characters and themes from her novels without ever hitting the viewer over the head with the references.

The film opens in 1795 and Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) is a 20 year-old beauty with a brain to match – not an accepted combination in rural England at the time. She is also an emerging writer who delights family and friends with readings of her work that express both sense and sensibility. Still, her loving but flighty mother (Julie Walters) and wise but poor clergyman father (James Cromwell) lean toward common sense when it comes to Jane’s future and are searching for a wealthy, well-appointed husband for her. They are eyeing the dull Mr. Wisley (Laurence Fox), nephew and sole heir to the formidable Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith). Wisley is agreeable; Jane is not. But even she begins to wonder if her dream of marrying for love is only the stuff of novels after all.

Enter the handsome, roguish and financially challenged Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy). Sparks fly when the two clash, very much in the style of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. But romance, of course, ensues. Both realize that such a match flies in the face of late 18th century conventional wisdom: in short, if they marry they risk family, friends and fortune. If they don’t – ah, well, therein hangs the tale.

Gorgeously filmed in England and Ireland, with a wonderful original score by Adrian Johnston, Becoming Jane is deftly directed by Julian Jarrold and superbly scripted by Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams. It is utterly disarming entertainment that stands on its own and also serves as spirited salute to all things Austen.

If you’re truly besotted with Austen, of course, you really should head for her home turf in the green rolling hills of southern England. Jane Austen was born in the tiny village of Steventon, near Andover in Hampshire, and it was here that Austen wrote first drafts of both Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. The scenes in Becoming Jane of Anne Hathaway/Jane scribbling away in her nightgown at her bedroom window beautifully recreate the writer’s youthful awakening to the power of words. Austen’s father was vicar of the parish here and the tiny 13th-century church of St. Nicholas where he and other members of her family were rectors, remains much as it was in Austen’s day. Many of the Austen family graves in the churchyard also remain, though not the rectory where they lived.

The Austens were themselves tourists, so a true Austen-phile might follow in their footsteps to Devon where the family spent summer holidays in the resorts of Dawlish, Teignmouth and Sidmouth in 1801. The South West Coastal Path goes through all three towns, as well as Lyme Regis in Dorset, which the Austen discovered in 1803 and of which she once wrote “a very strange stranger it must be who does not feel charms in the immediate environs of Lyme.” The film Persuasion was shot in Lyme.

After her father's retirement, Austen and the rest of the family moved to Bath, where the writer lived from 1801-1806. Walking up Beacon Hill to the village of Charlcombe, which Austen described as being “sweetly situated in a little green valley,” was a favorite destination, as were Claverton Down and Weston. Her knowledge of the Bath is reflected in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which are set in the city.

Visit the Jane Austen Center, in a Georgian house on Gay Street, where a permanent exhibition explores the effect that living in Bath had on Austen and her writing. Costumed tour guides add to the authentic period atmosphere. There’s also a fine gift shop and the Regency themed Tea Rooms where you can enjoy a pot of tea, homemade sweets or a light lunch. The Tea Rooms offer excellent rooftop views of the city, still very much as Austen knew it, preserving in its streets and historic buildings the world evoked so beautifully in her novels.

The last place Jane lived was at Chawton, near Alton, in her home county of Hampshire. While here, she completed and published all her novels. Her house in Chawton is now one of the most popular literary museums in England, with displays of her writings, her small writing table and a quilt she made with her mother and sister. There is also a flower garden and an old bake house in the courtyard with a brick bread oven, brick washtub and Austen’s donkey cart. The writer lived in the 17th century house from 1809 until her death in 1817. Austen was only 42 when she died, probably of Addison’s disease, and is buried in Winchester Cathedral. She never married.

Photos courtesy of Miramax Films.

For more information on Becoming Jane:

www.becomingjane-themovie.com

For more information on visiting Jane Austen’s England: