****Only for people who have actually read Jane Austen - and I think that in an ideal world that would be everybody****

Becoming Jane (2007) is a period movie that gives a fictionalized account of Jane Austen’s early days. James McAvoy shines as Tom Lefroy, while Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen and Maggie Smith as Lady Gresham pitch in strongly to keep every minute of the movie absorbing.

Jane Austen, is the youngest daughter of a clergyman in Hampshire who is being courted by the somewhat dimwitted heir of Lady Gresham, Mr. Wisley. Enter Lefroy, a young Irishman, and Jane finds herself drawn to this man of little independent fortune. She is confronted with two choices, security or love, and the movie is about the choices she makes.

Some critics have commented that the screenplay was original. Original it certainly was not, for not only have a number of dialogues and situations been lifted from Pride and Prejudice, in many scenes the backgrounds, costumes and the decorations too have been chosen to remind viewers of the cinematic versions of the books ^[1]. This is perhaps to hint at similarities between P&P and Austen’s life, but I feel that the hints were made a little to obvious.

For example, Lady Gresham’s house is just like Rosings Park of the movie P&P (the one with Keira Knightley) while the two balls are exact replicas of assembly at Meryton and the ball at Netherfields. I have seen my share of movies from that period, and I assure you that this is not just a coincidence. Right from the music onwards, everything in the scenes I mentioned is the same.

While situations and dialogues have been taken from P&P and adopted into the movie, I am made to believe that the director has been faithful when it comes to characters and the plot. Any similarity is to be attributed to Jane drawing upon her experiences when writing her books. What follows is an analysis of Jane Austen’s books in the light of Jane Austen’s own life, as depicted by the movie.

Most people interpret Darcy to be based on Lefroy. I believe that Austen picks up parts of Wisley and parts of Lefroy and combines them together to make a perfect man, the perfect triumphant marriage for Elizabeth Bennet that Jane Austen could not achieve. Consider this, it is obvious that Lady Catherine de Bourgh was modeled on Lady Gresham, and Wisley is Lady Gresham’s nephew.

It is true that Lefroy’s initial behaviour towards Jane Austen is haughty, just like Darcy’s behaviour towards Lizzy. But Austen changes her mind about not just Lefroy, but towards the end, also about Wisley. It is in Wisley that she sees the perfect gentleman.

Also, there are too many signs of Wickham in Lefroy. His loose morals, his charming nature, lack of independent fortune, his engagement to another woman, everything points him to be the model for Wickham.

But Lefroy’s influence in P&P is indubitable, as is Wisley’s. I think the line in P&P that reveals the most is this.

Perhaps this mismanagement was deliberate. Perhaps Austen took all the good qualities of Lefroy, his knowledge and experience in the world (and I don’t mean that in a naughty way) and put it in a Mr. Wisley, the gentleman, to create the perfect Mr. Darcy. And perhaps she took all of Lefroy’s bad qualities, the lack of principles, the lack of constancy and the lack of fortune and dumped them on Mr. Wickham, only leaving him some charm to recommend himself.

There are traces of Wisley vs. Lefroy in the other Austen novels too. She pits Knightley against Churchill in Emma, Edmund against Crawford in Mansfield Park and Brandon against Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility ^[2]. And in each of these books, it is the less charming man that wins. Perhaps for nearly twenty years after the incidents of 1796, she harbored regret for not being able to love Wisley.

Of course, Northanger Abbey is clearly a comic version of Judge Langlois’ house in London. Northanger Abbey was written in 1798, and it seems she had by then come to see the events of 1796 in a comic light. She not only makes fun of Mrs. Radcliffe and Judge Langlois (General Tilney?) but also herself as the young girl in trepidation.

Persuasion was written in 1816, just a year before her death, and after the meeting with Lefroy and his eldest daughter. Perhaps by this time she was having regrets about having let Lefroy go, rather than pining for the loss of the dull Mr. Wisley. Her life is coming to a close without her having experienced much in terms of passion. Lefroy too has seen success, and it is obvious that in retrospect their parting was not for the best. It is in these circumstances that she writes her last book, about reuniting lovers forced to separate by circumstances. In this book, Lefroy as Wentworth has no competition. His lack of constancy is forgiven, and in her imagination all is well again.

It is in Persuasion that we most clearly see the eternal romantic in Jane Austen. She draws upon her experiences when she met an older Tom Lefroy, but removes all the circumstances that prevent a reunion. Instead, she creates a new set of circumstances to make this reunion the most blissful one. She rediscovers the perturbing effects of seeing a lover after being parted for a while, of difficulties in trying to communicate by glances, of the inadequacy of words. The cynicism of Northanger Abbey and the sermonizing of Mansfield Park give way to pure passion, just as in Pride and Prejudice.

In Becoming Jane, she comments on passion –

In Pride and Prejudice, she retains her passion but creates the perfect man who would be worthy of it. But in Persuasion, she shows herself to be reconciled to the weaknesses of the male sex.

The earlier books are essentially critical of the sort of passion that blinds a person to his/her lover’s follies. Pride and Prejudice recommends passion only when the men in question are flawless (I do not Darcy’s haughtiness a flaw in the moral sense). She clearly does not disapprove of marriage in the absence of burning passion. There is no evidence that Marianne’s love for Brandon ever came close to her obsession with Willoughby. Nor is there evidence of Edmund ever doting on Fanny the way he doted on Mary Crawford.

But in Persuasion, passion stages a comeback. Flaws and weaknesses are quickly forgiven, standards are lowered and men who would have met their ruin under Jane Austen’s pen earlier go on to lead happy and satisfied lives.

I believe Persuasion is a repudiation of Austen’s earlier works. For she says, referring to Lady Russell –

I am not saying that she did not err in her advice. It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides; and for myself, I certainly never should, in any circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice.

So you see, Lady Russell is the old Jane Austen! And Anne Elliot is the new Jane Austen, the one with a renewed belief in passion, even if it is directed at imperfect men.

On my part, the lesson I take home is that both passion and poverty are real. Mrs. Austen may say that money is indispensable, but so is passion. That is the lesson we must learn from Jane Austen. What is not real though, is the idea of the perfect man or the perfect woman.

Many people criticize Austen by saying that she wrote solely about marriage. And yet, in her times, a woman’s life depended to a large extent on who her husband was. Does it not follow that any commentary on the state of women in her times should deal mainly with marriage and the choices regarding marriage that women of her century had?

* * *

PS: This analysis is based purely on Becoming Jane and I hope they haven't invented too many details. I have not read any other scholarly articles on this topic and therefore I might be repeating what has already been said and accepted, or what has already been repudiated. There is so much scholarship on Jane Austen that I can’t possibly have said anything new. I still undertook this amateur effort because it gave me pleasure while I was at it.

I am aware of the fact that my conclusions are somewhat simplistic and have been arrived at without sufficient basis. My only excuse is that there is much fun to be obtained by guesswork that can’t be had by poring over mundane letters regarding pigs and poultry.

^[1] I do not know how much the movie borrows from cinematic adaptations of the other books. I see no great resemblance to Sense and Sensibility or to the TV adaptation of P&P and I have not seen the other movies.

It is true that there is a dose of realism, unlike some other period movies. There are boxing scenes, scenes with prostitutes and gypsies and so on. But I see this merely as a continuation of what the new Pride and Prejudice started.

^[2] The first draft of Sense and Sensibility was written before or during Lefroy’s visit to Hampshire. But the final draft was prepared a good fifteen years later, and by all available accounts Austen had to rewrite a large part of Elinor and Marianne to make it print-worthy as Sense and Sensibility. I therefore believe it would not be wrong to claim that Lefroy and Wisley did influence the heroes of this novel.

Posted by KRC. | Permalink |