Peter J. Leithart - Jane Austen

She was like a childquite a child very lively and fully of humormost amiablemost beloved.

FULWAR WILLIAM FOWLE, on Jane Austen

N either Jane Austen nor her family could leave her characters alone. Her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh and niece Anna Lefroy frequently asked what happened after the novels ended, and Aunt Jane would oblige with

many little particulars about the subsequent career of some of her people. In this traditionary way we learned that Miss Steele never succeeded in catching the Doctor; that Kitty Bennet was satisfactorily married to a clergyman near Pemberly, while Mary obtained nothing higher than one of her uncle Philips clerks, and was content to be considered a star in the society of Meryton; that the considerable sum given by Mrs. Norris to William Price was one pound; that Mr Woodhouse survived his daughters marriage, and kept her and Mr Knightley from settling at Donwell, about two years; and that the letters placed by Frank Churchill before Jane Fairfax, which she swept away unread, contained the word pardon.

We cant leave Janes characters alone either. Drop in at the nearest big-box bookstore, and you will find shelves stuffed with prequels and sequels and every other kind of -quel imaginable. Over there is Emma Tennants An Unequal Marriage: Pride and Prejudice Twenty Years Later, in which Fitzwilliam has reverted back to his haughty pre-Elizabethan self, his son has married a barmaid, and his steward pines for his wife. Down the shelf is Linda Berdolls The Bar Sinister: Pride and Prejudice Continues, which gives details of the Darcys sex life and introduces a young workman at Pemberley who is reputed to be Darcys illegitimate son and who stands, due to Elizabeths barrenness, to inherit his fortune. Turn the corner and youll find Bridget Joness Diary, by Helen Fielding, less a sequel than a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, complete with Mark Darcy, an apparent descendant of Austens character Mr. Darcy. Then theres S. N. Dyers Resolve and Resistance, in which Elizabeth uses Pemberley as the base for a guerilla movement against Napoleons occupying army and learns with the help of Admiral Nelson, to navigate a fleet of hot-air balloons... so as to lead this English resistance to victory. If over the top is where you live, you might check out Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, billed as an updating of the classic Regency romance enhanced by ultraviolent zombie mayhem.

Though Pride and Prejudice is far and away the most often exploited of Austens books, there are similar novels based on Emma, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility, not to mention Stephanie Barrons Jane Austen Mysteries, in which Austen herself turns sleuth. I imagine someone somewhere is sweating away over a manuscript in which the intrepid and reincarnated Lizzie leads British special forces through the wastes of Afghanistan to the cave where Osama bin Laden makes his headquarters.

Time would fail were I to list the film and television productions of Austens novels, many of which hastily capitalize on the astonishing success of Sue Birtwistle s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

Some of the best Austen films are not Austen films at all, but more distant adaptations, like Whit Stillmans wonderfully Austenesque Metropolitan. Stillmans talky films work because he doesnt attempt to reproduce Regency England, with its connotations of elegance and craftsmanship; rather, he discovers contemporary or near-contemporary social settings (in Metropolitan, the haute bourgeoisie of New York City not so long ago) into which he can plop a plot. The failure to provide the right social setting is the main flaw in the otherwise charming Emma adaptation, Clueless. Southern California is many things, but a rigidly hierarchical society it aint. Emma Woodhouse was perhaps the first of the Valley Girls, but Emma becomes ludicrous unless its romance develops against the background of a fixed social structure.

We cant even leave poor Jane herself alone. Biographers (mea culpa) pore over her letters, which her sister Cassandra wanted to destroy or hide or keep to herself and the family circle. Tourists stomp through Janes various homes, and Hollywood has produced a film about her life, dressing it up with fictional characters and situations to work the germ of a romance into a two-hour feature. Becoming Jane (2007) is based on a biography by Jon Spence, which, despite many virtues, operates on the silly premise that Austen drew everything she wrote more or less directly from life. Spence treats Austens youthful writings (known as her Juvenalia) and the novels as autobiographical allegories, and the film takes this much further, assuming that Jane could not have written what she did not experience. She could not have imagined an elopement without eloping, could not vividly depict a girl falling in love with a rake unless she had had an affair herself, could not show Elizabeth Bennet skewering a rich suitor unless she had been stalked by a large clumsy booby, could not invent a Lady Catherine. Not even Spence was bold enough to create a romance with a nonexistent Mr. Wisley. One might as well ask, was Agatha Christie a murderess?

Whether Austen pined after Tom Lefroy, as Spence and the film suggest, is open to debate. But we can be morally certain that the young woman who wrote Pride and Prejudice never acted like Lydia, and that the woman who wrote Northanger Abbey would have been self-aware enough to stop short of making her own life a breathless romance. The film is endurable only if we imagine how heartily Jane Austen would have laughed at it.