Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Jane Austen – The Movie

Hey guys.

In the air over the Celebes Sea between Indonesia and The Philippines. More yippie – never get tired of flying out and the anticipation of the trip.

Pigged out on vile airline food. Not an oxymoron – I was just bored. And it wasn’t that bad. Maybe.

And have just seen ‘Becoming Jane’. They’ve run out of novels to translate into movies and are now cannibalising her life for material. But a mix of fiction and fact – the basic outlines are there but racy and fast. Authors can draw on their own lives and, then, to a greater or lesser extent. So it’s interesting the screenwriter/s have put the two together. A kind of what-if autobiography-fiction.

Jane Austen is pursued by a hunting-fishing-fighting-rake type and a dullard. And accepts the latter sort of to avoid the difficulties of the former. But within 24 hours takes up spinsterhood. All with some intense snogging and at a cracking pace.

Not quite the Jane I know, but the film would have been pretty killing if the ‘authorized’ version. Though it must be said of the author that she was not the ‘narrow-gutted’ spinster of D H Lawrence. But aggressively critical of the construction and of the social and legal position of women in early C19 England. For example, giving strong focus in a number of the novels to the laws of inheritance disallowing property descending though the female line.

Bout to land so back later!