Post by Test Card Girl on Mar 3, 2007 8:11:46 GMT 10
Anyone who has read a Jane Austen novel would know about her major theme of marriage for love not money and that in those days a woman had to marry for money for a comfortable future and that young men looked for rich heiresses to marry.
Becoming Jane is a new movie coming out later in March about Jane Austen. It's based on a biography by Jon Spence and he delves further into the affair Jane had with Tom Lefroy when they were both 20. She was a daughter of a village parson and he was a law student dependent on wealthier relatives for his education and start in life. Unfortunately, they bowed to society and Lefroy went on to become Chief Justice of Ireland and married into a rich family and Jane Austen became one of the best-loved authors in English Literature.
Jon Spence in his biography explores the idea that this love affair was the inspiration for Jane's writing. How was a spinster daughter of a village parson able to write with much insight and feeling about love and it's joys and disappointments. He surmises from letters that there was one final meeting between Jane and Lefroy at a relative's house in London and it was after that meeting that Jane started writing the novel that was to become Pride and Prejudice. Throughout Jane's novels you have the recurring character of a young man who marries the rich heiress rather than the poorer young lady he developed an attachment for. eg in Sense and Sensibility and in Emma (the characters' names escape me for the moment)
This affair was also the inspiration for my favourite Jane Austen novel Persuasion in which the heroine Anne Elliott is persuaded in her youth to reject a young naval officer she loves because he didn't have enough "prospects" They meet later in life when he is rich and looking for a wife. After some misunderstandings they realise they still love each other and marry. This is wish fulfillment at it's best. And the novel is made more poignant knowing that Jane had loved and lost like Anne Elliott but she was not re-united with the man she loved.
The movie starring Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy has had mixed reviews and concentrates on Jane and Lefroy. The biography also looks at Jane's sister-in-law Eliza de Feuillade as another source of inspiration for her novels. I don't know much about Eliza but I assume she married Jane's brother for love and was an independent spirited woman.
I'm going to buy the book when it comes out in the shops but will probably wait for the DVD of the movie.
Becoming Jane is a new movie coming out later in March about Jane Austen. It's based on a biography by Jon Spence and he delves further into the affair Jane had with Tom Lefroy when they were both 20. She was a daughter of a village parson and he was a law student dependent on wealthier relatives for his education and start in life. Unfortunately, they bowed to society and Lefroy went on to become Chief Justice of Ireland and married into a rich family and Jane Austen became one of the best-loved authors in English Literature.
Jon Spence in his biography explores the idea that this love affair was the inspiration for Jane's writing. How was a spinster daughter of a village parson able to write with much insight and feeling about love and it's joys and disappointments. He surmises from letters that there was one final meeting between Jane and Lefroy at a relative's house in London and it was after that meeting that Jane started writing the novel that was to become Pride and Prejudice. Throughout Jane's novels you have the recurring character of a young man who marries the rich heiress rather than the poorer young lady he developed an attachment for. eg in Sense and Sensibility and in Emma (the characters' names escape me for the moment)
This affair was also the inspiration for my favourite Jane Austen novel Persuasion in which the heroine Anne Elliott is persuaded in her youth to reject a young naval officer she loves because he didn't have enough "prospects" They meet later in life when he is rich and looking for a wife. After some misunderstandings they realise they still love each other and marry. This is wish fulfillment at it's best. And the novel is made more poignant knowing that Jane had loved and lost like Anne Elliott but she was not re-united with the man she loved.
The movie starring Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy has had mixed reviews and concentrates on Jane and Lefroy. The biography also looks at Jane's sister-in-law Eliza de Feuillade as another source of inspiration for her novels. I don't know much about Eliza but I assume she married Jane's brother for love and was an independent spirited woman.
I'm going to buy the book when it comes out in the shops but will probably wait for the DVD of the movie.