Jane Austen's Effect on Women and Feminism
The first time I heard Jane Austen’s name, I was 6 years old. My brother and I were spending the night with my father’s mother, a woman I had known little
Jane Austen's Effect on Women and Feminism
The first time I heard Jane Austen’s name, I was 6 years old. My brother and I were spending the night with my father’s mother, a woman I had known little of at the time. Like most grandmother’s, she got us to sleep quickly on the couches in her small apartment. She’s always liked to watch a movie before going to sleep, a ritual she still keeps 10 years later. A woman behind the times, she put her favorite tape in her damaged VHS and played a film that still affects her granddaughter to this day. After my brother had gone to sleep, she turned on the Keira Knightley’s adaptation of Pride & Prejudice under the assumption that I had also gone to sleep.
I still don’t know how she managed to get a movie released in 2005 on tape or how my 13 month old brother slept through the entirety of the 2 hour feature film. I do know that I watched that film intently with an open young mind. After years of Disney Princess movies, Elizabeth Bennett’s was the story that stuck. I wouldn’t understand all of the complexities lying within the film for a lot more years, but this was only the beginning. Jane Austen’s effect on me and other women is unmeasurable.
Austen’s effect has been done through her work during the Romanticism period. Romanticism was during a time of change, a time of influence. Works such as Austen’s incited both of these things. Although the National Woman Suffrage Association wouldn’t be established until 1869, the Romanticism period was during a time where women were starting to demand a voice and continued to be put down. Jane Austen’s part in the literary period wasn’t a miniscule footnote, if anything it was entire chapters.
Female authors during the romantic period don’t even reach the double digits. The women who dared to put pen to paper were as daring as the talented should be, especially for their time. The romantic period was during a time where women writing, especially writing the way Austen did, was entirely new and questionable. Her romantic novels showed heroines who wished for love, not money like most women of her time. This would lead to the idea that women didn’t even have to marry in the first place; it just so happens that Austen never did. Female writers of the Romantic period dared to do what they were told to never do.
That is a feat in itself. Jane Austen sits along with poets and writers such as Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, and Amelia Opie. These are fine people to sit with but one could only wish that there were more to be acknowledged. Austen inspired women to keep writing through the Romantic period and indirectly brought us so much of the literature today’s society highly regards. Many creatives give Austen credit for their inspiration.
These works vary from books, film, and everything in between. Her work still inspires modern creatives, and it’s surprising how many of our cultures trademarks were inspired by this one woman in the Romantic period. Movies inspired by Austen’s novel include: Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001) in which the heroine even ends up with her own Mr. Darcy, and Clueless (1995) based off of Austen’s Emma with Alicia Silverstone’s Cher and Paul Rudd’s Josh interpreting characters Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightley.
The links between Austen’s novels and these modern films usually go over people’s heads, but many others like me have been catching on for a while. Many people have even continued the lives of Austen’s characters, feeling like they didn’t get enough time with the Pride and Prejudice characters they loved. An author of the name Linda Berdoll thrived off of this idea, writing titles such as, Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and Darcy and Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberly.Amanda Grange even published a book in 2007 titled, Mr. Darcy’s Diary which follows the plot of Pride and Prejudice in the beloved Mr.
Darcy’s point of view. Jane Austen’s lasting effect on the creative world is countless. Her effect on women, however, is somehow even deeper than her effect on creatives. Many believe that the reason Austen stuck with women was because of her ability to relate with women 200 years after her death. She was simply a woman born in the wrong century, and I think she was well aware.
Her father dealt with her editor’s for her and she only received insult from other authors of the time. It isn’t a shock that she didn’t receive recognition until long after her death (Stylist, Jane Austen: An Influential Woman). Jane Austen’s writings have given many stories to many women. Persuasion comforted a woman in Maryland when her husband was deployed. A Texas mother read Emma to her preteen daughter and could see her eyes lighting up (Rosa Inocencio Smith, The Atlantic, Let’s Talk About Jane Austen). In plenty of communities money is still valued over love in marria