250 Years After Her Beginning, Why Is Jane Austen Nonetheless So Well-liked?

This yr marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s delivery.

To have a good time the event, 1000’s are flocking to Bath, England, in bonnets and high hats this month for the Jane Austen Festival.

Several new variations and reimaginings are additionally within the works throughout her birthday yr: Netflix is producing a brand new Pride and Prejudice collection written by Dolly Alderton; Focus Features introduced an adaptation of Sense and Sensibility with Daisy Edgar-Jones; and earlier this yr, PBS debuted Miss Austen, a collection about Jane Austen’s sister.

What continues to spur Austenmania two centuries after her delivery? It’s a query Aia Yousef asks her college students.

“I don’t know if we’ve settled on an answer,” Yousef stated. “She was writing two centuries ago about a small region in southeastern England. And yet somehow, she is still so popular.”

Yousef, an advising dean within the College of Arts & Sciences and adjunct lecturer within the Department of English, teaches an undergraduate course on Austen. In the category, college students learn Austen’s six novels, her unfinished seventh and her writing as a younger grownup, assessing the historic context of the time, her literary fashion and contributions to the event of the novel. They additionally study Austen’s enduring recognition, variations like Clueless and what she will be able to train us right this moment.

“I think students are looking for that space where they can explore some of these questions — what it’s like to be a young woman in society, how to make a good decision, how to be a good person, how to grow — and Austen allows them to do that,” she stated. “Her characters are still relevant. The stories they tell are still relevant.”

We requested Yousef why Austen continues to be common and what the 18th-century satirist can make clear right this moment. Here’s what she stated.

Austen teaches us concerning the world by which she lived.

Although Austen lived in rural southeastern England, her work illuminates the political and social problems with her day. Mansfield Park references the abolition of the slave commerce; her different novels contact on matters just like the Napoleonic Wars or gender inequity — the latter of which Austen was acquainted.

“Most of my students don’t realize Austen herself was economically dependent on her brother after her father passed away,” Yousef stated. “She wrote, it’s secure to imagine, as a result of she preferred writing, but in addition as a result of she hoped to generate profits. 

“This is somebody who understood the importance of financial independence when you’re a woman. And she was doing so when there were very limited options for women.”

And whereas Austen was humorous and satirical in her writing, her novels mirrored considerations about cash, Yousef stated.

“If you reread a lot of them, there is always some kind of economic anxiety happening with somebody: the obsession with money and standing in the society and who is independent and who is dependent and searching for that independence. It’s all over those novels.”

Austen’s novels are about greater than the wedding plot.

In Jane Austen’s six novels, the entire heroines’ tales finish in marriage, a conference that influences romantic comedies today, The Atlantic writes.

And whereas Austen’s novels are about love and courtship, additionally they study the practicality and position of marriage, Yousef stated. 

“There is an interrogation of the marriage plot. What is the role of marriage? What function does it serve?” Yousef stated. “Her protagonists all the time find yourself with somebody that they love, however they’re additionally financially safe, too.

“This is not somebody who is ‘throw yourself into love and it will all work out.’ [Students] realize Austen was struggling with and raising a lot of questions we still think about now.”

Austen remains to be common world wide for 2 causes.

For one, Austen represents totally different concepts for various individuals. The novelist reveals up in discourses about feminism, conservatism, range in casting interval items, even white nationalism, Yousef stated.

“You can see her being portrayed as this radical feminist at the same time you see her portrayed as this quiet, conservative aunt who doesn’t speak out of turn,” she stated. “She becomes a stand-in for these larger questions and conversations people are having.”

Another huge motive, Yousef stated, is that Austen’s writing is rooted in characters who really feel actual and flawed.

“Regardless of the position they have in society … there’s a sense in which their stories still matter. She makes fun of [the characters], they’re flawed, but she still respects them,” Yousef stated. 

“I think this acknowledgment that no matter how small your story may seem, you still have worth and deserve to find happiness …. is part of the reason why her novels are still so popular.”

Yousef additionally factors to Austen’s “spirited” female protagonists who really feel relatable right this moment.

“They’re independent, they ask questions, they push against the grain, but they’re also very flawed,” Yousef stated of Austen’s feminine characters. “I feel that appeals to college students now as a result of they understand, you don’t must be good. You don’t must be a great to be an Austen protagonist.

You simply must really feel like an actual particular person, an actual one that is prepared to develop.”

We maintain watching Austen’s variations as a result of …

There’s a highlight on girls’s lives and that their tales matter, Yousef stated.

There can also be a feel-good aspect, from the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice to 2001’s Bridget Jones Diary.

“And they’re funny,” Yousef stated. “I don’t think we recognize how funny she is. There’s something familiar, comfortable and validating.” 

Yousef stated if Austen had been writing right this moment, she wonders if the author would discover different methods to inform girls’s tales that don’t finish in marriage.

“She was this young woman who was so bright and intelligent and had very limited options and was struggling to support herself,” Yousef stated. “And this is somebody who kept doing what she could to have the kind of life she wanted. There’s something very beautiful about that that I think is still important for us to remember and still resonates with students.”