Becoming Jane

So I finally got around to renting and watching the movie. And yes, I loved it. But do I believe everything that they portrayed in this film about Jane Austen's life? Absolutely not.

Sadly, there are a lot of people out there who think that this film is a true adaptation of the life of Jane Austen. It is not!!! There is actually very little we do know about her life, and this film should not be looked at as the truth about her.

We know that she was one of 8 children and her father was a minister. We know that she only had one sister, and that neither Jane nor her sister ever married. We know that after the death of her parents, Jane lived with her brother Henry.

Jane Austen published four of her novels during her lifetime, and the other two were published posthumously by her brother. They were not published under her own name, but under "By a Lady." She kept her writing a secret from everyone but her own family.

With all of that knowledge of her life though, we do not know anything about her love life, or the lack thereof. We just don't! Did she fall in love with a man who would be unable to support her? Was she offered marriage by a man who stood to inherit great wealth, only to turn him down due to lack of affection? There is no way of knowing the answers to these questions.

What we can know is that the writers, directors, and producers of this film took great creative liscense. Is there anything wrong with that? Absolutely not! They created a wonderful movie that was fun to watch. However, if the movie-goer is familiar with Ms. Austen's novels, then they would also be aware that many of the events in the film followed very closely to the events which Ms. Austen wrote about. The film-makers made sure that the events in the film would be believable to those who have knowledge of Austen's work, by creating a world in which Jane Austen lived that was terribly true to her fictional characters. As such, the film should be viewed as a fictional work.

So while it is an enjoyable film, and while it is true to Jane Austen's fictional world, we should not rely on Becoming Jane as a historical document or as truth about the life of Jane Austen. We should rely on it solely as an enjoyable film which may or may not contain much truth about how Jane Austen truly lived.