(2007) Julian Jarrold directed this imaginative screenplay by Sarah Williams and Kevin Hood, who have placed the authoress Jane Austen (1775-1817), the greatest of English novelists for her satirical wit and moral discrimination, as it were within one of her own novels to experience the one life-changing love of her life.

Jane (Anne Hathaway), the seventh child and youngest daughter of a country parson (James Cromwell) and his wife (Julie Walters), who at the outset of the story have been married for 32 years, has her mother worried: "That girl needs a husband." Refusing to marry for money - Lady Gresham's nephew, Mr Wisley (Laurence Fox), is not only eligible and in love with her but stands to inherit his aunt's rich estate - Jane says: "I will not marry without affection."

Along comes Thomas Lefroy (James McAvoy), a young law student from Limerick, Ireland, dependent on his uncle Judge Langlois's allowance, sent from London to the deep countryside of Hampshire for his poor choice of wild companionship and dissipation. Arriving "late as ever" to an occasion of engagement between Jane's sister Cassandra (Anna Maxwell Martin) and the fiancé Robert Fowle (Tom Vaughn-Lawlor), Thomas then disparages Jane's reading of her ironical piece dedicated to the couple as "juvenile" and "insipid."

She quickly sums him up as "disagreeable," "impertinent," and "insufferable." Following a dance together and her whacking his bowl in a cricket match, Jane and Tom discuss literature during which he remarks that masculine authors have an advantage over females, who are "condemned to propriety," by means of their freedom at exploring diverse experiences; by example he hands her a copy of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. After reading it, she says to him: "Bad characters often thrive … as you."

Jane's mother, warning her that she will become a poor old maid with her obstinacy toward Mr Wisley, advises: "Affection is desirable; money is absolutely indispensable." During a visit from Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith) with her nephew, Jane suddenly breaks away. "What is she doing?" asks her ladyship. "Writing," replies Mr Wisley. "Can anything be done about it?"

Admitting to Jane that he has no money or property, Tom nonetheless promises her: "I'm yours, heart and soul." On a sojourn to London, Jane, her brother Henry (Joe Anderson), and her cousin Eliza De Feuillide (Lucy Cohu), an older woman of means in love with Henry, spend time with Tom, who takes Jane, with her ambition to earn her keep with her pen, to meet Mrs Radcliffe, a very successful authoress of gothic fiction, to whom Jane speaks admiringly: "Imagination has brought you independence."

In his appeal to his uncle (Ian Richardson), hoping Jane's splendid character has spoken for her worthiness, Tom's hopes are rebuffed; a letter has discouraged the union, resulting in the uncle's refusal to consent to the marriage. Later hearing that Tom's engaged, Jane rudely acquiesces to Mr Wisley's long-standing proposal, only to cross paths with Tom and spontaneously agree to his passionate resolution they elope.

Upon her return to her home, Lady Gresham refuses to have any association with a girl "fatally tainted by suspicion." However, Mr Wisley does not share his aunt's opinion of Jane: "Will all your stories have happy endings?" Jane replies that after they have suffered troubles, "my characters will have all that they desire."

For the record, according to the entry for Jane Austen in The Reader's Encyclopedia, "The only dramatic event of her life was an attachment to a clergyman who died before they could become engaged, but this was an obscure and doubtful episode, producing little outward change in her life. She never married; had no contact with London literary life; spent all her time, when not writing, on ordinary domestic duties, among her numerous nephews and nieces. Out of the materials of such a narrow world, precisely by sticking scrupulously to that narrow world, she made great literature."

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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