 |
WHITE IMAGES/SCALA, FLORENCE
|
|
The riddle of Jane Austen, dead more than two centuries, is how her six novels have remained vital and popular today. A batch of modern movie versions glow with performances by Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Anya Taylor-Joy, Dakota Johnson, Colin Firth, and Keira Knightley. A 2016 novel even set Pride and Prejudice in contemporary Cincinnati, with a backdrop of a Bachelor-like reality show.
In Austen’s 41 years, she never left southern England, never married (though she rejected one proposal), and found herself weighted by the leaden conventions of the day. She had a point of view on love, slyly embedded in novels focused on humor and the frailties of human character, society, and financial status.
“Nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound without love,” she once advised a niece, “bound to one, and preferring another; that is a punishment which you do not deserve.”
Read the full story here.
Please consider getting our full digital report and our magazine by subscribing here.
|
|
|
|
