What is the main lesson we take away from Jane Austen? I know novels aren’t manuals, but the Austen industry encourages a certain self-help approach to its products – and Austen herself was full of what we no longer call bossy opinions. From the books, there are endless shrewd judgments about how to be a woman of substance. From the screen adaptations, we learn just how nice it would be to have a big house in Derbyshire. There is the general rule of true love overcoming all obstacles. But there is also this: that there is no worse fate to befall a woman than to fail to lock down a man.
Two new Austen adaptations are heading our way: a Netflix miniseries of Pride and Prejudice, and a new movie version of Sense and Sensibility. They join Too Much, Lena Dunham’s new show that riffs on our relationship with romcoms – how we use them as templates and ideals – a clear nod to Sleepless in Seattle, except with Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility as its urtext rather than An Affair to Remember.
