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From Clueless to Bride & Prejudice and beyond, Austen’s novels have been reshaped in our era to appeal to
global audiences very different from her original readers in their tastes and
priorities, and distant as well from academic critics. These
cross-cultural adaptations depend, of course, on the capacity of Austen’s
central themes and characters to be transposed compellingly into other
languages and cultures, as well as other media. In other words, such
adaptations implicitly rely on the perceived universality of Austen’s primary
concerns. An effective transposition of an Austen novel can be enjoyed by
a reader (or viewer) who is familiar with neither the source text nor Austen’s
own historical and cultural context—as long as the adapter reshapes the Austen
material in a way that is both comprehensible to and entertaining for this
specific new audience. Considering
these adaptations on their own terms can thus be challenging for Austen
scholars. Our stock in trade is, after all, close attention to Austen’s
use of language, the subtlety of her characterization and plotting, and the
rich social, historical, and political contexts on which she draws, often
unobtrusively: the very elements that are most likely to disappear, or be
radically re-envisioned, when her works are imported across significant
distances of time, geography, and culture. At the same time, our detailed
knowledge of Austen’s original texts and contexts allows us to identify
important parallels and differences, which in turn reveal the strategies
employed by the adapter to appeal to her or his anticipated audience.
What we gain from such scrutiny is a fuller appreciation of what is indeed
universal—or can be claimed to be so—about Austen’s writing, as well as of what
is at stake for the adapter in making such a claim. Such an examination
is illuminating regardless of whether the adaptation differs profoundly or only
moderately from Austen’s original. This essay
takes as a case study a group of reworkings of Austen that are cross-cultural
in a particular, and somewhat unusual, sense. The target audience for
these two advice books and six novels has certain similarities to the one
Austen herself had in view: these anticipated readers are
English-speaking Christian women partial to love plots. Unlike the
predominantly Anglican readers of fiction in early nineteenth-century England,
however, the readers addressed by my two writers, Sarah Arthur and Debra White
Smith, are evangelical Protestant women in today’s United States who enjoy
romance novels and romantic films.1
Sarah Arthur’s Dating Mr. Darcy: A Smart
Girl’s Guide to Sensible Romance (2005), published by Tyndale, a Christian
press, coaches young evangelical readers through reflections on themselves and
their potential marriage partners, using Pride
and Prejudice as a touchstone.2
Arthur assumes her readers will be familiar with at least a film adaptation of
the novel—her guide mentions both the 1995 miniseries and 2005 feature film
versions—though she supplies annotated lists of characters and locations in an appendix
just in case.3 Debra White Smith’s
“Austen Series,” published from 2004 to 2006 by the Christian press Harvest
House, recasts each of Austen’s novels as a present-day romance starring
characters of faith.4 Smith’s use
of Austen culminates in her nonfiction advice book What Jane Austen Taught Me about Love and Romance (2007), in which
she relates the moral dilemmas of Austen’s characters to those faced by
contemporary evangelicals, including herself.5 All these works present
Austen’s characters, and to some degree Austen herself, as engaging,
trustworthy models for Christian behavior in today’s world. This effort
requires considerable interpretation of Austen’s novels and of their author,
interpretation that nevertheless takes very different forms for Arthur and for
Smith. Even as Arthur argues for correspondences between Austen’s world
and that of her readers, she calls attention to the challenges of appropriating
Pride and Prejudice for this
audience, and she works to redress these challenges through a combination of
simplified historical commentary, creative readings, and recourse to
allegory. Although Arthur understandably glosses over a great deal of the
complexity of religious belief and practice in Austen’s era, some of her
conclusions nevertheless resonate with those of recent scholars who have
studied these issues. Smith, in contrast, focuses on the capacity of
Austen’s characters and plots to remain compelling and inspiring even when
detached from their original context and infused with contemporary evangelical
beliefs and practices. What Arthur and Smith share is a commitment first
to locating within Austen’s novels the elements of a Christian romance and then
to conveying those elements appealingly to an audience whose reading is guided
by faith rather than by an academic understanding of literature. Making
Jane Austen a Christian role model: Dating
Mr. Darcy A “smart girl” who picks up Dating Mr. Darcy sees a cover photo of a pretty, present-day girl, dressed in an Empire-waist gown; the paperback’s pink-and-lime-green color scheme reinforces the hint that this book aims to meld the up-to-date with the pleasingly retro.
Cover of Dating
Mr. Darcy After several prefatory sections—beginning with Arthur’s
“confession” that she has “a crush on Mr. Darcy” (ix)—Arthur presents a
five-part series of reflections on topics relevant to the young dater, with
each section mixing discussion of the novel and of contemporary Christian life.
A section of “Extra Stuff” at the book’s end includes a guided series of
reflections, several of which incorporate the prayers attributed to Austen, as
well as a scheme for keeping a dating diary based on the qualities elaborated
in the book proper. Central to Arthur’s
enlistment of Pride and Prejudice as
a dating guide for teens of faith is her contention that these young women’s
own search for mates is fundamentally similar to that undertaken by Austen’s
characters. In both eras, declares Arthur, “[s]ingles in the dating
‘market’ often have only brief, contrived opportunities to get to know each
other,” a situation that affects alike those who are “silly and selfish” and those
who are “respectable” (5). Though Arthur does not spell out this definition,
to be “respectable” in her terms clearly means to be chaste as well as
generally virtuous, much as would have been true in Austen’s time. Not
only the dating market but its stock players remain recognizable, Arthur
implies: throughout her book, she encourages her young readers to
identify who among their own acquaintance behaves like Elizabeth Bennet and
Darcy, or Wickham and Lydia. In Arthur’s hands, Pride and Prejudice itself becomes a
conduct manual, demonstrating the consequences of good and bad behavior for the
benefit of impressionable readers. Putting Pride and Prejudice to this purpose is, of course, at odds with
Austen’s own insistence on distinguishing her fiction from the Evangelical and
overtly didactic novels prominent in her lifetime, as well as from conduct
books.6 Yet this essentially didactic
approach to Austen’s fiction is hardly unique to Arthur; indeed, it recalls the
attitude of Austen’s contemporaries as well as that of some readers
today. Austen’s first reviewers, as was typical in the period, emphasized
her novels’ capacity not only to entertain but to edify: the British Critic’s 1812 review of Sense and Sensibility, for instance,
commended that work for offering female readers the opportunity to “learn from
[it], if they please, many sober and salutary maxims for the conduct of life,
exemplified in a very pleasing and entertaining narrative” (Southam 40).7 The didactic strand of Austen’s
fiction continues to preoccupy certain scholars as well as popular writers, who
repeatedly cast Austen in the role of witty, reliable advice-giver.8 Like Arthur’s Dating Mr. Darcy, such works as Lauren Henderson’s (wholly secular)
Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating
implicitly contend that Austen’s guidance is timeless, ever-relevant to those
negotiating the pitfalls of social intercourse.9 Unlike Henderson and other
guidebook authors, Arthur is not concerned with relating Austen’s world to
contemporary American culture generally. Instead, Arthur concentrates on
establishing parallels between Austen’s world and the particular
subculture—even, one might say, counterculture—of evangelical Christian
believers in present-day America. Thus Arthur moves beyond her claim of
comparable marriage markets then and now to assert a more substantial and a
more focused correspondence between Austen’s world and that of the readers of Dating Mr. Darcy. “Jane lived in a
time,” Arthur contends, “when the Christian faith was taken for granted” (88)
and when “‘principles’ and ‘morals’ and ‘duty’” were terms used for “the
standards that God has set for us in the Bible” (98). Both Arthur’s
description of Austen’s England as an essentially Christian environment and her
equation of Austen’s language of morality with specifically Christian tenets
have counterparts in recent scholarly criticism, which—reacting to a long
tradition of essentially secular interpretations—has looked anew at the
religious currents and debates of her era. According to Irene Collins,
“‘[r]eligion and morals’ was assumed by the majority of Anglican clergymen
. . . to be an undivided subject” (143). Michael Giffin has
argued for the recognition of what he terms the “organic relationship between
the Georgian church and society” (2), while Bruce Stovel has asserted the
“interdependence of fiction, morality and religion” for Austen in particular
(202).10 Except on a few occasions,
Arthur blurs the distinction between Christianity in general and Anglicanism in
particular when discussing the religious beliefs and practices of Austen’s era,
a blurring that helps her construct her parallels with the faith world of her
readers. Yet it is not enough for Arthur’s purposes to identify Austen as
having lived in a pervasively Christian world; she aims also to establish
Austen as a believer in a sense that will be recognizable to her own young
evangelical readers.11 This effort
is evident in Arthur’s interpretation of the three prayers attributed to
Austen, a reading that is both carefully couched and creative. “It could
be argued,” writes Arthur, “that [Austen’s] prayers indicate that she felt a
personal experience of God to be
central to the life of faith, even if the language of having a personal relationship with God would have sounded
foreign to her” (88, italics original). That Austen’s prayers are
rhetorically similar to The Book of
Common Prayer—a point made by Stovel, whom Arthur cites—should not, Arthur
urges, incline readers to discount them as formulaic or insincere. “Jane
may have echoed the formal language of the Church of England to express our
need for forgiveness from Jesus Christ,” Arthur maintains, “but her prayers are
uniquely focused on the need to acknowledge our sin and turn to him”
(89). Arthur’s “Guide to Reflection” works further to make these texts
relevant to her own audience by juxtaposing excerpts from the prayers with
questions such as “[i]n what ways have I sinned against my loved ones through
the unkind things I’ve thought, said, or done?” (155). While vital to
Arthur’s project of encouraging spiritual reflection, this insistent
personalization of Austen’s prayers is at odds with the texts’ rhetoric, which
Stovel has described as “speak[ing] in a shared voice of a generic predicament”
(194). Not only does Arthur attempt
to rehabilitate Austen herself as a Christian role model—in the sense of being
prayerful, penitent, and God-focused—but she must work against the apparent
lack of such explicit role models in the novels themselves. Arthur openly
acknowledges that “[i]t may seem ridiculous to speak of faith in Jane Austen’s
novels when the author herself doesn’t seem to address the issue,” or does so
only in “hints” (86, 89). Arthur’s acknowledgment here is in line with
Austen’s earliest reviewers, who expressed relief that she did not follow the
Evangelical fashion for overtly pious content and style: the British Critic’s 1816 review of Emma, for example, praised the novel for
“not dabbl[ing] in religion; of fanatical novels and fanatical authoresses we are
already sick” (Southam 71). For Arthur’s purpose, of course, it would be
convenient if Austen had indeed cultivated a more “fanatical” writing style, in
the sense of incorporating into her novels more explicit and extensive comments
on belief and conversion. Arthur’s strategy for coping
with the challenge of Austen’s limited treatment of faith is threefold.
First, she milks Austen’s hints: for instance, Arthur asserts that
Darcy’s statement that Wickham ought not to be a clergyman constitutes “one of
the most important statements about faith to be found in Pride and Prejudice” (102). Second, she argues around
characters like Mr. Collins: rather than confronting the implications of
Austen’s satirized portrait of him, Arthur takes refuge in a claim that the
ordination of a character whom she dismisses as a “weirdo” reflects the
practice of “the Church of England of the time” (102), thereby conveniently
differentiating between the Christian world she has claimed is present in
Austen’s novels and the Anglican church as an institution. Finally, Arthur asserts that Austen’s writings are not only appropriate but beneficial for evangelicals to read, by introducing an allegorical interpretation of her novels. Arthur encourages her readers to think figuratively, in terms of the “divine romance in which every human character is in the process of being wooed back to the loving heart of God” (85-86). Viewed through this lens, Austen’s characters become “living parables of our relationship with God” (87). This perspective has the effect not only of rendering Mr. Darcy as a type of Christ—due to his “self-sacrificing actions” on behalf of the Bennet family (106)—but of proposing a parallel between Austen and God the Creator. “God is the one who created you,” Arthur reminds her readers, “and he, as the Author of the great story of humankind, has given you a role as one of the characters” (85). At this point, a secular reader of Dating Mr. Darcy may feel that Arthur has left Austen’s actual novels behind altogether. Yet here, too, Arthur’s reasoning is in line with recent scholarly work on religion and the tradition of the novel. Mark Knight and Thomas Woodman, for instance, point out the “deep-rooted similarities and analogies between the novel and religious discourse,” with the most central being “the role of story. . . . Not only is the Bible primarily a narrative, but Christians are encouraged to assimilate their own personal stories in the great meta-narratives of salvation and conversion” (5). The extent of overlap between Arthur’s arguments and those of recent scholars suggests a commonality of purpose that might seem surprising, given the obvious differences between Dating Mr. Darcy and a work of criticism. Part of this overlap is due to Arthur’s own research, as revealed in her endnotes, and which may come as a surprise given her ostentatiously unacademic writing style, peppered as it is with slang and exclamation points. In another sense, however, Arthur shares these scholars’ concern with illuminating and ruminating on the long-neglected strand of religion in Austen’s works. Arthur does so, of course, not to make an academic argument about Austen or about religion but in order to enrich the faith lives of her novel-reading and movie-watching young audience. Jane
Austen at the community church: Debra White Smith’s “Austen Series” Like Arthur’s, Smith’s central aim is to enlist Austen’s writings in order to inspire spiritually her own readers. However, even in What Jane Austen Taught Me about Love and Romance—the closest parallel among Smith’s works to Dating Mr. Darcy—Smith’s appropriation of Austen is essentially, and unapologetically, ahistorical. Smith structures What Jane Austen Taught Me as an extended meditation on the qualities of love enumerated in 1 Corinthians 13, assigning a virtue or vice to one of Austen’s memorable characters (e.g., Mr. Knightley is patient, Fanny Price is kind, Mrs. Elton is rude). Like Arthur, Smith identifies Christlike characters in Austen’s novels—chief among them, not surprisingly, Fanny Price (33)—and encourages readers to think of God’s direction of their own lives as comparable to that of an author’s: “[w]hile Elizabeth [Bennet]’s story is carefully crafted by Austen, our lives are crafted by God” (103-04). Nowhere in this endeavor, however, does Smith concern herself or her readers with what religion meant to Austen personally, in her time period generally, or in her fictional representations. Smith seems to consider Austen’s novels a kind of collective sacred text, one that can be excerpted and interpreted at will for contemporary readers, without concern for the source text’s internal inconsistencies or contexts.
Cover of What
Jane Austen Taught Me About Love and Romance This lack of anxiety about
the appropriateness of Austen’s novels for her audience—at least as interpreted
by Smith herself—frees Smith to borrow the elements of the novels she finds
most useful and to ignore the rest. Austen first attracted her as a
graduate student, Smith explains, because of the author’s “wittiness, her
characters, and the dynamics of the plots,” an interest that led to Smith’s own
“vision for presenting all her novels with contemporary storylines” (What Jane Austen Taught Me 10).
Indeed, Smith considers Austen a mentor in terms of her own professional
writing rather than her faith: “you were as much of a writing maniac as I
am,” Smith remarks in her closing letter to “Jane,” in which she thanks Austen
for “motivating and teaching and for being that good, literary friend I can
always rely on” (192).12 That the
“teaching” Smith has in mind here is of the writer’s craft, not of a spiritual
nature, is borne out by her statement elsewhere in this passage that Austen
provides her the “inspiration” to create characters “in a way that wins my own
heart . . . and hopefully the hearts of my readers” (192).
Smith, in other words, takes Austen as a model for romance-writing rather than
for Godly living, even as she shows in this guide that Austen’s characters can
be reinterpreted, for the most part in line with the original
characterizations, as moral exemplars. Because Smith’s “Austen
Series” takes place in the present day, of course, she can avoid having to
grapple openly with what morals or faith meant in Austen’s era. Like What Jane Austen Taught Me, these novels
demonstrate Smith’s determination to appropriate what she considers important
from Austen’s fiction and to weave in the evangelical content that her own
readers expect, which she does for the most part adroitly and even relatively
unobtrusively. Indeed, given the latitude her contemporary setting gives
her to rework Austen as she sees fit, the degree of Smith’s fidelity to Austen’s
depiction of religious life is striking. With only a few exceptions,
notably a pivotal encounter between her Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy characters
at an altar rail, Smith depicts little more churchgoing or regular religious
observance than does Austen. Perhaps out of concern not to alienate any
potential readers, Smith remains vague, too, about the denominations
represented by the “community churches” and “metropolitan churches” her
characters attend. She quotes from the Bible only once—when a character
remembers that “It is not good for man to
be alone” (First Impressions
162)—and refers to it rarely, usually in order to equate an anti-heroine with
Delilah (Northpointe Chalet 172, Central Park 149, Reason and Romance 204). Except for one, Smith preserves as
clergymen the characters Austen designates as such, with only rare additions
(she makes her Darcy’s parents missionaries) and small changes (both her Mr.
Elton and Henry Tilney characters work as music ministers rather than ordinary
pastors). The major exception is Mr. Collins, who in First Impressions becomes the unappealing vice-president of an oil
company. While Smith does not shy away from suggesting that some
self-proclaimed Christians, such as Rick Warren (Wickham), may live less than
wholly admirable lives, she evidently does not share Austen’s readiness to
apply pointed satire to a member of the clergy. This avoidance of satire
may seem surprising, given that the persona Smith creates for herself in What Jane Austen Taught Me is hardly
humorless or prim. Like Smith’s elision of denominational designations,
this decision to rework Mr. Collins may indicate an awareness that some of her
readers would take more offense than she at Austen’s original character. Smith makes
it quite clear, as is hardly surprising given her anticipated audience, that
her heroines and heroes are people of faith, and that this identity is
important to each of them personally and especially in the search for a mate.
Yet here too she adds less to Austen’s characterizations, and does so more
subtly, than one might expect. Apart from her Fanny Price character, who
bears an appropriately high concern for her own morality and that of the
clergy, and her Catherine Morland character, portrayed as a religious seeker,
Smith’s heroines could all be described in the terms with which Dave Davidson
(Darcy) thinks of Eddi Boswick (Elizabeth): “reverent, [but] not the most
demonstrative church member” (First
Impressions 269). Smith’s most crucial intervention is to incorporate
explicitly a dimension of religious conversion into the transformative changes
of heart experienced by certain of Austen’s heroines. Anna Woods
(Marianne) turns back to Bryan Brixby (Col. Brandon) after an extended,
near-death vision of the “the Giver of Life” (Reason and Romance 293). Amanda Priebe (Emma Woodhouse)
repents of her matchmaking in a prayer in which she apologizes for “trying to
play God” (Amanda 298). Eddi
Boswick, too, asks God to “forgive” her once she realizes how she has misjudged
Dave Davidson (First Impressions
248). On a few
other occasions, Smith employs
contemporary Christian language for a more pragmatic reason, in order to offer
explanations of certain characters’ behavior that will make more sense to her
readers than those Austen presents (or, in some cases, leaves to be
assumed). Smith’s Mr. Bennet character remains in his marriage because he
is “a God-fearing man” (First Impressions
98), while Francine (Fanny Price) assuages her anxieties about Hugh Casper
(Henry Crawford) by reminding herself that “God was in the business of changing
hearts” (Central Park 296).
Most crucially, Kathy Moore’s (Catherine Morland’s) perusal of the diary of the
dead Laura Tilman (Mrs. Tilney) reveals that Laura was not murdered by her abusive
husband and that she knew and accepted her impending death, being “intimate
enough with her Creator to understand when He was calling her name” (Northpointe Chalet 285-86).
Indeed, Kathy’s contact with “the thread of holy devotion in Laura’s diary” (286)
is as important to her as the power of Ben’s (Henry Tilney’s) preaching in
awakening her own sense of faith. A more
ideological agenda is evident in Smith’s handling of two other aspects of
Austen’s narratives: chastity and ordination. While Smith does not
comment explicitly on the fact, it is evident that for her—as for Arthur—an
essential basis for bringing versions of Austen’s narratives to her audience is
the common ground between the code of virtue taken for granted in Austen’s
novels and the present-day assumption among evangelicals that virginity should
be maintained until marriage. Even Kathy Moore, unconventional in some
ways, “lived high morals,” the narrator assures us (Northpointe Chalet 176). For Smith, of course, it is
important to show not only her heroines but her heroes as well practicing
sexual restraint. Unlike Austen, who remains discreetly silent on the
subject of her heroes’ sexual experience, Smith makes plain that the godliness
of these characters extends as well to their stewardship of their bodies.
Nate Knighton (Mr. Knightley), is “wait[ing] on God to bring him his future
mate” (Amanda 19), a situation made
more explicit in the case of Ethan Barrimore (Edmund Bertram), who has
“determined to keep himself sexually pure and as far removed from temptation as
possible . . . , allow[ing] the Lord to lead him to his mate
when the time was right” (Central Park
23). Ben Tilman (Henry Tilney) even announces to Kathy that he hasn’t
been, “you know, active in that way,” and he subsequently puts into practice
his convictions by “forc[ing] himself to break away” from a kiss with her (Northpointe Chalet 205, 231). While most
of Smith’s protagonists highly value purity, however, she sanitizes neither the
desires nor the behavior of those characters who, in Austen’s novels, sexually
transgress or come close to doing so. The promises associated with the
purity ring Anna Woods (Marianne Dashwood) received in adolescence from her
parents help preserve her from giving in to the blandishments of Willis
(Willoughby), an effect the narrator terms a “miracle” (Reason and Romance 176). Linda Boswick (Lydia Bennet) does
actually sleep with her Wickham and get pregnant—although she redeems herself
for that sin by remembering “the sanctity of human life” and choosing marriage
over abortion (First Impressions
255). Less
obvious than Smith’s updating of Austenian virtue to the twenty-first century
is her depiction of a world in which ordained preachers are invariably
men. Without ever touching openly on the controversial (among some
evangelical groups) subject of ordination for women, Smith emphasizes that her
clergyman heroes are invested with God’s power. A musical performance by
Ted Farris (Edward Ferrars) reveals the extent of his “praise and adoration for
his Holy Creator” (Reason and Romance
211). Ethan Barrimore’s congregation tells him “that the Lord’s anointing
was evident in a powerful way when he spoke,” a gift later renewed when “[a]
holy fire cleanse[s] his soul” of his attraction for Carrie Casper (Mary
Crawford; Central Park 88,
326). So talented is Ben Tilman as a preacher that his “insightful
messages” from the pulpit initiate a conversion process for Kathy that
culminates in her recommitment of herself to Christ (Northpointe Chalet 217). The effect of all of these embellishments and interventions by Smith is to render the Christian beliefs and practices left essentially implicit in Austen’s novels in a form recognizable to Smith’s own readers, while preserving and amplifying those aspects of Austen’s original texts that continue to resonate with this audience, particularly the concern with feminine purity. The result is novels that could be said to be, in the terms of Sarah Arthur’s subtitle for Dating Mr. Darcy, “sensible romances”: fiction that, in the great eighteenth-century tradition, edifies as well as entertains. Faithful fans Like all adapters, Arthur and Smith mediate between Austen’s original texts and their own anticipated readers. In Dating Mr. Darcy and What Jane Austen Taught Me, this mediating role is taken explicitly by Arthur and Smith themselves, who as authors interpret and explain Austen for the benefit of their faithful audience. This endeavor, which has little in common with academic literary analysis or teaching, arguably shares more with the kinds of Biblical exegesis practiced in churches and in faith-based workshops of the kind Smith leads on the topic of marriage. Moreover, Arthur and Smith’s effort to establish connections between female readers’ partiality for Austen and their faith can be seen as a counterpart to other efforts within the evangelical world to enlist popular culture as a bridge to church life.13
Cover of Reason
and Romance Of course,
Arthur, Smith, and their publishers stand to benefit too from capitalizing on
Austen’s current popularity. Austen’s name sells merchandise, especially
to women. Yet Arthur and Smith’s descriptions of their own interests in
Austen suggest a more personal stake as well. Both are self-described
Austen lovers who take unashamed pleasure in both the novels and their recent
film adaptations. “As much as I love reading your books,” Smith remarks
in her concluding letter to “Jane,” “I also adore curling up in front of the
fireplace on a winter’s evening with a bowl of popcorn, some hot cocoa, and a
Jane Austen movie” (What Jane Austen
Taught Me 189-90). “You’re missing out,” Arthur exhorts any reader
who has yet to encounter an Austen novel (Dating
Mr. Darcy xi), even as she celebrates her favorite film version.
These authors are addressing a community of like-minded women on two
levels—Austen fans and women of faith—and their writings can be seen as having
a dual purpose as well: proselytizing, if we can use that word, for
Austen’s novels as well as for evangelical Christianity. An academic
reader might well object that it is hardly a promotion of Austen’s novels to
rework them without satire or to skate over their complexity and that of her
historical context. As Deidre Lynch has reminded us, however, “the
cultural Jane Austen has been a crossover phenomenon, and acknowledging that
Austenmania straddles the divides between high and low culture, and between the
canon and the cineplex, can be humbling experiences. We are reminded that
we are far from having exclusive title to the real Jane Austen” (5).
Arthur’s effort to locate recognizable counterparts in Austen’s characters and
in the author herself suggests an interest in providing young women of faith
with literary forebears, however contrived these might seem to those more fully
acquainted with the religious practices and debates of Austen’s day. By
explicitly designating Austen as a kind of muse for herself, Smith too
demonstrates a desire to claim this author, in spite of all her obvious differences,
as kin. In this sense,
regardless of Arthur and Smith’s specifically religious agenda, they are quite
typical of contemporary rewriters of Austen, whose impulse to rework invariably
springs in their own accounts from their great enthusiasm for this author (and,
in some cases, for particular film or stage versions of her novels).14 Arthur’s and Smith’s agenda, of
course, prevents them from recasting Austen quite as freely or fancifully as
have some of their secular fellow writers. In working to strike a balance
between Christianity and romance, Arthur and Smith model for their readers the
very approach they advocate in a reading of Austen. NOTES
I would like to thank Rachel Brownstein for introducing me to
Debra White Smith’s novels. 1. Throughout this essay, I will use
“evangelical” to refer to present-day believers and “Evangelical” to refer to
revivalists of Austen’s era. Though widely separated by time and place,
the two groups can be seen to share significant characteristics. Michael
Wheeler has described Evangelicalism in Austen’s time as placing an “emphasis
upon conversion and a new life in Christ, sanctification and the empowerment of
the Holy Spirit, mission and acts of love (or ‘charity’) and a personal life
set apart from worldly immorality” (407). Present-day evangelicals are
conventionally distinguished as well by a reliance on Biblical authority and a
shared commitment to spreading the Gospel. 2. Arthur has made a career of basing
inspirational works on popular films: she is the author as well of guides
derived from The Lord of the Rings
and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. 3. Arthur remarks of herself that she “first came to Pride and Prejudice through the
BBC/A&E television series and [hasn’t] quite been the same person since”
(ix). Claiming first acquaintance with Austen films rather than Austen
novels is fairly common among authors of Austen-related books, especially those
with looser ties to the original novels. Such claims also suggest that
the author may anticipate readers whose own first experience of Austen was also
with a film version. 4. Among her many fans, Smith is known for her
several dozen romance novels as well as her pair of advice books, Romancing Your Husband and Romancing Your Wife (the latter co-written
with her own husband). She has also built her name recognition through
inspirational presentations and workshops, which her publishers advertise at
the end of all of her novels. The author blurb on What Jane Austen Taught Me credits Smith with fifty books and a
million copies in print. 5. Another Christian re-interpretation of Austen
that is worthy of consideration is the 2003 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which I will treat
in “Jane Austen in Mollywood: Mainstreaming Mormonism in Andrew Black’s Pride & Prejudice” (part of a
planned collection edited by Michael Austin and Mark Decker). See also
Lori Smith’s 2007 memoir A Walk
with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love & Faith, part of which
deals with this Christian author’s musings on the importance of religion to
Austen. 6. Both Jan Fergus and Mary Waldron examine Austen’s relationship to Evangelical and didactic novelists. 7. Barbara Benedict has noted how
Austen’s titles signaled her choice of subgenre to her original readers (73);
more broadly, Benedict makes the bold claim that Austen’s intertextuality “suggests
that she conceived of her novels in the context of current fiction, as a part
of popular literature, and designed her novels to reach the audiences who were
reading contemporary novels” (64). 8. On the scholarly side, see for instance
Michael Giffin’s recent characterization of Austen’s novels as “didactic
commentaries dedicated to showing how and why a rational neoclassical
understanding of self and world is appropriate” (5-6). 9. Other recent popular titles extract
from Austen’s novels advice that is relevant to Regency manners, to be
appreciated by those contemporary readers with an affinity for that period
rather than to be applied to their own lives. See Josephine Ross and
Henrietta Webb’s Jane Austen’s Guide to
Good Manners: Compliments, Charades & Horrible Blunders and Margaret C.
Sullivan’s The Jane Austen Handbook: A
Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World. 10. See too Gene Koppel’s monograph, which arguably initiated the recent effort to restore to critical view the importance of Austen’s Christianity. All of these studies, of course, treat in much greater depth than does Arthur the complexity of theological debates in Austen’s day and as rendered in her fiction. 11. Here, Arthur can be seen as continuing the tradition begun by Austen’s brother Henry, who in his “Biographical Notice” asserted that his sister’s “love of God” remained unflagging even in her final illness and contended that Winchester Cathedral does not “contain the ashes of a brighter genius or a sincerer Christian” (4, 5). 12. The desire to cast Austen as a
“friend” is evident as well in contemporary fiction that features Austen as a
character: see Wells, “Everybody’s Jane: Austen’s Adventures in American
Popular Fiction, 1996-2006” (part
of a planned collection edited by Clare Hanson and Gillian Dow). 13. One instance among many is Greg Garrett’s The Gospel According to Hollywood, which identifies religious and spiritual themes in mainstream films of the last several decades. 14. To take two examples from different ends of the literary spectrum, see Karen Joy Fowler’s proclamation of gratitude to Austen, at the end of The Jane Austen Book Club, for her “renewable, rereadable, endlessly fascinating books” (288), and Amanda Elyot’s statement of thanks in By a Lady to Austen and her dramatic adapter, Howard Fast, for having “so greatly changed [Elyot’s own] life” (v). WORKS
CITED Arthur, Sarah. Dating Mr. Darcy: A Smart Girl’s Guide to Sensible Romance. Wheaton: Tyndale House, 2005. Austen, Henry. “Biographical Notice of the Author.” 1818. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Ed. R. W. Chapman. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1969. 3-9. Benedict, Barbara. “Sensibility by the Numbers: Austen’s Work as Regency Popular Fiction.” Janeites: Austen’s Disciples and Devotees. Ed. Deidre Lynch. Princeton: PUP, 2000. 63-86. Collins, Irene. Jane Austen and the Clergy. London: Hambledon, 1994. Elyot, Amanda. By a Lady: Being the Adventures of an Enlightened American in Jane Austen’s England. New York: Three Rivers P, 2006. Fergus, Jan. Jane Austen and the Didactic Novel: Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice. Totowa, NJ: Barnes, 1983. Fowler, Karen Joy. The Jane Austen Book Club. New York: Putnam, 2004. Garrett, Greg. The Gospel According to Hollywood. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007. Gifford, Michael. Jane Austen and Religion: Salvation and Society in Georgian England. London: Palgrave, 2002. Henderson, Lauren. Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating. New York: Hyperion, 2005. Knight, Mark, and Thomas Woodman, eds. Biblical Religion and the Novel, 1700-2000. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Koppel, Gene. The Religious Dimension of Jane Austen’s Novels. Ann Arbor: UMI Research P, 1988. Lynch, Deidre. “Introduction: Sharing with our Neighbors.” Janeites: Jane Austen’s Disciples and Devotees. Princeton: PUP, 2000. 3-24. Pride & Prejudice. Dir. Andrew Black. 2003. DVD. Excel Entertainment Group, 2003. Ross, Josephine, and Henrietta Webb. Jane Austen’s Guide to Good Manners: Compliments, Charades & Horrible Blunders. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2006. Smith, Debra White. Amanda. Eugene: Harvest House, 2006. _____. Central Park. Eugene: Harvest House, 2005. _____. First Impressions. Eugene: Harvest House, 2004. _____. Possibilities. Eugene: Harvest House, 2006. _____. Northpointe Chalet. Eugene: Harvest House, 2005. _____. Reason and Romance. Eugene: Harvest House, 2004. _____. What Jane Austen Taught Me about Love and Romance. Eugene: Harvest House, 2007. Smith, Lori. A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love & Faith. New York: WaterBrook Press, 2007. Southam, B. C., ed. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage. Vol. 1. London: Routledge, 1968. Stovel, Bruce. “‘The Sentient Target of Death’: Jane Austen’s Prayers.” Jane Austen’s Business: Her World and Her Profession. Ed. Juliet McMaster and Bruce Stovel. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996. 192-205. Sullivan, Margaret C. The Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World. Philadelphia: Quirk, 2007. Waldron, Mary. Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time. Cambridge: CUP, 2001. Wheeler, Michael. “Religion.” Jane Austen in Context. Ed. Janet Todd. Cambridge: CUP, 2006. 406-14. |
