Jane Austen never married. When she was about twenty, she had a flirtation with one Tom Lefroy, an Irish relative of her (much older) friend Mrs. Anne Lefroy. He couldn't afford to marry her, and at the end of his visit to his relatives they went their separate ways.
From these sparse facts a movie has been spun, with Anne Hathaway doing a creditable English accent as Jane (though I didn't see this one with my British friend, as I did Miss Potter, so I'm not sure what her verdict on the dialect would be) and James McAvoy as Tom, depicting their flirtation as extremely similar to the courtship of Darcy and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, starting in mutual disdain and coming around to a passion that can't be denied...except that, as we know from history, Jane Austen never married Tom Lefroy or anyone else.
It's the kind of movie that makes me want to find a book that'll tell me the real story, because I know that wasn't it. But it was pretty to look at, well acted all around, and adequately entertaining for a Sunday matinee.
From these sparse facts a movie has been spun, with Anne Hathaway doing a creditable English accent as Jane (though I didn't see this one with my British friend, as I did Miss Potter, so I'm not sure what her verdict on the dialect would be) and James McAvoy as Tom, depicting their flirtation as extremely similar to the courtship of Darcy and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, starting in mutual disdain and coming around to a passion that can't be denied...except that, as we know from history, Jane Austen never married Tom Lefroy or anyone else.
It's the kind of movie that makes me want to find a book that'll tell me the real story, because I know that wasn't it. But it was pretty to look at, well acted all around, and adequately entertaining for a Sunday matinee.
Originally posted at MySpace 9/16/07
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