My Jane Austen rant.

If you haven’t read the books and been knocked out by the opening sentence of P&P or the situations and social comments and dialogue in Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion and understood that this is a woman who is writing from the experiences of her own narrow life - painting in miniature one critic said - then you will call her a writer of romance and be satisfied with the 2005 version of P&P. Austen wrote with wit, irony and a keen eye for the social situation under which she and so many single women suffered.

If you want to see films which use her dialogue and show sharply her criticisms of her world then try: the Emma Thomson Sense and Sensibility where she used all Austen’s dialogue, and it stings. Try the Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds Persuasion (get the copy of the book which gives you the other ending which Austen wrote and changed at the last minute. It’s a great lesson in writing better!) and the Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth P&P which shows all those different marriages in sharp focus. I don’t think Austen had a high opinion of marriage even though she had seen her own family in happy marriages. The Bennets’ marriage, Charlotte Lucas and her situation, young sisters desperate for men and marriage, the same situation of helpless women trapped again in S&S and Persuasion. Austen was making sharp satirical comments about her world and doing it in beautiful English.