After the workshop, I drift back to the Emporium, where I am alternately charmed and repelled by the merchandise on display. For every apron or tea towel or mirrored compact bearing a genuine Jane Austen quote, there seems to be a key chain or plaque or note card adorned with a line found only in an Austen movie. The real Jane Austen, I’m sure, would have died rather than write anything as maudlin as “Sometimes the last person on earth you want to be with is the one person you can’t be without” or “Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another.” Hasn’t anyone around here READ THE BOOKS? I find myself wondering. The movies had made Jane Austen more accessible than ever, broadening the base of her fandom and diversifying her appeal, and even as I register my silent squawk of protest, I feel a bit churlish… (But really—“Sometimes the last person on earth--?” That one wasn’t even in an Austen movie! It was on the poster for an Austen movie!) Once again, I’m face to face with the contradictions of fandom: I’ve come to a Jane Austen conference to enjoy the company of other Janeites, but I can’t help turning up my nose, just a little, at the gross ignorance—the sheer bad taste!—of people whose idea of Pride and Prejudice owes more to Keira Knightley than to Jane Austen.
In my reading of Among
the Janeites, there have been moments—many moments, actually—where I groan
inwardly, roll my eyes, and think such phrases as “oh, brother” and “ewwww no,
stop” and even skimmed a little to get past some stuff. But the paragraph above… it just spoke to me
on a Deep and Personal Level. (I wonder
if that would qualify me as a “real Janeite” according to the ideas of its
author, Deborah Yaffe?)
