A new film version of “Sense and Sensibility” is in theaters, inspired by the 19th century novel by Jane Austen. For years, Jane Austen’s novels were snubbed by literary scholars, most of them men. But that’s changed in recent decades, said Ashley Reed, associate professor of English at Virginia Tech.
“They are not just stories about women putting on pretty dresses and chasing down husbands,” Reed said. “But in fact her novels are very deeply engaged with the political and economic and military and social situation of her own time.”
During Austen’s life, the British Pound lost value, partly because the country was fighting a drawn-out war against Napoleon. Money concerns are in the background of many of her novels, and her main characters feel pressure to marry well to help their family.
“So the enormous economic pressure that these women are feeling is compounded by the precarity that England was undergoing during Jane Austen’s lifetime,” Reed explained.
In addition to affordability concerns, Austen’s generation also saw the rapid increase of print media, and Reed said it was sometimes challenging to fact check and verify the truth of everything being printed. She compared it with the spread of social media, and the increasing use of artificial intelligence in writing and media.
“Jane Austen and her contemporaries were dealing with information overload, in much the same way we feel like we are dealing with information overload,” Reed said. “Ours is digital theirs was print. But the sensation feels very similar.”
There was also a tariff that put added economic strain on some families in England, and efforts by the Parliament to limit free speech.
“These are all aspects of Jane Austen’s life that you can find in her novels that are not that different from what we are living through right now,” Reed said.
Reed hasn’t seen the new “Sense and Sensibility” yet, and said it’s tough to compete with the version from the 1990s starring Emma Thompson. But she thinks there are parallels between Austen’s time and ours that make it even more relevant today.
Netflix is also set to release another Jane Austen inspired film. They’ll begin streaming a mini-series of “Pride and Prejudice” beginning in December.
