Who would be interested in tales of love among the landed gentry and middle classes in villages, market towns and seaside resorts from the Regency period? Yet, on her 250th birth anniversary, Jane Austen is not only widely read but her novels are also portrayed in films, television serials and digital platforms. Instead of waning, Austen’s popularity has increased and that, too, among a readership and viewership far from her own immediate environment — urban and tech-savvy young women. Austen writes of a time very different, when inheritance favoured the son and women had to secure for themselves well-off husbands who would give them stable homes. The alternative was to live in poverty or drop steeply down the social ladder to become, for example, a governess. Austen depicted a marriage market driven by women’s economic need, and criticised the gender, social and legal inequalities of her time with wit and sarcasm. Her stories are comedies, compassionate but unsparing, where her heroines find suitable husbands at the end. What appeals especially to women today, perhaps, are the independent heroines, far from perfect, who refuse to marry for financial reasons and insist on finding love and respect.
Austen herself was a rebel. She remained unmarried, and fought to win an independent life by writing. Her characters, men and women, still come alive because they are familiar types, recognisable by their dialogue and thought processes. She conveys an immediacy with her language and style, which are remarkably modern. But on her 250th birth anniversary, it may be time to ask, how far does her popularity go? If her stories were to reach another kind of audience, say, women to whom Austen’s world is unimaginably distant in place, time and society, who are underprivileged and have to fight for daily survival for themselves and their families, often non-urban and with very limited life choices? Would they respond to Austen?
There is a kind of universality in Austen’s stories in spite of their apparently limited scope. It is possible that women from all social classes would identify with the economic insecurity of the heroines, for although Austen seldom depicts poverty, most of her heroines are threatened with it. It simmers beneath the polished surface of the novels. If they do not acquire well-off husbands by the end of the narrative, they can become poor working women. Underprivileged women are deeply sensitive about class and gender, aware of their undeserved position at the bottom of the social
ladder. Their struggle in an unequal society is universal. The quest for love, too, has a universal appeal. Even women with limited choices may respond positively to wish fulfilment. But Austen’s heroes would be less appealing – their characters and concerns may not ring a bell. And given the distance in time and place, it is possible that Austen would enjoy less overall popularity among underprivileged women than she does among the urban, educated reader-and-viewership.