Rebecca,

Why don't you be the first to end the stereotypes about romance writers and novels?

I've been writing and publishing these for thirteen years. I had never read a romance novel before I began, and I certainly agree that some of them were pretty awful, as some are now.

But the "quivering lips" bit is so old-hat. So are "rape fantasies" and weak-willed heroines. If there are any "bodice-rippers" on the market, they are in a tiny minority.

Have you read a contemporary romance novel ... and I don't mean the little Harlequin series books, but a single title? Sure, there are conventions we writers must fulfill to meet genre readers' expectations, but the boundaries stretch a little further every year. No one reads a romance novel expecting a tragic ending. But these novels serve a very important purpose in the lives of those who read them, as readers' letters to me have attested.

Please ... as a woman, be one of the first journalists to stop belittling this genre until you know more about it.

Sincerely,

SueinNM

Stephanie,

My sincerest apology for mistaking your name. That was unforgiveably sloppy of me.

Sorry!

SueinNM

Maybe because at a tender age I saw Mad TV's hilarious "Tea and A" Austen-movie parody and it's colored my perceptions of Regency-era romances ever since.

>...but if there is one thing that the history of popular cinema has taught us, it is that audiences do love gazing at beautiful people on the big screen.<

1) Some of the biggest stars ever were not beautiful people. In fact, in real life, a good many looked odd or downright plain.

2) Beautiful people who can't act only get so much slack. Or am I missing all those hit movies starring Cindy Crawford? :)

3) Beautiful people have to bring more to the table than just beauty. They don't have to be Liev Schreiber or Olivier, but they should at least have personality--or play themselves with a sense of humor. I doubt if Giselle Bunchen will be the next Streep,for example, but the couple of times I've seen her in movies (THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA and TAXI), she's been amusing and has a nice air of not taking herself seriously.

particularly Anne Hathaway and just generally the gentile "tone" and the depiction of the desperation of shabby-gentile woman with regard to marriage (something that awful dreadful what-this-woman-needs-is-a-husband Pride and Prejudice remake utterly ignored)..

Sounds like a more than pleasant way to spend a couple of hours ... aside from a couple of "groaner" moments ...

"genteel, tasteful Harlequin romance"

Have you ever read one? I doubt it.

Please refrain from using comparisons when you are ignorant about what you're citing.

It's clear that you despise romance, that you despise romantics, and that you despise this movie. Your comments on this movie's merits as art may be dead on, but I question your credentials about the rest of what you've said.

Maybe she was an earthly loud type who liked to hoist a few with the stablehands on her downtime. Maybe she was gay.

I don't know why Stephanie is so dismissive of this film. It's not Harlequin-romance-like at all. The performances are uniformly good (even Hathaway, whose big, weepy eyes are part of her charm here) and the plot revolves not so much around love as the thwarting of it: by conventions, resources, even death.

So what if it wildly embellishes Austen's life? True, it does try a bit too hard to link Austen's life with her art, which is its weakest feature. But the parallels between the known facts of Austen's life and her work are easy to draw.

Go see this film...it's entertaining and moving, and so what if it's pretty to look at?

If nothing else, you'll be treated to Maggie Smith providing a couple of her typically brilliant line readings. Brava!

I am on my way to see the film today (let you know how that turns out) but I have read the non-fiction book on which the movie was reportedly based.

Spence's book is a very interesting piece of pop-history woven with literary criticism. He takes all the familiar sources of information on Austen's life (family wills, letters, family-penned bios) and re-interprets them with an eye toward Austen's novels, and the ways in which Austen's family and personal lives made their way into them.

Spence makes a good case for an Austen-LeFroy romance. What I like best about his book is that he always indicates where something is "fact" (that is, a piece of information both recorded historically by more than one contemporary source and triangulated by family members' letters, etc) and where it is his own or even potentially an Austen family member's conjecture. Readers can choose to reject some of his (or an Austen family member 's) claims, but if we do so, it is because we are not convinced by the evidence, not merely because we dislike his argument.

I will have to presume that Zacharek has not read Spence's book; otherwise, I think her review would have both mentioned her opinion of it and been less dismissive of an Austen-LeFroy romance (of course, I do not know how the romance is construed in the movie, but Spence never claims sex or even marriage proposals were involved).

By the way, it is a well-documented (albeit not mentioned in Spence) fact that *Tom Jones* was considered too risque for unmarried women of the early to mid 19th century; the novel was kept out of their way on purpose by relatives and guardians. In fact, jokes were often made about how young women newly wed would exclaim "Now I can read Tom Jones!" I don't know how the movie presents Austen's introduction to TJ, but it is entirely likely that an unmarried woman of the age WOULD have been surprised/excited by the chance to read it.

(And the other letter-commentator correctly noted Spence's largely substantiated argument that LeFroy talked often of Tom Jones and Austen named at least one character in every novel after characters in TJ.)