Austenmania, or the female biopic as literary heritage

Abstract

Jane Austen can be singled out as one of the most popular among British novelists. Her far reaching popularity is displayed in the many screen adaptations of her novels, but also in rewritings in book form and in many other cultural and economic appropriations her name endorses. More recently, British film and TV producers seem to be capitalizing on this obsession by focusing attention on Jane Austen herself, who has become the protagonist of biopic films such as Becoming Jane (2007) or Miss Austen Regrets (2008). This essay focuses on Jane Austen as a British cultural product and centres its analysis on Jane Austen’s biopic films as the expression of a heritage market product that stands for a certain idea of English literary culture. We try to briefly assess the way Jane Austen is depicted in both written and filmic media and the possible implications of the film medium in the representation of Jane Austen as cultural icon and, particularly, the implications of this representation from the point of view of feminist criticism.