“Her female characters are very strong and vocal about their opinions and what they want,” said Moa Aashacka, a 23-year-old Swedish student who was paying a Valentine’s Day visit to the Jane Austen Centre in Bath with her boyfriend.
“They don’t just accept marriage because they have to. They want to marry someone they actually like and love and who they feel respects them.”
She added that Austen’s novels were “more than romance… It’s also about women taking power.”
Tour guide Lauren Falconer, who helps giggling visitors dress up in Regency-style fashions, said all of Austen’s characters are “so relatable” that “everyone has their favourite”.
Maria Letizia d’Annibale, an English literature teacher visiting from Italy, said her pupils loved reading Austen’s novels.
“Her stories are captivating. Young students really like her, especially the girls,” she told AFP.
Part of the resurgence in Austen’s appeal can be traced back to a stunning 1995 BBC adaption of “Pride and Prejudice”, starring Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, and director Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning adaption of “Sense and Sensibility”, starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant.
Professor Sutherland credits these for propelling Austen “into a different level of popularity”.
“In Jane Austen’s novels, the hero, the male lead is really a kind of background figure. He is a moral instructor for the heroine, but he’s not particularly sexy. Whereas in the films, of course, he’s very sexy,” she said.
“I think this turns the films into something that the novels are not, which is more narrowly romantic.”
To coincide with the author’s 250th birthday, Sutherland is organising an exhibition in Oxford called “Dancing with Jane Austen” with costumes from the films and examples of her writings about balls.
© 2025 AFP