Reflecting on Jane Austen, 250 years after her birth

The largest course Michael Gamer ever taught was a section of Jane Austen and Popular Culture two decades ago during what he calls the “peak of Austen mania.” He has since taught multiple other classes dedicated to Austen, as has fellow Department of English professor Barri Joyce Gold.

In honor of the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth on Dec. 16, Gamer and Gold spoke with Penn Today about their approach to teaching Austen and what makes her work so enduring—and adaptable to the screen—more than two centuries later. Austen, they say, presents an opportunity to teach students not only about engaging in close readings of a text but also about history, sociology, gender studies, energy and ecology, and film.

How they teach Austen

“I like to complicate the popular expectations of Austen,” says Gold. People may approach Austen’s work with expectations about the marriage plot and happy endings, she says, but the idea that the endings are simple contrasts with everything leading up to it. Gold highlights the key role of dialogue throughout Austen’s novels, noting that this allows readers to see multiple perspectives of the same questions.

Gamer encourages students to look at the dialogue and actions to understand where Austen stands, because her third-person narration is not always omniscient or reliable. Rather, Austen inhabits characters by adopting their vocabulary and thoughts, a literary technique known as free indirect discourse.

Gamer also pushes students to break down nostalgic notions they may have of the Regency era—to understand that life was not simple and cute back then, that the world was changing rapidly and that Austen’s characters were modern and cutting-edge for the time.

Why do we still read Austen?

Gamer says he doesn’t think anyone in Austen’s era would have expected her to “make it” in her own period let alone to the present day, noting that the four of her six novels published during her lifetime were published anonymously.

He points to the role of happenstance in keeping Austen in the public eye and says modern readers shouldn’t underestimate the impact of her family’s social connections. For example, her first publisher was a friend of her brother Henry. When her success allowed her to move to the more prestigious firm of John Murray, Murray recruited the most famous writer of the day, Walter Scott, to review “Emma.” After Austen’s death, Henry oversaw the publication of Austen’s posthumous works, writing a biographical notice of her. It remained the only biography of her until Austen’s nephew published a full one several decades after her death.

Henry’s brief biography depicted his sister “as someone who lived in the country and never bothered anyone, which, notes Gamer, is absolutely not true. She was utterly connected, liked to travel, liked politics, liked to act in plays,” he says, but her family repackaged her as a demure maiden aunt and Victorian lady. “Like all writers, Austen had to speak to her moment. That we still read her, though, suggests how adaptable she is, and how even from the start, she’s speaking to moments that aren’t her own.”

Gamer has taught a course called Jane Austen and Adaptation, and Gold also incorporates adaptation into teaching, saying it allows students to discuss a wider range of topics.

Her Jane Austen Remix course this semester included the 2004 Bollywood film “Bride and Prejudice,” leading to a discussion on what it means for a former British colony to claim Austen. They also discussed the “Pride and Prejudice”-inspired 2022 gay romantic comedy “Fire Island,” whose writer said, “No one understands gay social mores like Austen.”

“She speaks to a readership she never imagined,” Gold says. Take, for instance, how Mr. Bennet failed to save for his daughters’ dowries in “Pride and Prejudice.” Gamer notes that college students can imagine a situation in which their parents didn’t save for college and they didn’t get any financial aid, prompting them to reflect on how this might impact their relationships with family members. He also says Austen writes about missed opportunities better than any other author, guiding readers not just through what happened but what could have happened.

Austen’s novels, says Gold, endure in part because they negotiate the relationship between the individual and the world. “I think that’s something that never goes out of fashion,” she says, “because we never resolve it; we just frame it in different ways as time goes on.”