Jenny Jeanne Wen

Jul 15, 2023

Seeking Jane
Thinking about Becoming Jane
As a Jane Austen enthusiast, I have read and seen many of her works
and films adapted from her compositions, for instance, Pride and
Prejudice directed by Joe Wright and Sense and Sensibility directed by Ang
Lee. Among all those films about Jane, there’s one that’s not adapted
from any of Jane’s novels and is not that eminent but still made fans
of Jane Austen shed a tear. It focuses on Jane herself. It’s Becoming Jane
directed by Julian Jarrold.
Jane was a girl with a fertile imagination and conspicuous writing
talent who lived with her siblings and parents in Hampshire. Henry,
Jane’s older brother, finished his study in London and came back to
the cottage in Hampshire with his friend Thomas Lefroy. Lefroy is a
young law student in London who came from Limerick and was
recently released by his uncle, also known as his teacher, for his
debauchery, womanising and squandering to Austen’s cottage. At first
sight, Jane considered Lefroy as an impudent and lofty cockney while
Thomas evaluated Jane as a pedantic, mind-unacquainted country
girl who, quoted from the original play, 'lack of experience'. As time
passed, under one roof days and nights, they had changed their
thoughts of each other, and eventually fell in love with each other.
They tried lots to persuade Thomas’s uncle to permit their
engagement but failed. They even ran away together to avoid the
betrothal marriage and mournful separation. However, after Jane
found out that Thomas’s degenerating camouflage of his financial aid
to his penniless siblings and mother who married a poor man for love

ESSAY 1
so that Lefroy’s uncle refused to help, they separated in grief. Jane
Austen has never married any man in her 41 years of life, even
though there were men with property proposed. Thomas Lefroy
became an influential grand justice and a politician in Parliament in
Ireland, as he promised to Jane. He married a woman who came from
money. He named his first daughter Jane Lefroy.
After watching this film, I supposed that Thomas Lefroy is exactly
the archetypal character of the hero in Jane’s most noted novel Pride
and Prejudice, Mr.Darcy. They have so many things in common. Also, I
guess that Jane put herself as the archetypal character of Mr Darcy’s
beloved wife, Elizabeth Bennett. Jane and Elizabeth both had a
prejudice against Lefroy and Darcy initially. Thomas and Darcy both
behaved arrogantly at first. In the end, they all changed their minds.
The only different thing between reality and the novel is that Jane and
Thomas didn’t rebel successfully from the society of right people,
which Darcy and Elizabeth did. Darcy and Lizzy live in felicity forever
in the novel. Jane and Thomas have never seen one another after their
failed elopement. However, Jarrold, the director, gave a scene of Jane
and Thomas met again years later and Jane realised that Thomas's
daughter’s name was from hers. I adore that brilliant arrangement,
though some pointed out that this scene is a bit sacrilegious and didn’t
esteem the history, for giving the couple a chance to a reunion and
confession. At the same time, this reunion scene broke my heart cause
soon after that I realised the tragedy after the director brought this
seem-to-be-nice shot. The sweeter the bitter. How genius Jarrold was
to evoke the audience’s tragic pleasure.
I firmly believe that Thomas had a life-changing impact on Jane,
both in writing and life. I firmly believe that Jane had a critical
significance in Thomas’s life. Thomas is a crucial afflatus that
emerged abruptly, left regretfully and affected permanently of Jane’s
compositions. Without him, subjective conjecture, Jane might be
married.[ Still, nobody could deny that Jane is an independent lady.]

ESSAY 2
Thomas was greatly gifted in the field of politics and law, but without
Jane, would he become a chief justice?
In fact, in the film, there’s a rich but impudent[the real impudent]
man named Whisley who proposed to Jane several times but failed
and Austens adored him. I have to stress that the movie is talking
about Jane Austen, the legendary novelist. How could she obey the
marriage of property and married a man without passion and
independent thinking? I cannot believe more than Thomas Lefroy is
the right person Jane loved and needed.
They have become the life-long love, passion and sorrow of one
another. They have also become always inspiring and where love is of
one another. I have to quote that prominent lines in the novel Flipped,
'Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss. But every
once in a while, you find someone who’s iridescent, and when you do,
nothing will ever compare.’
I sincerely wish that Jane and Thomas could wind up with Darcy-
Elizabeth-like marriage and happiness. Like the majority of
Austenites, I wish they could together be in the cottage, discuss the
novels they have read, the political issues Thomas met and the next
novels of Jane, brimmed with blessedness, never the sorrow.

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