Jane Austen remains one of the greatest writers of all time. Almost two hundred years after her death, her novels such as “Pride and Prejudice” and “Mansfield Park” continue to entrance generations of readers the world over. This film shatters any assumption that Austen herself lived the elegant Regency life of her financially comfortable heroines who ultimately find their true love. Instead it reveals the real Jane Austen as part of strata of Regency society much crueller in its treatment of women and harsher in its economic realities than her novels and their current television adaptations convey. And it discovers a woman more tragic in her own personal love life who does not enjoy the “happy ending” that she bestows upon her own female characters. Through readings and dramatic reconstructions, The Real Jane Austen pieces together the reality of Austen’s existence her modest upbringing in Hampshire as one of seven children of a clergyman; her disappointment in love; and the family’s poverty following the death of her father. Through her writing Jane found financial independence without having to marry. Tragically only four years later in July 1817 while writing “Persuasion” Jane Austen died. Filmed in locations associated with Austen including Jane’s birth place of Steventon and her later home in Chawton, and illustrated with extracts from film and television adaptations of Austen’s work, The Real Austen paints a vivid portrait of one of the greatest talents in English literature.
