Pride and Provocation

The press materials released with the movie hedge any bets: The film "spins the few known facts" of a "seemingly brief" and "apparently rapid" romance into a "boldly imagined" love story about Austen and the man who "perhaps, might have stolen her heart" and "awakened" her talent.

It is this definitive love story that inspires such consternation.

"The idea that Tom Lefroy sparked Jane's brilliance is totally foolish," says Deirdre Le Faye, author of "Jane Austen: A Family Record." "She came from a very smart family. By the time she met Tom she was already an accomplished writer."

And yet, there Movie Tom is, roguishly criticizing a young Jane's sophomoric writing and introducing her to grown-up novels like the racy "Tom Jones" -- which historians say Austen had actually read long before meeting Lefroy.

We won't suggest it's anti-feminist. We'll just suggest Elinor Dashwood would be appalled.

(At least the film fills in biographical gaps with relevant material: As you watch wealthy Tom and underprivileged Jane frolic through English balls, pretending to hate each other but wittily falling in love, resist the urge to call them Mr. Darcy and Lizzie Bennet. Indeed, Variety's review calls it "an ersatz 'Pride and Prejudice' in all but name.")

"It's a very masculine production; you can tell it was male-directed," says Park Honan, emeritus professor of English at the University of Leeds and author of "Jane Austen: Her Life." "And it has an unfounded view of creativity, supposing you must be in love to write about love."

Lest you think he is being an overly prissy academic, Honan, who also wrote a biography of William Shakespeare, points out that he saw the movie "Shakespeare in Love" six times.

"[That movie] has irony to it," Honan says. "It laughs at itself. No one would walk out of it wondering if Shakespeare had really had an affair with a woman named Viola." It has irony where "Becoming Jane" has sentimental earnestness, something that Honan says could easily confuse Austen neophytes.

Just ask the Jane Austen Society in London, where the film opened in March. Its members have already begun receiving queries from viewers anxious to learn about Austen suitor Mr. Wisley.

(There is no Mr. Wisley. He is a romantic foil invented for the film.)

Foils, fabrications and fudging aside, we're rooting for the doomed couple, but why ? We're perfectly able to handle the writerly miseries of other artists -- Shakespeare losing Viola or, more realistically, Hemingway drowning in drink -- so why the burning need for Jane to find love?