00:00She lived without a celebrated romance of her own,
00:04yet gave generations of readers some of the most enduring love stories ever told.
00:09The question remains, what was her secret? What did Jane Austen truly know of love?
00:15Mr. Darcy, Mr. Darcy, Mr. Darcy.
00:18Romance may look different today, but thanks to Jane Austen, it has never truly gone out of style.
00:24Where shall we begin? Maybe here in Bath,
00:27which was known at the time as a good hunting ground for husbands.
00:30Let's start with the men in Jane's life, or should I say the lack of them.
00:34But there are three men who are worthy of an honorable mention.
00:40One was a young clergyman she met by the Devon shore,
00:43a fleeting acquaintance cut short by his sudden death.
00:48Another was Harris Big Wither, the man to whom Jane was engaged for a mere 24 hours.
00:57I'm 27 years old.
01:00I've no money and no prospects.
01:02I'm already a burden to my parents, and I'm frightened.
01:07At almost 27, Jane accepted Big Wither's proposal, then ended it the next morning.
01:13And of course there was Tom Lefroy, the charming young Irishman, often rumored to be the love of her life.
01:21After her death, her beloved sister burned most of Jane's letters to protect her reputation,
01:27so these men's importance isn't clear.
01:29What remains certain is that Jane never married, but there's one man whose importance is undeniable.
01:36In a world where the yearning man is constantly trending,
01:39we should not forget about the father of all yearning.
01:45I felt an itch in my fingers.
01:47Mr. Darcy isn't just Mr. Right, he's something even more intriguing.
01:51A man written by a woman.
01:53Austin-crafted men who were more than just their estates.
01:57Socially secure, yes, but also emotionally sincere.
02:01They embodied what women longed for then and now.
02:04Maturity, kindness and the capacity of real love.
02:08The enduring fantasy isn't wealth, but being truly seen and valued.
02:16We meet with Dr. Shelley Golpen, a lecturer at King's College London in culture, media and the creative industries.
02:23With a keen eye on period dramas, she has explored the reason Austen's portrayals of romance continue to feel relevant today.
02:34When we think about the past, we maybe have this sense that they didn't think about love the same way that we do.
02:41But I think really when you read Jane Austen, you cannot believe that. You realise that it's not.
02:48You know, she writes about love, I would say, exactly as we experience it today.
02:54You know, falling in love, the kind of the excitement, the worry, the confusion.
03:00It's incredibly universal, I think.
03:03So I think she knew a lot about love.
03:06I don't know where she got that knowledge from, but I think she communicates it exceptionally well.
03:14There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others.
03:21With the words of Elizabeth Bennet, Darcy's true love,
03:24we turn from the men in Austen's world to the women who truly carry her stories.
03:30Jane's stories live off the vit virtue and charm of their heroines.
03:33The appreciation and acknowledgement of women and their struggles shine throughout all of Austen's novels.
03:43All of her heroines go on a journey.
03:46You know, someone like Emma is, you know, the whole thing with Emma is like, she's perfect, you know,
03:51like, but, and that's kind of her sort of selling point.
03:55But her journey is about learning that actually she's not perfect, you know, that she was naive, she was young,
04:01she had things to learn about, about the world and, and sort of coming and being a better person by the end of it.
04:08All of them are strong women who bend but do not bow to society's rules.
04:13They mirror the struggles of their time to marry for status and security,
04:17while also expressing a timeless desire to marry for love.
04:22In that way, they're not unlike Jane herself, which leads us to the question, where did she get her inspiration from?
04:29Let's travel back in time to learn a bit more about the author.
04:35It's the year 1775. Autumn leaves fall, the winter solstice approaches,
04:41and in a quiet Hampshire town, a child is born.
04:44No one could have guessed that this girl would one day reshape the course of literature.
04:50Jane grew up in a bookish family. Her father owned more than 500 books,
04:54a remarkable library for the time. Education was highly valued in the household.
05:00She was especially close to her only sister, Cassandra.
05:04Jane began experimenting with writing novels around the age of 12.
05:10Back to the present.
05:13We've traveled to Bath. Jane didn't live here long,
05:16but the time she spent in Bath did have a big impact on her life and her writing.
05:24This is where Jane lived. Her father moved the family to Bath, though Jane preferred the countryside.
05:33As an unmarried daughter, she had little choice.
05:35When we came here, somebody came out to give us this.
05:39This is the original key from back in the day. Let's see if it still fits, shall we?
05:44Well, unfortunately, it doesn't. But it used to 225 years ago.
05:57This is the same key that Mr. Austin touched.
06:02Bath changed Jane's life. Here is where her father died.
06:06And during her time here, she had two of her three romantic encounters and faced money struggles.
06:11Experiencing the limits placed on women left a mark on her writing.
06:19The city Jane once wanted to leave is now full of her admirers.
06:24Strangely enough, the setting looks much the same as it did 250 years ago.
06:30Every year, people put on Regency costumes, hoping to recapture the spirit of Austin's world.
06:36Each of her stories has different women with extroverted personalities,
06:41women who are a bit shy or have anxiety. And so each of her stories has all of these
06:47rich heroines who people connect with time and time again.
06:52Her books are set in the Regency era, but they are timeless and they show
06:56principles that stand against time.
07:10Jane taught us more than lessons in love.
07:14She showed us how wit, grit and chasing your passion is relevant to any era.
07:18Two centuries on, Jane's novels remind us that love, romantic and platonic, ambition and the
07:24struggle for independence are timeless.
07:28Jane Austen can teach us so many things about human relationships,
07:33how society treats people differently, expectations of society.
07:38And I think there's ways of overcoming that and still having a happy ending.
07:45Every generation rediscovers Jane Austen, often thanks to a new Pride and Prejudice
07:51adaptation in the pipeline. But Austen offers way more than just matchmaking and courtship.
07:56The fact that she has this sort of roving narrator who can just sort of dip into people's psyches
08:03at will. And so we're kind of getting this like vast array of different characters and their experiences
08:09and the way that they're seeing the world. And I think that that's, that's really powerful.
08:14The question isn't whether marriage would have changed Jane's writing, but rather whether the
08:22longing for a happy one made it even greater and sparked the same longing in her readers.
08:27Jane's wit shaped her characters, her longing for love shaped her novels,
08:32and her voice gave women space, both on the page and beyond. And this echoes until today.
08:37In the end, Jane's deepest loves were not men, but the women around her and the words she left behind.
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