Becoming Jane (2007) [* * *]

I didn't particularly like this movie because it flies in the face of evidence that Jane Austen chose to stay single. Yes, even if she was beautiful and brilliant. Too many would like to perpetuate the myth that beng ONE isn't good enough!

Anyway, for so many Austen fans, I'm sure digging up a historical, obscure but intelligent, lawyer Tom Lefroy for her passions is far better than the real suitor, Harris Bigg-Wither, who later went on to say that she was 'temperamentally unsuited to marriage'. What a jerk!

Becoming Jane though is too sentimental and speculative, the reasons for giving each other up too pious and I think I prefer the more real choices women make with economic independence - to remain single. Jane Austen died within 15 yrs of that decision and seems never to have regretted it.