A World Without End For Fans of Jane Austen
By PAMELA
LICALZI O'CONNELL
IT is universally
acknowledged that Jane Austen wrote too little. For years, publishers have
sought to capitalize on the craving for more Austen prose with a steady stream
of sequels to her mere six completed novels. Many of these ''continuations,''
unsurprisingly, have been found wanting by Austen devotees and literary critics
alike.
Now, with a grass-roots publishing
platform available, Janeites, as fans of the English novelist are known, have
taken to the Web to extend the author's oeuvre themselves, creating online
libraries of hundreds of stories inspired by her novels.
These stories are an example of a
widespread Web phenomenon known as fan fiction, or fanfic, creative writing
that uses existing characters. Most such fiction grows out of science-fiction
television shows (''Star Trek'' stories alone number in the tens of thousands).
But Austen's works represents the only classic literature to inspire a sizable
collection of online fan fiction, said Karen Nicholas, who maintains a
comprehensive Web site on the topic (members.aol
.com/ksnicholas/fanfic/index.html).
The two largest libraries of Austen fan
fiction can be found at Austen.com (austen .com) and The Republic of Pemberley
(www.pemberley.com), noncommercial sites devoted to all things Jane.
Several explanations have been offered as
to why Austen, who died in Winchester, England, in 1817 at age 41, has inspired
such an explosion of fan writing. Ann Haker, the founder of Austen.com and a
structural engineer in Minneapolis, points foremost to the dearth of Austen
prose.
''Fanfic writers make no claims to be able
to reach the literary heights of Miss Austen,'' she said. ''But we feel the
need to expand on the world, the characters and the stories, that she created.
There just is not enough of Jane Austen's own words to read, so we write our
own.''
Many fanfic authors also cite Austen's
restrained style and tendency to leave out critical scenes (in ''Pride and
Prejudice,'' Darcy's second marriage proposal to Elizabeth Bennett is not
described, for example) as spurs to their own creativity.
''The implicit nature of Austen's writing
collides with our modern sensibilities and desires for the explicit,'' Ms.
Haker said. ''As Jane Austen failed to write of these things, we feel compelled
to do so in her place.''
Laurie Kaplan, a professor of English at
Goucher College in Baltimore and editor of Persuasions, an academic journal
published by the Jane Austen Society of North America
(www.jasna.org/pol01/index.html), is no fan of Austen sequels, published or
otherwise. Yet she sees how they could naturally arise from what she terms
Austen's ''non-endings.''
''Her summaries at the end of her novels
are never as neatly packaged as those of other authors of that time,''
Professor Kaplan said. ''There's always change and trouble hinted at -- it's
almost satiric -- and the story isn't projected very far into the future. It
makes the reader want to push it further.''
Most fanfic authors would probably agree
with Ann Rydberg, a librarian in Orebro, Sweden, and a prolific fanfic writer, that
the sheer volume of Austen fan fiction is but more ''proof of the rich material
she left her readers to build imaginings on.''
The two Austen Web sites represent two
schools of fan fiction. The Republic of Pemberley's stories try to mimic more
closely Austen's style with plots that remain ''in period,'' or true to
Regency-era England. They range from straightforward sequels and ''missing
scenes'' (those that readers wish had been in the novels) to retellings from
different characters' points of view and stories that imitate Austen's style
without being a sequel to, or a completion of, any specific original.
Austen.com, however, allows more fanciful
interpretations, like ''crossover'' stories in which Austen characters mix with
those from other novels or even modern television characters like Buffy the
Vampire Slayer. A recent story inspired by ''Pride and Prejudice,'' for
example, was set in the antebellum South. ''That was our first black Lizzie!''
Ms. Haker sighed, happily.
Stories based on ''Pride and Prejudice''
dominate both sites, and not just because it is arguably Austen's best-loved
work. Many fanfic authors date their interest in writing Austen-inspired
stories to the 1996 broadcast in the United States of a BBC adaptation of that
novel, starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.
''That broadcast brought a lot of
obsessives out of the woodwork,'' said Myretta Robens, a founder of The
Republic of Pemberley and the technology and operations editor at Harvard
Business School Publishing in Boston.
Carolyn Esau, an author of more than 20
fanfic stories and a secretary for a chemistry journal published by the
University of Virginia, conceded that she found herself wishing she could see
her dialogue acted out by Mr. Firth and Ms. Ehle. ''I often think, 'If only I
could have seen this in the screenplay,' '' she said.
Like most of her fellow fanfic authors,
Ms. Esau limits her creative writing to Austen fan fiction and has few
pretentions that her stories will find a wider audience, much less pique the
interest of a commercial publisher. In a way, she said, posting her stories at
Pemberley was like publishing them. ''It's exposing yourself to a lot of
people,'' she said, ''since there's a lot of lurkers,'' people who read the fan
fiction but post no comments on it.
While the audience for both sites is small
in overall Net terms, it remains steady. Austen.com draws nearly 30,000 page
views a week, and about 25 percent of those represent people looking at the
board where the fanfic stories are posted, Ms. Haker said. The Republic of
Pemberley has a larger audience, with one million page views of its fan-fiction
area each year, Ms. Robinson said.
Most fanfic authors are women, and in the
case of Austen fanfic, nearly all are. Ms. Robinson suggested that was because ''most
fan fiction is romantic.''
''The authors are drawn to the
relationship aspect,'' she continued. ''Also, Austen didn't write scenes for
men -- we don't ever get Darcy's point of view, for example -- so perhaps that
has something to do with it.''
Bill Friesema, a computer programmer in
Oak Park, Ill., is one of a handful of men contributing to Austen.com.
''Austen's examination of the mating dance may have led some males to falsely
conclude that she is a romance novelist and so want nothing to do with her,''
he said via e-mail. ''Or perhaps men
are intimidated to join an activity so heavily dominated by women, although I
have never found that to be a particular deterrent.''
Diana Birchalls may be the only Austen
fanfic writer to have her work published. Ms. Birchalls, who evaluates novels
for the Warner Brothers film studio from her home in Santa Monica, Calif.,
began posting her sequel to ''Emma,'' entitled ''In Defense of Mrs. Elton,'' to
an academic-oriented Internet mailing list devoted to Austen. It was eventually
published by the Jane Austen Society for distribution at one of its
conferences, and Ms. Birchalls is planning a sequel to the sequel.
Ms. Birchalls characterizes the fan
fiction at the decidely nonacademic Austen.com and Republic of Pemberley as
''short romantic fiction -- fun to do, a pasttime,'' and that is a fair
assessment of most of the stories. Too many refer to Darcy, incongruously, as
Fitzwilliam and overuse words thought to lend Regency flavor, like
''exceedingly'' (as in ''I am exceedingly happy to see you here,
Fitzwilliam''). And the stories tend toward the overly romantic, a complaint
often leveled at many of the published sequels.
Yet some of the more serious stories are
enjoyable for their efforts to think through missing scenes and get period
details just right.
Other stories introduce characters who
prove so popular that they begin appearing in stories by other fanfic writers.
Some authors play intellectual games, incorporating dialogue from the actual
novels, or disguise existing Austen characters and challenge readers to
identify them.
Where some might see hubris in any attempt
to mimic Austen, Ms. Robinson of The Republic of Pemberley, argues that the
best fan fiction is very conscious of Austen.
''It doesn't just use her as a vehicle,''
Ms. Robinson said, ''but pays homage to her work.''
Whether hubris or homage, the wealth of
fanfic may well prove, in Ms. Rydberg's words, that ''Austen's novels can take
any amount of bungling amateurism and still remain unsoiled, remain the
exquisite and well-polished bits of ivory she once presented us.''
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