Jane-Stop This Crazy Thing!

No, I don't want to talk to you of the Jetsons episodes but something much more serious and insidious. Yes, it's Jane Austen. She is infiltrating society at an alarming pace. How many versions of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility can we take? I was never so disappointed as when someone pointed out to me that the plot of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary was a remake of Pride and Prejudice. Way to ruin a good movie. And then there are the books that take off from there... Books mimicking Austen or about Austen lovers, The Jane Austen Book Club (movie soon to be shown at our fair library), Austenland, Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, etc. Do you know that when you type Jane Austen in the library catalog as topic, you pull up 87 different items including I Have Found It, a movie described as an Indian version of Sense and Sensibility? On and on it goes. But it isn't really the books and movies that annoy me-it's the Janeites themselves. Every time a book or a movie comes up to the front desk to be checked out, it begins. "Oooh, P & P! Don't you just love Colin Firth as Darcy?"(Duhhh, who wouldn't like Colin Firth as Quasimodo?) " And what about Elizabeth's response to her father in Chapter 13, pg 108, paragraph 5, line 1-3? She's so witty. I wish I could think of things to say like that..." Well I hate to break it to you- she didn't say that. Jane Austen sat for hours with a cup of strong black tea thinking of the perfect thing to say. That's why it's intelligent and witty. I say enough is enough. There are tons of I love Jane sites on the Internet but I have yet to find an I hate Jane one. But I have hope. I have a cause. Jane haters unite! See you on the Internet. P.S. To those who looked up the aforementioned reference-gotcha!