Info
Is it just me, or have there been a lot of new Jane Austen retellings of late? I mean, Austen retellings have been around for ages, think Clueless and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for a start. But it seems like, within the last several years, more and more Austen books have been getting new takes. Why? Well, I have a few ideas, and the fact that Jane Austen’s books are a classic of the English literary canon certainly doesn’t hurt, but the short answer is this: I think we all want to see ourselves in our favorite stories. Jane Austen’s novels are so universally loved. Every writer who loves these stories, wants to see themselves in these stories, has a longing to write the version of a Jane Austen novel that goes the way they always wanted it to. It’s the same reason people write fanfiction, the same reason people have been telling and retelling the same tales from time immemorial.
There are plenty run-of-the-mill contemporary romance retellings of Jane Austen books, but those aren’t what interest me. It’s all the new retellings from queer and BIPOC voices, the stories that image happy endings for sidelined characters or completely new identities for beloved characters, that I think are most interesting. Despite, and directly in spite, of all the book bans trying to censor what people are allowed to read across the United States in particular, diverse stories are still being told, and they’re still being published. We hunger for them.
In a brilliant article Book Riot Senior Editor Kelly Jensen wrote for School Library Journal, the authors she interviewed emphasized how their retellings are inspired by and build on Austen’s work. YA author Gabe Cole Novoa pointed to the relevance of Austen’s stories today, where women and femme people face “eerily similar expectations.” L.C. Rosen, whose book Emmett is a queer reimagining of Emma, sums it up nicely:
Queer people existed and fell in love and had romances and read Austen and related to her characters. Retelling her stories as queer ones is a way of asserting that these stories are for us as much as anyone.”
Author Sayantani DasGupta, who has written multiple Jane Austen-inspired YA novels, refers to multicultural retellings as a sort of “storied healing for those of us who have too long been ignored, erased, or vilified.”
Things aren’t always easy, and progress isn’t linear. We move forward and backward and forward again. But these new Jane Austen retellings, like many other great novels, remind us that everyone’s story is just as worthy and important as the next.
All access members continue below for invigorating Austen retellings.
This content is for members only. Visit the site and log in/register to read. 🏷️ Books_feed