Jane Actually

AGM occurred to her.
    She looked over the recent emails he’d sent her, to see if he’d said anything about leaving, but found nothing other than his obvious upset that they’d been unable to meet.
    She briefly considered confessing to him in an email, but she thought it improper. Even if she couldn’t see him and he her, she felt she owed him an explanation in a private real-time conversation. Toward that end, she sent him an email explaining that her schedule had opened up and she could meet him that night to chat.
    The film crew arrived while Jane was writing. They quickly found a suitable spot for filming in the suite, settling Mary into a comfortable chair beside a large poster of
Sanditon
. The presenter, Amanda Vickery, introduced herself and was punctilious to address Mary as Jane.
    Jane was familiar with Vickery’s books, having enjoyed
The Gentleman’s Daughter
, which she thought helped dispel somewhat the impression that Georgian marriages were loveless unions based on money and status.
    Vickery was currently filming a documentary that had originally been titled
The Many Lovers of Jane Austen
, but in light of Courtney Blake’s book and Jane’s identification, it was now to be called
Jane Austen Today
.
    After fifteen minutes of setting the lighting and audio levels, they were ready to begin.
    AMANDA VICKERY: Thank you, Miss Austen, for giving me this opportunity. I am an unabashed fan.
    JANE AUSTEN: You’re very welcome, Ms Vickery. And I’ve enjoyed your books as well.
    VICKERY: Always nice to hear, thank you. And still for me a little unreal, that I should actually be talking to Jane Austen. Since the discovery of the afterlife, I’ve hoped that of all the great authors, you could find a way to reclaim your identity. So many of your admirers identify with you and claim you as a friend. Why do you think that is?
    AUSTEN: I assure you it was not grand design on my part. I wrote my novels primarily for the enjoyment of my family and friends. I imagined what joy my sister or father would experience when reading this or that, and perhaps because that was my goal, my stories seem personal and the voice of the author seems like that of an intimate.
    VICKERY: But you don’t pretend that you wrote only for family.
Mansfield Park
and
Emma
you wrote after the success of
Sense and Sensibility
and
Pride and Prejudice
. There seems to have been a calculation and experimentation there, resulting in very different novels.
    AUSTEN: You are correct, perhaps with the consequence that those novels are not as popular, but I do not regret my decision to try something different or to appeal to a larger public or to write something that pleased me more than it might please others.
    VICKERY: I mentioned before that I had hoped you could reclaim your identity, but I wonder why it was so important to you, a woman who never sought recognition for her work.
    AUSTEN: Now here, Miss Vickery, you ask a question that I know you know to be a lie. I always sought recognition as a writer. I revelled at the sight of the title page of
Pride and Prejudice
, proclaiming it as being written by the author of
Sense and Sensibility
. What I did not want is notoriety.
    VICKERY: What you’ve also done is fail to answer the question. Because I can’t help but think you’ve achieved both recognition and notoriety with your reclaimed identity.
    AUSTEN: Oh, pardon me. Yes, I am afraid I now have some small notoriety, which I had hoped to avoid. Now as to why I went to the trouble, and it was considerable, to reclaim my identity. I am afraid it all comes down to pettiness. Despite the efforts of many scholars, such as you, to represent me as more than just a literary spinster, I am afraid that is precisely what I have become. I have become known for writing books with little plot and no sex. Someone called me the Seinfeld of literature 2 —I had to look up the reference—meaning I wrote books about nothing. Others have belittled my novels as being only about relationships and marriage, as if that isn’t the biggest challenge, hope and desire of most of the people in the world. While at the same time a dedicated cadre rank me just below Shakespeare, which while flattering, is arrant nonsense. I thought if I could regain my identity, I could argue for a middling sort of reputation.
    VICKERY: So you couldn’t be content with simply seeking a publisher for
Sanditon
as … as …
    AUSTEN: Precisely, you see the difficulty. What name would