Jane Actually

and now I am proclaimed Jane Austen. It is a humbling thought that one’s identity hangs from such a slender thread.”
    Mary’s image, which had been displayed on the large screen behind the stage and the two smaller ones flanking it, was now replaced by a series of articles about Jane’s identity being recognized by the AfterNet. The headline of the last article read: Jane Austen’s identity now ‘a truth universally acknowledged.’ 1
    “And I do stand before you with a measure of humility and gratitude and embarrassment and with a very real sense that I have to show myself worthy of my own legacy. My six novels seem so small in comparison to the movies, television series and documentaries about them. They seem so small in comparison to the societies such as this one and the society in my own homeland and in Europe … and South America and Australia and Japan. They seem so small, so infinitesimally small, in comparison to the universe of Jane Austen fan fiction, where my characters are endlessly falling in and out of love or have been re-imagined as vampires and werewolves or detectives, and where even I have been re-imagined as such.”
    The audience laughed as a series of book titles were projected on the various screens in the ballroom, the last showing a ghostly pale Jane as a vampire with a trickle of blood upon her chin. Mary turned to look at the last image and then faced the audience.
    “I look like Miss Havisham 2 … eating a jam tart,” she remarked, which elicited more laughter. She had to wait until the audience quieted.
    “Please understand that I fully appreciate the importance of this community. After my death, I saw my popularity fade away and I faced the contemplation of my literary death. But wondrously, I did not completely fade away and I saw successive generations rediscover me.”
    The audience laughed again as a portrait of Mark Twain appeared with his quote: “Every time I read
Pride and Prejudice
I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
    “Every adaptation, every continuation, every movie, keeps me alive for the next generation. Yes, there have been some liberties taken that have irked me, but let me be honest, I should be little more than a wikipedia article were it not for the people in this room and countless others before you. I should be nothing more than the province of graduate students studying obscure Regency female authors. I should be a dusty book on a dusty shelf in a dusty library, but you have found and continue to find something of value in my words and in the very boring life of a woman who travelled little and never married. You have found something that is worthy of assembling from every corner of North America once a year in a different city.
    “And from the bottom of my heart, which still beats though I have no body, I thank you, utterly and completely.”
    Mary had to stop for the entire audience stood and applauded and there were no half-hearted meeting of hands this time.
    “I told you this would happen Jane,” Mary said to Jane.
    “Only because of the eloquence you bring to my words, my dear.”
    Mary nodded and smiled at the applause; happy for the joy it must bring her friend. And she found herself with tears in her eyes and for the first time, she truly felt the power within her, to move people, to excite them, but it was a power she exercised not for her gratification, gratifying as it was. She was moved to do this for her art and for the body of work of another. She took those words Jane had supplied and together they made something so powerful that she feared the applause would never stop.
    “Please, please,” she said with a voice made rough from tears. “I’m supposed to give a thirty minute talk.”
    There was laughter at this, which broke the spell. Mary motioned the audience to sit and as they sat she took the opportunity to dry her eyes with a tissue.
    “Now to return to the challenge of my own legacy, which is not a new problem for me. In fact every author faces the challenge of meeting expectations and, it is hoped, exceeding them. However, I am perfectly aware there are people in this audience who don’t care for one or more of my novels or who have never even read some of them. It’s understandable that people have favourites; I certainly do.”
    Behind Mary some quotes appeared: “I want to tell you that I have got my own darling child [
Pride and Prejudice
] from London.” And another