“HER LAUGHTER ECHOES ON THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES, INSPIRING CINEMATIC MEDIUM AND BEYOND.”
Scriptwriter and film enthusiast, Ann Thurber, discusses Austen’s long-lasting influence on romantic comedies.
Celebrated romantic comedy screenwriter and filmmaker, Nora Ephron, famously attributed all romantic comedy films to two sources: William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Austen’s plots and characters are an evergreen source of creative influence, leaving much of the film genre’s structure and common tropes indebted to her blueprints.
Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice (2005)
While it would be reductive to categorize Austen’s work as pure romantic comedy, ignoring distinctive components of her literary genius—free indirect speech, deftly crafted portraits of human nature, social commentary on class structures, and use of realism—there’s no denying the connection. Austen’s romantic pairings are among the most well-loved couples in literature, but Austen’s sense of humor and skilled application of comedy gives her marriage plots, and their film successors, an edge.
One need only look to her letters for further proof that much of Jane Austen’s genius shines through her ability to view the world through a comic lens. Austen’s correspondences are brimming with joking asides, wry observations, and sarcastic remarks. In a letter Jane Austen wrote to the Prince Regent’s librarian, Reverend James Stanier Clarke, on April 1, 1816, Austen is clear about the high value she places on comedy. The backstory to Jane Austen’s encounters with Stanier Clarke reads like a variation of Pride and Prejudice, in which Jane Austen’s writing career becomes the target of a clueless, Mr. Collins-esque clergyman.
“Penning a Letter”, George Goodwin Kilburne, c. 1924
Stanier Clarke took it upon himself to offer misguided writing suggestions. Austen responded to his tiresome meddling, tactfully but boldly, saying:
You are very, very kind in your hints as to the sort of Composition which might recommend me at present, & I am fully sensible that an Historical Romance, founded on the House of Saxe Cobourg might be much more to the purpose of Profit or Popularity, than such pictures of domestic Life in Country Villages as I deal in—but I could no more write a Romance than an Epic Poem.— I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my Life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first Chapter.— No—I must keep to my own style & go on in my own Way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.
As Austen cleverly demonstrates, she is no romantic sentimentalist. Her insistence on “relaxing into laughing at [herself and] other people” fuels her authorial voice and outlook. Unlike her heroine, Marianne Dashwood, in Sense and Sensibility, Austen is incapable of viewing love, life, and art through romantic rose-tinted glasses. No wonder the more sensible, and subtly wry, Elinor Dashwood is the true protagonist in the novel.
Elinor from Elinor and Edward at Barton, in Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. London: George Allen, 1899.
Much is unknown about the exact nature of Jane Austen’s youthful flirtation with law student, Tom Lefroy. Despite potentially serious feelings for him, Austen keeps her focus firmly on the funny. In a series of letters to her sister, Cassandra, written in January 1796, Jane details her “shocking,” flirtatious behavior with him at a dance. She lists Lefroy’s best qualities, calling him a “gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man,” but later jokes about his “one fault,” mocking the color of his jacket. In the next letter, she tells Cassandra she expects a marriage offer. Austen immediately counters the potentially sentimental statement by utilizing several comedy devices such as surprise, callback (referring to a previously used joke), and a quick turn into the unexpected, saying: “I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white Coat.” Unfortunately, Lefroy and Austen’s flirtation never manifested into an engagement for financial reasons.
Jane Austen’s playfulness about matters of the heart in her personal life translates to her storytelling. In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland’s first meeting with love interest, Henry Tilney, is an amusing delight. After engaging her to dance at a ball, Henry asks Catherine a series of predictable surface-level questions, mocking polite society’s lack of originality in conversation topics. He ends with, “Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again.” Catherine responds by turning her head away, unsure if she should laugh, but she is undoubtedly smitten.
Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney’s “meet cute”, Northanger Abbey (2007)
Austen’s first encounters between her couples-to-be lay a foundation for the ever-present Hollywood romantic comedy “meet cute.” In film terms, a “meet cute” is defined as a charming or amusing first meeting between two characters who will eventually develop a romantic relationship. The purpose is to show potential chemistry, piquing interest or demonstrating why the couple belongs together. Austen did not invent the meet cute, but she perfected it to a new standard, shaping the film genre with believable, everyday scenarios and witty banter.
Sometimes, as with Emma and Persuasion, the characters have known one another for years, so the “meet” is simply the first time we see the couple together. In Persuasion, we first learn about Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth’s broken engagement, feeling all the awkwardness, longing, and pain lingering between them before their first interaction on the page. Although Persuasion’s humor is admittedly quieter than Austen’s earlier novels, Anne and Captain Wentworth’s relationship sets a precedence for the second chance romance trope, appearing in classic film examples, like The Philadelphia Story (1940), and popping up frequently in Hallmark romantic comedies.
Anne Elliot’s first reunion with Captain Wentworth, Persuasion (2022)
The “meet cute” in Jane Austen’s Emma outlines the definitive friends-to-lovers trope, later appearing in romantic comedy films like When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Yesterday (2019). The first interaction between Mr. Knightley and Emma in the novel demonstrates their comfortable familiarity. Emma says: “Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know—in a joke—it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another.” Their dynamic was easily updated to fit 1990’s California culture in the romantic comedy, Clueless (1995)—a testament to Austen’s timeless storytelling, as well as her direct, lasting influence.
Austen’s perennially popular Pride and Prejudice holds the strongest influence as a romantic comedy film precursor. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy’s enemies-to-lovers dynamic, with a side of social class warfare, has become integral to romantic comedy film DNA. Fittingly, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) grapples with these very topics, playing a key role in the emergence of the cinematic genre (and farcical sister genre, screwball comedy). Starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, the film gender-reverses Elizabeth and Darcy’s roles, pairing a rich, snobbish heiress with a middle-class newspaper reporter determined to take her down a peg. Although the film’s plot differs from Pride and Prejudice, the comic, barbed exchanges and social-class-fueled dislike for one another echo Austen.
Nora Ephron, a Jane Austen admirer who worked on the Lost in Austen screenplay before her death in 2012, directly paid homage to Austen in You’ve Got Mail (1998). The film is a loose remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940), which also shares similarities with Pride and Prejudice. Not only do Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s characters mirror Darcy and Elizabeth, but Ephron weaves in a discussion between them about the novel. Hanks even flips through a copy of Pride and Prejudice, featuring a photo from the 1995 miniseries adaptation on the book jacket.
Tom Hanks reading Pride and Prejudice in You’ve Got Mail (1995)
Pride and Prejudice inspired romantic comedies are too numerous to name, but filmmakers continue to reinvent Elizabeth and Darcy, adding new and diverse perspectives—from Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and Bride and Prejudice (2005), to small screen Hallmark romantic comedies, such as Unleashing Mr. Darcy (2016) and Hulu’s streaming Fire Island (2022).
Austen’s romantic pairings would not be cinematically inspiring if not for Austen’s insistence on “sticking to [her own] style,” filtering each novel and romantic plot through her clever sense of humor. Mr. Darcy’s biggest tragedy, as Elizabeth points out, is that he hasn’t learned to laugh at himself. Like Elizabeth teasing Mr. Darcy, Austen rallies our courage and reminds us to laugh, never taking ourselves, or life, too seriously.
The tension between Austen’s sharp humor and hopeful, happily-ever-afters combine into lasting influence. Her writing style has been so uplifting and inspirational, her novels were circulated to World War I soldiers as a balm for the terrors of combat, leading to Rudyard Kipling’s short story, “The Janeites”—evidence of value in Austen’s endings and the feel-good nature of romantic comedies.
As Austen says in the closing chapter of Mansfield Park, “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.” It is no wonder her laughter echoes on throughout the centuries, inspiring the cinematic medium and beyond, reminding us Mr. Bennet’s words still hold true: “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”
©️ Ann Thurber 2023.
Ann Thurber is a freelance writer with a Master of Arts in Film Studies and Literature. Her Jane Austen enthusiasm ignited at seventeen when her mother took her to The Jane Austen Centre in Bath and purchased a set of Austen’s novels from the gift shop. Ann stayed up until 5:00 a.m. reading Pride and Prejudice. Her fate as a lifelong Janeite was cemented.
At university, Ann studied under the mentorship of film comedy expert, author, and Distinguished Professor of Media, Wes Gehring. During her Master’s program, Ann’s research included literary film adaptations, romantic and screwball comedy, and the Hollywood studio era. She has also worked in various capacities in the film industry.
Ann’s passion for storytelling led to placement as a two-time quarterfinalist in the Oscars-affiliated Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Additionally, she has placed in several Young Adult fiction literary contests and is a Raindance Film Festival Script Contest winner (comedy genre), nominated for Best Unproduced Screenplay at their festival. She enjoys pizza and movie nights with family, travel adventures, Irish dancing, book chats with friends, impromptu Taylor Swift singalongs, and finding glimmers of magic in each day.
Works Cited:
Austen, Jane, and Penelope Hughes-Hallett. The Illustrated Letters of Jane Austen. Crown Publishing Group, Incorporated, 1996.
-- Emma. Oxford University Press, 2003.
-- Jane Austen's Letters. (Rev. Ed.). Edited by Deirdre Le Faye, Oxford University Press, 2011.
-- Mansfield Park. Oxford University Press, 1998.
-- Northanger Abbey. Oxford University Press, 1998.
-- Persuasion. Oxford University Press, 1998.
-- Pride and Prejudice. Oxford University Press, 2004.
-- Sense and Sensibility. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Barchas, Janine, and Kristina Straub. “Will and Jane: Shakespeare and Austen during World War I and II.” Folger Shakespeare Library.
Gehring, Wes D. Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy: Charting the Difference. Scarecrow Press, 2002.
Horn, John, and Rebecca Keegan. “Nora Ephron Dies at 71; Writer of Sharp-Edged Romances.” Los Angeles Times.
Jane Austen Regency Week
17th - 25th June 2023 - Tickets on sale soon!
Join Jane Austen’s family, Jane Austen Literacy Foundation ambassadors and volunteers at the Regency Market, our Parade for Literacy and Regency Picnic, three events on the Jane Austen Regency Week program. The program and tickets will soon be available here:
