It’s a truth not universally acknowledged that not everyone is in want of a Jane Austen experience, or even her books, a peculiarity of disposition which will make for an irksome 2025.
This year is being billed – frightful pun warning – as an Austentatious period of Austenticity for Jane-ites.
Canny event-mongers have launched a slew of balls, promenades and general gawp-fests in all of the author’s English hometowns and those of her characters to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth. Bonnets and breeches not even faintly optional.
Though the most venerated venues have already sold out, massed incursions of people in Regency dress will be inescapable.
Locals ambivalent about the pending surge in what is already a constant invasion by costumed pilgrims to cities such as Bath might take solace from the resurgence of that most Austeninan merchant, the haberdasher. The way this frocking-up trend is going, purveyors of millinery, muslin and trimmings may become the stock market’s new dotcom unicorns.
Austen-mania isn’t the half of it. Until recently, getting about in dressing-up clothes would have been naff for anyone over 10. Those who did battle re-enactments or flocked to science-fiction conventions in full regalia did so largely out of sight.
However, the massive success of Armageddon-style costumed sci-fi and gaming pilgrimages blew away embarrassment for subsequent generations. Global online gaming now dwarfs the film and music industries combined and outstrips book publishing.
Harry Potter deserves credit, too. His legions of now-adult fans are refusing to call “expelliamus!” on their love of adding capes, specs, wands and broomsticks to their celebrations.
For some, dress-ups have moved from hobby to daily lifestyle, notably the Steampunks, who lace themselves into Victorian velvet, and Furries, who even get implants to resemble their favourite animals.
In an echo of Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Bennet, who warned, “let the other young ladies have time to exhibit”, effrockery was turbocharged in 2020 by Bridgerton, television’s raunchy race-and gender-inclusive fantasia on Austen’s tales.
It grieves this Wellingtonian, who sees throngs of people here in Dublin dressing as Ulysses characters for Bloomsday week, marking James Joyce’s hero’s odyssey, to reflect how New Zealand lost its Rugby Sevens wardrobe.
For years, back-to-work grimness was alleviated by the February parade of costumes and well-lubricated cheerfulness. People roved the streets in themed teams, quickly graduating from basic wigs, bath towels and togas to provide a parade not too far south of wearable art.
It fell prey to liquor crackdowns and sport’s baroque funding appetites.
Which brings us back to the deathlessness of Austen-omics and what over-exposure might mean for her legacy.
Times newspaper columnist Giles Coren made the fair point that given recent surveys showing a decline in book reading, many Jane-ite tourists will not have read a single Austen title.
He also lamented the lack of veneration for other great period writers. Why no Middlemarch, Dickensian or Trollope-ite frockage?
Let’s also regret that gussied-up fans aren’t following the Fink-Nottle newt trail in honour of PG Wodehouse.
Although Shakespeare still does all right at the box office, you don’t see Portias and Bottoms showing off down the local boozer.
A further risk is backlash. Austen already has illustrious detractors – Mark Twain said that omitting her books would improve even a library with no other books in it and HL Mencken found Mansfield Park “extraordinarily stiff and clumsy”.
Still, the latest roaring ticket sales suggest there’s little danger of Austen having, as Mr Bennet also warned, “delighted us for long enough”.
