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10/21/2026 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/21/2026 20:13

With a New Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen Is More Relevant Than Ever

With a New Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen Is More Relevant Than Ever

The latest adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility bring audiences back to Jane Austen's depiction of Regency-era social mores and the women who were obligated to reckon with them. Photo by Justin Downing/Netflix

Arts & Culture

With a New Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen Is More Relevant Than Ever

The legendary author's observations on love, class, and how women navigate the two have proven timeless, according to a BU scholar

October 21, 2026
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Hollywood can't get enough of Jane Austen.

More than 200 years after the legendary Regency-era author published her debut novel, Sense and Sensibility, the romantic drama hits the big screen on October 16 with an adaptation starring Daisy Edgar-Jones. Not even two months later, on December 3, Austen's seminal novel, Pride and Prejudice, gets the Netflix miniseries treatment in a production starring Emma Corrin as Elizabeth Bennet and Jack Lowden as Mr. Darcy.

Austen remains a constant presence in Hollywood and across the globe, with more than 50 adaptations of her novels for film and TV. The author, whose work focused almost exclusively on young women in early 19th-century England, has managed to somehow become only more relevant. For Joseph Rezek, an associate professor of English in the College of Arts & Sciences, Austen's timeless appeal comes down to her two literary obsessions: love and money.

"These themes-who are you going to marry and how much money are you going to have-are central themes in modern capitalist society," Rezek says. "They may be the most important themes that young people confront as they face uncertainty in life."

Most of the protagonists in Austen's novels are women navigating the strict social codes of an era when marriage was an economic proposition for them. The context in which they lived might be different than today, but the push and pull between what they want out of life and what society is willing to offer resonates far beyond the Regency era, says Rezek, who is teaching a seminar on Austen's work in spring 2027.

Austen's enduring appeal is helped by a literary legacy that, although subsequently interrogated by scholars, has never really been in doubt. She is "one of the greatest novelists who ever lived" for a reason, Rezek says.

The themes that Jane Austen tackled in her novels-love, money, and the interplay between the two-have kept her work timeless, says Joseph Rezek, an associate professor of English in the College of Arts & Sciences.

For those who study literature, Austen is a formally innovative novelist who pioneered new literary techniques like free and direct discourse. But for the readers and viewers who continue to flock to her work, it's Austen's approach to character that has helped her withstand the test of time. She wrote about ordinary people dealing with daily struggles with such "wit and accuracy and feeling" that anyone can relate to them, Rezek notes.

"All of her heroines are struggling through life," he says. "They've been disinherited and they have to make their way, but it's that struggle, making your way in the world, navigating economic pressures, that is an enduring theme for readers."

Austen's most famous stories and characters, including Pride and Prejudice's Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, have almost become modern myths in Western pop culture. Their archetypes and plotlines have been echoed in so many other stories that even if people aren't familiar with Austen's work, they have engaged with it indirectly.

Despite the challenges Austen's protagonists face, her novels are comfort reads, much like the romance fiction they inspired. At a time when that long-dismissed genre is experiencing a spike in popularity, it comes as little surprise to Rezek that audiences and movie studios might flock to some of the most timeless romances in literature. In their own way, these are fantasy books where the protagonist gets what they want, in this case marriage and love, and the villain gets punished, Rezek says.

Importantly, they also put women at the center of these stories in a way that Rezek says rings true even today. There has been an ongoing scholarly debate about how Austen's idea of womanhood, defined as it was by marriage, fits-or clashes-within modern feminism. Her insistence on exploring all aspects of the inner lives of women actually makes her novels translate well for modern audiences more used to seeing women portrayed with depth, he explains.

"The way women think and act in their cleverness and intelligence and their ability to navigate complicated situations, those are the things Jane Austen rewards her heroines for," Rezek says. "There's no question that these books are focused on women. That itself, even today, is radical."

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Boston University published this content on October 21, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on October 22, 2026 at 02:13 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]