True Love, Jane (Austen and Campion) Style

True Love, Jane (Austen and Campion) Style, my piece at my home base, RH Reality Check, is up for our V-day story package celebrating love. I'm always searching for ways to combine radical feminism with a love of 19th century Brit Lit. Sigh. I think I did a better job with "Bright Star" than with "Emma," perhaps because the latter is so close to my heart right now and I'm still thinking about it in a frenzy, night and day. The intro is below:

In recent months, my favorite romantic works of art, "Emma" on TV and "Bright Star" in theaters, both featured well-mannered Regency Brits in old-fashioned romances. Cultural critics love saying that women viewers' proclivity for costume drama represents a backlash against sexual liberation, a longing for a return to decorum and being treated like property. But to me, it's the opposite. Both film's visions of love achieve the goal of being enrapturing and romantic while subtly critiquing conventional conceptions of love.