While Jane Austen's novels are rightly regarded as some of the best romantic stories ever told, because they were written in the Regency period there are no LGBT+ characters in her books or their direct adaptations. It's always been up to modernizations to include LGBT characters, but very few have tried to -- and when they do, as for instance with Clueless' Christian Stovitz, they usually remove the character's romantic happy ending. The first major American film that modernized Austen's books while creating LGBT+ romance was 2007's immensely underrated The Jane Austen Book Club.
Based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler, the film follows five women and one man as they read through the novels of Jane Austen in a book club in modern-day Sacramento, while their own personal lives come to reflect the heroes whose books they read. Aptly directed by Robin Swicord, it finds both the timelessness of Austen and the fun of escaping the modern world with her works. Among the six, the film's Marianne Dashwood is Allegra Avila (an open lesbian), played by Maggie Grace -- whose Willoughby and Colonel Brandon are two different young women, Corrine (Parisa Fitz-Henley) and Dr. Samantha Yep (Gwendoline Yeo).
Why Allegra's Lesbian Love Is Such a Milestone
Unlike Clueless, where the LGBT version of an Austen character is denied his book-accurate love interest, Allegra's romances are as integral to the film as any of the heterosexual romantic subplots. They also have just as much depth and complexity. Just like Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility, Corrine ends up betraying Allegra's trust to serve her own ends, namely selling her stories as a writer, while, like Colonel Brandon, Dr. Yep acts as Allegra's savior when she nearly dies in the climax during a daredevil accident. While the film's ending is a bit ambiguous (the novel, which seems to prefer Marianne/Willoughby, implies she got back with Corrine), it nonetheless firmly presents Allegra's love life throughout and explores the depths of her relationships.
This makes The Jane Austen Book Club an important milestone in Austen adaptations in terms of LGBT representation. Rather than adding an LGBT character on the sidelines and denying them romance or happiness on the level of the straight cast members, this film simply takes an Austen character's story -- the protagonist's, no less -- flips the genders, and tells the story as is. Allegra has all of Marianne's flaws and foibles, and gets both her complex arc and her emotional fallout. In terms of Austen modernizations, it is actually the only version to do so. While Bridget Jones and Clueless both fell into the "gay best friend" cliche, The Jane Austen Book Club successfully turns an Austen heroine's romance into a lesbian love.
What Makes The Jane Austen Book Club Such a Milestone
This decision is monumental in hindsight. With Austen films, both modernized and historical, being a big craze and a popular borderline subgenre now inspiring other similar stories like Bridgerton, it's clear that many consider Austen's particular style of humorous social satire blended with romance the archetype for a good rom-com. For LGBT fans, rom-com is an important genre -- one where the heroes get a romantic happy ending rather than a dramatic or tragic one. Due to prejudice, it's a genre LGBT characters have long been barred from or sidelined in, forced to only appear as the protagonists of tragedies instead. Austen in particular has been largely devoid of LGBT representation outside of fandom due to the age of her books, despite their timeless characters.
This immensely underrated film (also a fantastic woman-written and directed picture) solves this problem in the easiest and most obvious way. Simply take an established Austen hero and change their love interests' genders. Treat the LGBT+ hero and their love story with the same depth and dignity as the straight heroes. The Jane Austen Book Club does all this for Allegra, without making her sexuality her whole identity or sidelining her. It should be the template for LGBT+ representation in modern Austen and remembered well -- for, sadly, it is still the only modern Austen to do so.