Maria Bello’s Anti-Marriage Vows

by Jesse Kornbluth

I can see why Bello was the first actress cast for The Jane Austen Book Club—she’s so genuinely strong, she would have no problem portraying her character’s self-sufficiency. And then setting it aside again. This is a comedy, after all, and comedies end in union—if Bello’s character, Jocelyn, is alone at the end of the movie, she didn’t come to properly understand her Jane Austen. “WHAT WOULD JANE SAY?” a traffic signal flashes, in one of the film’s more inspired images. Well, when it comes to love and romance, Jane would say, “GO FOR IT.”

Jane Austen would also say it’s okay for a woman to be the smartest person in the room. Indeed, were she alive now, she would almost surely endorse a woman’s right, on a random Tuesday night, to go home with a man she has no intention of marrying. And, after all that, she’d see no reason why a smart, experienced woman couldn’t find enduring love.

“Jane Austen was a woman breaking the mold in a puritanical society,” Bello tells me. Takes one to know one.