In the Name of Love?

I dumped two loads of clean laundry on the couch next to me and hunkered down to fold and watch "Becoming Jane," starring Anne Hathaway.  I'm not a huge Hathaway fan...but I do love Austen.  Strains of classical music accompanied opening scenes of the traditional green English countryside.  Looking away from the scene and my folding, I realized I had a companion.  My 15 year old son had decided to finish his homework and watch with me.  Usually verboten, I allowed him to join me...

I wondered first how long he might stay - and next, what he was going to think about this very Austen-like story of Jane's real life.  Full of the misguided romance and tragedy that one might expect from her novels, it is a gripping story for one of my age and disposition...but for a teenage boy? 

He worked and watched for the first hour, and getting restless, I thought he was going to leave.  But, when Jane decides to elope to Scotland with her "true love" he sat up, gripped, like myself, in Jane's rebellion.  When Jane learns of the impact of their elopement on her paramour's family and decides that their love must be sacrificed, to save his family, my boy buried his head in the couch pillow. 

He is a kind of quiet kid - sometimes sharing his thoughts - more often keeping those thoughts to himself.  So, we didn't talk much after the end of the movie.  "It was ok.," he mumbled to me.  This afternoon, though, after returning home from school he totally shocked me when he asked, "Mom, is there a part two to the Jane Austen movie we watched yesterday?"  Sadly, no - that pretty much covered her brief life - but perhaps it opened his young eyes to consider the power of love - from a less-than "happily ever after" perspective.