Abstract:
Jane Austen’s enduring popularity is no accident. Her books are filled to the brim with
relatable, lovable characters, realistic situations and interactions, and insightful commentary and
criticism of Regency England. Many of those criticisms and observations are still applicable today,
and it is this universality and timelessness of Jane Austen’s work that this project is meant to bring
out. By adapting Austen’s final novel, Persuasion, to take place in the American Midwest just after the
Vietnam War, What We Leave Behind: A Novel shows the reader how the world of Jane Austen’s
characters is not so far removed from the modern era as he or she may like to think and how history
does, in fact, tend to repeat itself. It also explores themes of alienation, racism, the treatment of
Vietnam veterans, and the struggles of deindustrialization, all of which relate to the themes which
Austen touched on but are also, within What We Leave Behind, somewhat unique to the time and
place in which this adaptation is set.
