Although she died nearly 200 years ago, her face recently graced the cover of Newsweek. Her novels are still discussed at length on college campuses every semester. And now a movie about a supposed love affair she once had is set to open in theaters across the country.

But like her novels, there is much more to Jane Austen than a romantic tale.

"Although Austen is everywhere in popular culture, the real Jane Austen is hard to find," said Emily Auerbach, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book "Searching for Jane Austen."

With the film, "Becoming Jane," scheduled to be released in theaters Friday (it went into limited release this past Friday and it goes into wider release Friday), Auerbach feels that the real Austen is somehow being lost amid the romantic fictional portrait of her that has been painted over the past two centuries.

"She's in popular culture. I have a Jane Austen action figure. There's merchandise and zillions of movies. But they are a far cry from the real Jane Austen and her books. I'm afraid the movie will reinforce stereotypes about her that are not accurate."

Not just chick lit

Auerbach was inspired to write the book "Searching for Jane Austen," when she realized that a course she was teaching on Austen had only one male student out of 40.

"Jane Austen has become a chick lit figure," she said. "She's become romaticized and feminized. It's a mistake to put her in a compartment."

In her research, she found that an original portrait of the author has been touched up with curls and rosy cheeks. In addition, letters she wrote to family that were sometimes sarcastic and biting were edited to softer versions after her death.

"There is a steadfast attempt to soften her up and make her feminine," Auerbach said. "I think if she could see the movie 'Becoming Jane,' she'd write a satire of it."

It bothered Auerbach when she heard the movie being touted as the "untold love story that inspired the book."

"As if she wrote novels because she was a lovesick old maid," Auerbach said. "I think we do women writers a great disservice when we reduce them to lovesick old maids instead of seeing them as serious artists. Can you imagine if we had a movie about Chaucer called 'Becoming Geoffrey,' and were told a love story was the muse behind his entire writing career? That's ludicrous."

In fact, Austen turned down a marriage proposal, she said.

"Jane Austen made a decision not to marry in order to preserve her freedom to write."

Mary Lenard, an assistant professor of English at UW-Parkside who also teaches Austen's work, agrees that the old, lonely spinster image of Austen doesn't jive with the facts known about her life.

"People think too much about her living by herself in a room," she said. "That's not true. She came from a family of eight. Her father had boy pupils living with their family growing up. She has exposure to boys and young men growing up. Her family was pretty close. Her brothers encouraged her in her writing career. She had all her sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews. Her life did have a lot of events."

Lenard said despite her chick lit reputation, based on her experiences with male students, Austen does appeal to men as well - if they take the time to read her work. "They like the humor of it too," she said. "They like the sarcasm and witty statements she makes about her characters."

Beyond the romance

If you look beyond the love stories in Jane Austen's novels, you will find revolutionary ideas about feminism for that time period.

For example, Auerbach said, in "Pride and Prejudice" the Bennett family property is set to pass to a male cousin. Similarly, in "Sense and Sensibility," the stage for the entire novel is set upon a widow and her daughters being removed from their home and station because the death of her husband meant all his assets became the property of his son and daughter-in-law.

"If you actually compare how she presents women's education, she has quite a bit in common with Mary Wollstonecraft," Lenard said.

Sometimes referred to as the mother of feminism, Wollstonecraft wrote, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." The 18th century book-length essay is about women's rights and, specifically, women's education.

Lenard said Wollstonecraft argued that the system of education for women at the time was making them dependent. She said women were being trained to be man traps, but after they married, they had no idea what to do with themselves.

Austen commented on these same ideas in her novels, but they often take a backseat to the romance.

"I think the films really emphasize the romance," Lenard said. "That's what people want. They don't show the depth of ideas that are in the novels."

However, Lenard likes that films continue to be made about Austen and the adaptations of her work.

"The films are wonderful teaching tools," she said. "I appreciate that they keep on doing them."

Staying power

And it doesn't look like Austen's popularity will wind down anytime soon.

Megan Hunt, an assistant manager at Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Racine, picked up her first Austen novel three years ago and is now a fan.

"Her writing style is really amazing," Hunt said. "The voice of the novels is always so optimistic. They are humorous and fast-paced. They are very easy reads."

Hunt doesn't often read fiction, and when she does, she prefers older classics. Three years ago she set a goal to read every book on Barnes and Noble's classics list within a year's time. Of course, Jane Austen's novels were on the list. Hunt started with "Pride and Prejudice," and then went on to read Austen's other five novels.

"They let you get very involved with the characters' lives and forget what's going on in your own life," Hunt said.

The relationships that Austen writes about are what gives her timeless appeal, Hunt said.

Lenard and Auerbach agree.

"From what I've observed in my teaching, her characters and the situations that she writes about are things we can identify with today," Lenard said. "Relationships between people, family relationships, man and woman relationships, sibling relationships; we still have that."

And despite the many advancements of the world over the last 200 years, at their core, people are still the same.

"(Austen) was brilliant at penetrating human motives and vanities that are universal," Auerbach said. "You can take 'Emma,' and it can become 'Clueless,' just as Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet,' can become 'West Side Story.' It doesn't get dated. The various emotions and problems that (Austen) identifies, they don't go away. She's funny. She makes us laugh at ourselves, in the same way that Mark Twain does. She sees so clearly."