Welcome back to the Janeite Spotlight series, dear readers! As most of you know by now, the Janeite Spotlight project is dedicated to showcasing and connecting Austen fans around the globe, without whom Jane Austen’s legacy might have disappeared in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Today, we’re highlighting Sowmya Guntooru, founder of the official Jane Austen Society of India.
Hailing from the city of Hyderabad in India, Sowmya Guntooru is a teacher of English and French by day and a Jane Austen superfan by night. “Namaste,” she offers in greeting.
Sowmya’s passion for Austen began when she came across an old copy of Emma on her mother’s bookshelf as a young girl. She only read a few pages, but it was enough to pique her interest. A few years later, she encountered several film and television versions of Jane Austen’s novels, although she didn’t realize they were adaptations at the time. One of her favorites was Amy Heckerling’s 1995 teen classic Clueless. “It was a fun movie, except for the part where the heroine likes her stepbrother,” Sowmya says with humor.
When she was studying for her master’s degree in English literature, Sowmya finally read Emma in its entirety, prompted by one of her class syllabi. She loved the story’s sweet light-heartedness, especially in comparison to the dark, dramatic works they read alongside it—such as Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Sowmya soon sought out Austen’s other novels, and just like that, she was hooked.
“I love how happy and practical her books are!” Sowmya says. They're fun but “sensible,” and they include different kinds of love stories and marriages at different ages. Sowmya is also drawn to the story of Austen’s own “unconventional” life—her decision not to marry, her precarious living situation after her father’s death—and her love of gardening, a hobby Sowmya shares with the late author.
In 2017, Sowmya launched the Jane Austen Society of India (JASI) on Facebook to share her passion for Jane Austen’s writing with like-minded individuals across the subcontinent. Through JASI’s online presence, Sowmya also enjoys connecting with Janeites across the world. She interviewed several Austen-adjacent authors as part of JASI’s Happy Hour program during the Covid-19 pandemic, and she regularly interacts with other societies dedicated to Austen online. She participated virtually in Damianne Scott’s 2024 JASNA presentation, too. Sowmya loves platforms like Facebook, Instagram, StreamYard, and Zoom, which allow her to connect with fans, scholars, fan-fiction writers, and other members of the Austen community.
JASI’s Facebook page regularly features blurbs of Austen-adjacent novels and adaptations to encourage Janeite authors to continue writing. Sowmya believes adaptations are a fun tribute to Austen’s original stories: “Not everyone is privileged enough to read and understand classics and hence, adaptations are a great way to introduce people to Jane Austen's work. And who doesn't like [to see] their favorite characters come to life on their TV screen?”
Sowmya believes Jane Austen resonates so strongly with readers today due to the timeless themes that resurface again and again in her novels, such as love and money (“and jocks and jerks”), which remain relevant in the modern era. In India, for instance, arranged—not forced—marriages are still common, and dowries still exist, although they were technically outlawed by the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961. In Austen’s time, women were not allowed to vote, study at a university, inherit property, or pursue many careers. Sowmya argues that “we [women] have to read Austen” so that we are reminded never to “take the sacrifices of our foremothers and various social reformists for granted.”
In celebration of Austen’s feminist legacy, Sowmya also interviews current authors who write women-centric books featuring interesting women characters. Her interviewees have included Nancy Springer (author of the Enola Holmes series, which recently received a film adaptation starring Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill), Pamela Redmond Satran (author of Younger, which was made into a television series starring Sutton Forster and Hillary Duff, and other novels), and Nina Shengold (award-winning screenwriter and author of Reservoir Year). Sowmya believes in honoring Jane Austen by celebrating books with strong women characters who make bold decisions and live life on their own terms.
Sowmya also champions the importance of mental health in Austen’s novels. For instance, she believes Mrs. Bennet suffers from an anxiety disorder, which Austen describes as “poor nerves.” Her often-neurotic behavior is a result of the helplessness she feels as a woman without the power to secure her daughters’ futures—due to nineteenth-century inheritance laws in England as well as Mr. Bennet’s poor financial planning—through any means other than facilitating advantageous marriages.
Going forward, Sowmya is excited to meet her online Janeite friends from around the world in person, and to visit Austen-related sites in England, such as Winchester Cathedral and Chawton Cottage. She is also excited to see what’s next for Austen fandom: “a few are into period costumes and fashion, some people are into preserving Austenian artifacts, then a few others [educate] people around the world [or present] scholarly articles and papers. All this will strengthen Austen's legacy and will preserve it for future generations.”
Connect with Sowmya via Facebook.
Excerpted from email correspondence with Sowmya Guntooru, January 14, 2025.
Meet other passionate Janeites at JASP 2025: Sensibility and Domesticity. Register here! We hope to see you in New Bern, NC this summer.
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