Thomas Langlois Lefroy
In 1796, Lefroy began a flirtation with English novelist Jane Austen, who was a friend of an older female relative. Jane Austen wrote two letters to her sister Cassandra mentioning "Tom Lefroy", and some have suggested that it may have been he whom Austen had in mind when she invented the character of Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice", as the courtship between Tom Lefroy and Jane Austen took place over the year or so that "Pride and Prejudice" was written. In his 2003 biography, "Becoming Jane Austen", Jon Spence suggests that Jane Austen actually used her and Tom LeFroy's personalities as the models for Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, but not in an expected way. Spence suggests that Jane Austen used Tom Lefroy's more gregarious personality as the model for the novel's heroine Elizabeth Bennet, and her own measured demeanor was used as the model for the male protagonist, Mr. Darcy. So while the exact influence of Tom Lefroy on "Pride and Prejudice" continues to be debated, it does seem certain that his presence in Austen's life is in some way reflected in the novel.
Jane Austen in popular culture
The American author Amy Elizabeth Smart visited several Latin American countries in 2011 to see where Austen stood in that part of the world. Smart was at first concerned that a British author like Austen would not be popular in Guatemala, where most of the people are Maya Indians. But she found Austen fitted in well with the Maya, intensely family-oriented people who criticized her for not taking her own family with her to Guatemala, saying how could she possibly leave her parents behind in America. Smart discovered that Austen's picture of close-knit families in the English countryside was to the Maya comparable to their own existence in the Guatemalan countryside. When Smart asked her Guatemalan students if the story of "Pride and Prejudice" could take place in modern Guatemala, the unanimous answer was yes. Smart found her Guatemalan students related to "Pride and Prejudice" better than her American students as the general expectation in Guatemala is that a woman should be married by her early twenties, just as was the case in Regency England, whereas her American students have trouble understanding why Elizabeth Bennet was risking social disgrace by turning down two marriage proposals. Moreover, Smart's Guatemalan students found the subject of class prejudices in Regency England more compelling than her American students, with many also saying racial prejudices against the Maya by Guatemala's "Criollo" elite made them relate to Elizabeth Bennet's struggle for acceptance from the Hertfordshire elite. Smart reported class discussions in the United States about "Pride and Prejudice" did not automatically lead to the subject of racism while in Guatemala, her students always brought up the racism against the Maya when discussing Miss Bennet's struggle against the gentry and aristocracy of Hertfordshire. By contrast, in Paraguay, where the majority of the population are Guaraní Indians, Smart discovered that hardly anyone knew who Austen was, and much of her class was indifferent to the books. Smart suggested that the War of the Triple Alliance, which wiped out most of the Paraguayan population between 1864-70 with Paraguay going from 1 million to 200, 000 people, had left a grim, death-obsessed mentality in Paraguay where the macabre was celebrated and where Austen simply could not fit into.