First, the attention-grabber: Jane Austen.

It seems we just can’t get enough of Austen. On Friday, a film about her life—Becoming Jane—opens nationwide. Four adaptations of her novels are due on ITV this year alone and the man who gave us “that” Darcy moment—writer Andrew Davies—is adapting Sense and Sensibility for the BBC.

Last week, Pride and Prejudice topped a poll of the books “we cannot live without” and Penguin is preparing to re-issue all of Austen’s novels to meet the predicted rush for copies after Becoming Jane’s release.

But not everyone is a fully conscripted member of her fan club. Indeed, Austen has a habit of dividing opinion, often down gender-specific lines. So what is it about Austen?

Then the raves.

It’s her creation of characters, the clever dialogue, and the irony with which she writes that makes her stand out from other writers, say experts.

“They are easy to read and have a simplicity that is hard to get as a writer, which Austen worked hard to achieve,” says Professor Janet Todd, the general editor of the nine-volume Cambridge edition of the works of Jane Austen.

“But it’s a surface simplicity; there is a lot more going on. It combines wish fulfillment with a sense of the unlikelihood of it happening. There is always a modification to the romantic ending which points us back to real life.”

Then the inspiration.

“Those films have made Jane Austen into a brand,” says Brayfield. “I hate them with a passion but you have to admit they do a great job of selling ninteenth-century literature.

“Often my students are only inspired to grapple with Austen after seeing a film of one of her novels with Keira Knightley in it, but at least it’s a way in for them.”

Knightley might also draw in another audience that has issues with Austen—men. It’s by no means a rule, but they don’t usually find period drama an appealing combination of words. While Austen’s wit and irony might appeal, the romance usually does not.

Then the detractors.

“There is no poverty in her novels, no corruption, ambition, wickedness, or war. Yes, her wit is enchanting and her human observations enduringly accurate, but the world she writes about is so tiny. I find it claustrophobic.”

It’s all too graceful and lacks guts, says writer Zoe Williams, who prefers those other ninteenth-century romantic writers—the Brontë sisters.

“I’m not crazy for Austen. The Brontës’ novels are so overheated, so female, you have to look them in the eye when you read them.”

Then the paragraph that makes me laugh (courtesy of Gill Hornby, author of Jane Austen: The Girl with the Magic Pen).

“Her novels are only about romantic love and family life and they are two of the few things that haven’t changed in the world since she was alive. Both things still absorb us and annoy us in equal measure. If she’d written about the Napoleonic Wars, no one would have read her books.”

The Napoleonic Wars indeed.