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Jane Austen: A Life. - book reviews

Commonweal, Nov 7, 1997 by Suzanne Keen

David Nokes sets out to debunk the "pictures of perfection" promulgated by Jane Austen's relatives, particularly her sister Cassandra, after Jane's death. Poor Cassandra - she would have writhed at the publicity she has attracted to herself for loving her sister! Nokes expresses instead a disapproval not uncommon in biographers thwarted by relatives of writers: "Cassandra contrived to turn the house into a kind of shrine to her dead sister. She carefully preserved every scrap of manuscript which might do honor to dear Jane's memory, while burning anything that might tend to suggest a less perfect picture. She copied out Jane's prayers but destroyed her most malicious letters." We have the juvenilia, Lady Susan, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Emma, Persuasion, and a section of Sanditon, but what are we to do without the most malicious letters? Sufficient scraps of wickedness survive for Nokes to succeed in depicting a Jane Austen who could have plausibly written Jane Austen's novels, and that's a significant accomplishment. But if a reader of these novels can't catch the note of malice unassisted by private letters to her sister, then I despair of novel-readers altogether!

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In fact, Cassandra's destruction of so much of the evidence of the private Jane Austen's nasty side does not entirely conceal it, as Nokes's biography demonstrates. Rude remarks, dismissive descriptions, and sneers have survived. Despite Nokes's efforts to make the Victorian generation of nieces and nephews who remembered Aunt Jane seem unreliable, the nice, kind person they recalled seems pretty plausible. But if he has not succeeded in entirely replacing the angelic Aunt Jane with her wicked double, Nokes has recreated with exemplary flair the familial and cultural context of Austen's life. It is a rare experience to feel disappointed when the biographer dispenses with the ancestors and arrives at the birth of his subject, but that's how I felt when Nokes left behind the drug-and-gem smugglers, the Indian adventurers, the savage adherents to primogeniture, as well as those kinder, drabber ancestors left to cope with the consequences of their relations' decisions and misadventures. Luckily for a reader craving characters and incident, several brilliantly drawn female relations - an embarrassing kleptomaniac aunt; and the illegitimate daughter of Warren Hastings - stay on the stage for another generation.

Nokes needs this diverse cast of family and friends to make a substantial biography out of a pretty patchy set of documents. Indeed, as he sometimes in frustration admits, Cassandra has entirely obscured whole years of her sister's life from our view! Having adopted from the start a frankly novelistic technique (converting quotations from letters into "thoughts" in characters' minds), he has left himself room for a little speculation about what Jane might have been up to, but he scrupulously flags the sometimes meager facts. No reader will be misled, and the novelistic approach to his material adds some drama to the telling. For instance, when Aunt Leigh-Perrot is imprisoned and tried for stealing lace (a character defense based on the lady's status wins the day), Nokes tells the tale without benefit of hindsight. We know only how Jane and Cassandra and other relations reacted at that time. Only later, when the same lady gets into further trouble for snitching greenhouse plants, does Nokes let on that her own family members privately fret that Aunt Leigh-Perrot might have been guilty of the lace theft.

Potential reader, let me not lead you astray with this sensational example. Most of Jane Austen's life is extremely boring! Her writing career as a published author, who earns money for her work, occupies a small slice of the biography. When she finally gets First Impressions out of the drawer, dusts it off, renames it Pride and Prejudice, and (following on the success of Sense and Sensibility) publishes it, the reader heaves a sigh of relief, and not only because it means a paycheck. The money matters: one of the best things in Nokes's Life is his catching the unwavering note of anxiety about fortunes, bequests, investments, and promises to support dependent relatives. The sensible marriage of the pragmatic Charlotte Lucas to odious Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice can be read as a normal response to this inescapable financial pressure; the awarding of real love and the richest catch in the story to the smart-mouthed, independent-minded Elizabeth Bennet (who has, like her maker, refused proposals) represents with full force the wish-fulfilling fantasy of Austen's fiction. Nokes shows very clearly how Austen works out happy endings for her protagonists, while avoiding the consequences of a merely sensible marriage (and a succession of pregnancies) for herself. Though not poor, as a dependent female Jane cannot always control where she lives, what she does, in whose company, or for whose reasons. The frustration and anxiety understandingly depress her.

Jane Austen: A Life. - book reviews

Commonweal, Nov 7, 1997 by Suzanne Keen

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