Apu’s World

Jane Austen’s novels, especially Emma, Pride & Prejudice and to a lesser extent, Sense & Sensibility and Mansfield Park are among the best loved novels of all time. Their meticulous depiction of family life and its tensions, of love, romance and heartbreak, of society and manners - all make them enjoyable even two centuries after they were written, not to mention the renewed interest in them in the form of movies and TV serials and adaptations. Somehow, the characters she created - Elizabeth Bennett, Emma Wodehouse, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, always led me to think of the author on the lines of these women - young, beautiful, romantic.

Reading Claire Tomalin’s ‘Jane Austen: A life’, it came as something of a surprise that Austen wrote most of her novels when she was done with being a young woman on the lookout for romance, and in fact had very little of it even when she was young. She differs from most of her characters in many ways, and what the biography makes clear is that while village life may have provided her with some of her setting and background, much of her work came purely from her imagination.

Until a few years ago, I used to avoid reading any non-fiction on the grounds that it would be boring. That can hardly be said for this biography. Very interestingly written, it is sympathetic to Austen without making her a saint. What is more remarkable is that it is put together very well in spite of the very little information and evidence available, since Austen’s family destroyed many of her letters. At the same time, it does not appear as if Tomalin is simply indulging in her own fancies; instead, she bridges the many gaps in the narrative by bringing in evidence from Austen’s contemporaries - women who would have gone to similiar schools, attended the same parties, been in similiar situations - and makes a plausible case for those parts of her life.

Jane Austen comes alive - as the young girl who starts writing early, as the young woman whose fleeting romance is quickly brought to an end, as the devoted aunt who nevertheless finds family obligations a strain on her, and as an author with tremendous confidence in herself, and the ability to laugh at criticism.

Two things really struck me after reading the biography; one was Jane Austen’s attachment to her only sister, Cassandra, with whom she shared a room almost her entire life and wrote to regularly whenever they were apart. After her death, Cassandra wrote poignantly, “…I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed. She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself.” I found this deeply touching.

The other was how hard life was for women in those times - with absolutely no money of their own, even women from middle-class families were completely dependent on fathers or brothers for their support. If the family fell into hard times or if brothers withheld support, there was little that single women could do. Unlike men who could work their way up by entering into a profession, few occupations were open to them. Tomalin’s biography brings this up, especially in one instance, where the Austen parents abruptly decide to relocate from their country home to Bath, and Jane and Cassandra, both grown women, have no choice in the matter, although the move troubles them deeply.

Married women of course were expected to devote themselves completely to their households, and there was little thought of them needing any independence, although widows could and did fall on hard times. Besides, the lack of contraception and the constant child-bearing did literally kill women, including two of JA’s sisters-in-law. While there is little to indicate that she had overt feminist leanings, it is clear that as she grew older, she considered herself lucky to be a single woman, and to have escaped marriage and constant child-bearing. In fact, her belief in women as people with intelligence, wit and wisdom, as seen in her letters as well as in her novels (rather than the helpless, pliant creatures they were assumed to be) leads Tomalin to suggest that in slightly later times, she may well have been a feminist.

Today, Jane Austen adaptations are in themselves a multi-million dollar industry. It is a sobering thought that well into her early thirties, she was completely dependent on others for whatever little they could give her. By the time her work started earning her some money, she had little time left to live. Despite the essentially cheerful and hardy character that comes across in this biography, one cannot help feeling sad at such a life.

(Incidentally, it appears that Claire Tomalin is going to be at this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival, an event I’ve always wanted to attend and never managed to.)

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apu The Literary life, Women & Feminism