Tuesday, April 7, 2020

What to Read in Quarantine? : A Special Post

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby -- Austenesque Historical fiction

Miss Austen
Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

It is impossible to describe this book. While it is largely set in a country village it does not involve 3 or 4 families. There are no rogues, no villains, no real high plot points, just a gentle story about 19th-century spinsters who were devoted to their families in different ways. The story opens in 1840 when Jane Austen's sister Cassandra, now in her 60s and frail, travels on her own, unannounced to visit Isabella Fowle, family friend and niece of Cassandra's late fiance. Isabella's brother, the country clergyman in Kintbury, Berkshire has recently passed away and by church rule Isabella must vacate her home. Feeling lost and unhappy, Isabella doesn't know what to do and is not thrilled to have to entertain this elderly woman on top of everything else. Cassandra has a mission and won't leave until she's accomplished it. Her mission is to ostensibly help Isabella pack and move. She also seeks to convince Isabella that the very best thing for her would me to move in with one or both of her sisters, something the three Fowle women are reluctant to do. It worked out for the best for Cassandra to stay with her mother and devoted little sister Jane. Cassandra's real mission is to search for letters written by her famous sister and destroy any that show Jane in a negative light. Cassandra wants people to remember her sister as always calm and happy, to have had smooth sailing all her life, nothing to ruffle her calmness and creativity.

In 1840 people weren't yet interested in the obscure Jane Austen who had some literary success at the beginning of the century and then died. Only the family is beginning to take an interest in that long ago past and Cassandra can not let them shape the narrative the way they want. Cassandra knows her sister-in-law Mary will make herself out to be a heroine and Jane a villain. If only Cassandra can find those letters. It isn't as easy as she hoped. She's thwarted by the lazy maid Dinah, sister-in-law Mary and niece Caroline as they help with the hustle and bustle of moving. Each night Cassandra reads from Persuasion with Isabella listening for the first time. In this small way Cassandra can keep her sister's memory alive.

The story shifts from 1840 to the past when Cassandra's loved ones are alive. Each letter she reads brings back memories Cassandra had long buried as she faced numerous hardships with a stiff upper lip. Beginning in 1795 when Cassandra was a young woman engaged to her father's former pupil Tom Fowle and ending in 1817 with the event we all know happened and none of us want to have happened, the story shifts back and forth in time sharing Cassandra's story as well as Jane's. Cassandra's past has the power to shape the future if she can recognize what needs to be done.

I enjoyed this different take on Jane Austen's life. It's more about Cassandra and how her life always intertwined with her sister's even after death. It's about the choices women have and must make, duty to family, love romantic or familial, which is more important? What stories do we tell while we are alive? How do we want to be remembered when we die? How do our loved ones remember us or want us to be remembered? This story asks those questions revolving around Jane and Cassandra. Jane's story is well-known, or we think we know her story anyway but in destroying her letters, Cassandra also erased part of her own story and Gill Hornby plausibly brings it back.

As an unmarried woman of a certain age myself, certainly a middle-aged spinster by 19th-century standards, I find myself more drawn to the Miss Bates characters and of course Cassandra and Jane Austen. This story gives us several single women, all of whom make choices that shape their lives. Let me start with Isabella and get to Jane and Cassy later. Isabella is unable to cope without a man. Her father was a bully and made his wife and daughter subservient to him. Isabella spent her whole life catering to him and caring for him in his final illness. She would not have dreamed of going against his wishes. Her story is quite sad and one of the usual themes of this time period. Many authors today like to point out how difficult it was for women, especially single women, without rights, to do what they pleased. Gill Hornby takes a different approach. While Isabella is lost without a man, her two sisters have been able to make their own lives. Elizabeth runs a one-woman daycare center caring for the babies of working women and has found fulfillment that way. Mary-Jane married and traveled, was widowed and returned to Kintbury. She's eccentric to be sure but she seems content with her choices and I admire that.

Cassandra and Jane are a different matter. They found happiness and contentment with each other but it wasn't the easiest path to take or really a matter of choice. This story shows Cassandra's fears about marriage- not the usual ones but her fears of being away from her lively, intellectual family and especially her sister. Tom seemed like he was a simple, uncomplicated young man who never stopped to think about what Cassandra wanted. Her fears seem justified for a MODERN woman on the brink of marriage but in the Georgian period, you married someone you liked well enough and hoped it worked out. As we know, Tom died young and Cassandra was left a grieving widow without having had the pleasure of actually being married. Fiction fills in the blanks.

Gill Hornby imagines a reason why Cassandra never married but I think even if she didn't have that big reason, she wouldn't have left her family, especially Jane. Jane and Cassandra were like two halves of a whole. Their devotion to each other is very sweet and touching but also tinged with sadness. These two bright young women were everything to each other but what history doesn't tell us is why Cassandra felt duty bound to stay with her family and never marry. Aside from Cassandra's secret, Jane has a secret. Jane's secret makes the story more heartbreaking.

Cassandra becomes the dutiful daughter, nurturing aunt and loving sister supporting everyone through the years. Cassandra doesn't come across as saintly though. She has moods based on her feelings. She makes decisions that affect her future and they weigh heavily on her mind. As a woman, she is in a difficult spot. Still, even today, women are expected to be caretakers of their ageing parents and of course in the 19th-century, women didn't have any outlets for their hurt or frustrations. Cassandra CHOOSES her fate and that sets her apart from many other spinsters. Martha Lloyd is the real saint, uncomplainingly moving around with the Austen women and helping to care for her family. She keeps smiling through and I found her goodness a bit hard to take. I like Cassandra better even though she's always annoyed me for coming across as perfect. Jane, with her clever mind and sharp wit appeals to me more.

Mary Austen is the villain of the story. Mary was born a Lloyd, sister to saintly Martha and friend to Jane and Cassandra. She's the Charlotte Collins of Jane's real life. Mary needs to marry and sets her sights of Jane and Cassy's widowed brother James. Mary turns into a different person around him, a person James expects a woman to be. After her marriage, Mary turned into a frenemy. In this novel, she's clearly the prototype for Mary Bennet, Mrs. Elton, Mary Musgrove and the other insufferable female characters. I HIGHLY doubt it was that obvious or people would have noticed! Jane may have taken some of Mary's characteristics but surely she wasn't stupid enough to earn her sister-in-law's hatred that way. Mary Austen is not bright. She doesn't have the cleverness of her Austen in-laws and doesn't seem to have a mind of her own. Mary is truly awful but she isn't really a villain. Perhaps she would have given us a more complete picture of Jane if she had been allowed.

Supporting characters in the present 1840 setting include Dinah, the maid who is a terrible maid but turns out to be a good friend. Personally I would have given her the sack long ago. Isabella doesn't have the inner strength to make Dinah do her job but Isabella is lonely and in need of a confidante so she seems to keep Dinah around for that. I don't know why Isabella didn't feel she could confide in Cassandra except perhaps because Cassandra is an old, old lady. There's also a Mr. Lidderdale, a country doctor who treated Isabella's father. He isn't a man of breeding or fortune but he's good at what he does and has a calming manner. That subplot was painfully obvious. Cassy should have known. Caroline Austen, daughter of Mary and James, apparently doesn't like her Aunt Cassy for whatever reason. Caroline is also a single woman of a certain age who must care for her widowed mother. The two have that in common and should have a bond of sisterhood. Caroline is too much like her mother for Cassandra's liking but she doesn't seem as spiteful.

In the past we get to know Eliza Lloyd Fowle. Like her sister Martha, she is sweet and kind. She endures a pompous, bullying and perhaps physically abusive husband with good grace. The light went out of the household when she died. The Austen parents are portrayed much like the Bennets. Mrs. Austen is constantly complaining about her ill health like Mrs. Bennet and trying to marry off her daughters and their friends. Mr. Austen also tries to pay matchmaker. Cassy and Jane's brothers are lively and fun-loving in their youth. Cassy reflects on the difference between her family's love of literature and intellectual pursuits, their good humor and loving nature with that of the Fowles more somber and less intellectual household. When the Austen men grow up they fall victim to their wives. James always comes across as egotistical and pompous in history and here he's like John Dashwood, letting his wife do all the talking and thinking. Edward isn't much better but Elizabeth is more naive and lacks empathy than the cruel Fanny Dashwood. Frank and Charles are mostly mentioned and George is left out of the narrative, not living with the Austens.

Also in the past we meet that mysterious gentleman from the seaside whom Jane supposedly fell in love with. Cassy has no memory of telling this story to Caroline and what she remembers differs greatly from the family narrative. I had never thought of THAT but it surely seems plausible, even possible! This storyline was tough to read though, knowing that real life is not the same as a novel.

My only major quibbles with this novel are that it is difficult to tell who is writing Jane or Cassandra. Their voices sound too much alike. My other, major complaint, is that I don't think the Austen sisters would have revealed private information about the other to a mutual friend. Because we don't have existing letters or diaries to go on, Gill Hornby needed some way to tell the story and she chose letters to a friend rather than family.

I really enjoyed this thoughtful novelization of Cassandra Austen's life and how it was so intertwined with her sister's. I highly recommend this to Janeites new and old.

4.75 stars/out of 5
and almost as many hankies! 5 hankies for July 1817! I silently cried out "NO!" as if I could somehow change the past. It's such a tragedy that such genius died so young- the same age I am now, nearly exactly. It seems extra unfair if she died of something that can easily be treated or cured today.

This is such a choppy review. I can't do justice to this book in a review. I found someone who can though, for a better, more in-depth analysis see Austen in Autumn

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