In Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Jane
Austen created two of literature’s most endearing and enduring pairs of
sisters. This celebration of the sisterly bond makes sense because the
most important relationship in the author’s life was with her sister,
Cassandra. Jill Pitkeathley’s novel Cassandra & Jane explores
that relationship from Cassandra’s perspective, piecing together a
portrait of a joint life that feels very authentic.
Jane
Austen was a prolific letter-writer, and many of her letters to
Cassandra were preserved for the ages and remain available for
appreciative readers to peruse. I haven’t read these myself, but many
are excerpted here. Meanwhile, Pitkeathley takes a stab at guessing the
contents of several of the letters Cassandra famously burned after her
sister’s death. Many have wondered what intrigues these missives might
contain; Pitkeathley’s solution is that some detail foiled love affairs,
while others show Jane’s mean streak rather too acutely.
My
impression has always been that Jane was rather like her most celebrated
heroine, the tart-tongued Elizabeth Bennet, while Cassandra was like
sweet-tempered Jane Bennet, and this book reinforces that notion.
According to the novel, Cassandra does have a strong jealous streak when
it comes to her sister, often fearing that she will lose her to
romance, fame or more intellectual friends, but she never reveals this
insecurity to any of her acquaintances or relatives and rarely mentions
it even to Jane. For the most part, she comes across as just as
even-keeled as Jane Bennet.
The book is largely a biography of the sisters, albeit with fanciful touches. Unlike with The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen,
which I read earlier this year, it is easy for me to imagine that the
book actually is a memoir rather than a novel. That’s largely because
Cassandra’s voice here is so much as I imagined it to be, whereas Jane’s
in the other book seemed like far too much of a shrinking violet. In
this book, she is much zingier, and the conversations between the
sisters feel very realistic.
The book, which is set up to have
been written a couple of years before Cassandra’s death – and nearly 30
years after Jane’s – covers every period of Jane’s life, from idyllic
childhood to the miserable decade in Bath to the richly creative final
years. Letters are used plentifully, and the book includes many
references to Austen’s six novels at various stages of completion. The
foiled romances actually take up very little room; a flirtation with an
Irishman named Tom Lefroy – the main storyline in the movie Becoming Jane
– occurs while Cassandra is away, and while she is present for the
courtship with clergyman George Atkins, whom they meet in Lyme, that
does not last long either.
One element of the book that I
found interesting was the sisters’ speculation about those aspects of
marriage that had been kept hidden from them, particularly what
“conjugal duties” might involve. There seems to be a great deal of
nervousness about this issue and very little information. What both the
women understand all too well, however, is what a dangerous business
childbirth is, as several women in their family die in the process.
Cassandra is particularly aware of this since she has been present for
the births of several nieces and nephews, though she never witnesses the
actual birth.
With these reservations about the physical
dangers of motherhood, there is a thread throughout the book of some
relief on both the sisters’ parts that they were spared those
difficulties, despite their deep disappointments in love, particularly
Cassandra, whose longtime fiance died overseas before they could wed.
Mostly, there is gratitude that they have each other, and each seems to
agree that even a husband would be no match for the closeness that they
share. Moreover, the spinster lifestyle seems far more suited to an
authoress, and one wonders how many novels Jane would have written or
published had she married.
Jane Austen may not have ever seen a
romance through to fruition, but her characters certainly did, and they
continue to enchant readers long after her death. There’s no way of
knowing how a different lot in life would have affected her productivity
and fame, but the one thing that’s certain is the fact that Jane and
Cassandra shared an extraordinary kinship, and this novel delves into it
in a manner that any enthusiast should be able to appreciate.
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