Читать книгу 21 Miles - Jessica Hepburn - Страница 15

It was a Wednesday evening when the email popped into my inbox. At 18:04, to be precise. It read:

Dear Jessica,

We will never know what Jane Austen thought about not marrying and not having a family of her own, because we have no evidence that she ever told anybody. She was certainly acutely aware of the pitfalls of an ‘unequal’ marriage and portrayed them in her novels, as well as the happier ones.

However, since she had endless nieces and nephews, some of whom stayed with her, some of them recorded how they loved her, and she recorded how she played with some of them, I am sure being an aunt was the next best thing to being a mother (especially when you can give them back to their parents!). She was, nevertheless, never blinded to their true natures.

She did have an offer of marriage but, despite the man having an estate and good fortune and being the brother of her friends, she turned it down because she realised that she didn’t love the man. She told her favourite niece that, whilst it was good to respect a man, one should not marry without love (or the possibility of respect turning into love). She also said that it was a good thing not to marry too soon because the woman would not then be subject to so many pregnancies. She was always concerned about one of her nieces, in that respect, calling her ‘a poor animal’.

It was certainly not through the lack of society, like the Brontës, that she never married – the number of people she knew, met, and wrote about is staggering; perhaps she was too picky (like some of us today!) or some men might have found her too shrewd! Who knows?

It is true that, had Jane Austen married, she would not have had the time and energy, or perhaps the inclination, to write and we would not have had all those wonderful novels. In fact she called Pride and Prejudice ‘her darling child’. Whether or not the novels were sublimation, we will never know.

Regards,

Maureen Stiller,

Hon. Secretary, Jane Austen Society