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You don’t read just anything when you’re
really sick. C.S. Lewis said that at his lowest all that would suffice
was The Wind in the Willows. I agree, but, laid up these last few weeks, I’ve been
exclusively rereading Jane Austen, occasionally breaking the print
paralysis to stumble downstairs and view a BBC Austen prizewinner, though
any Austen film has substance enough to merit a biggie. I’ve always advocated reading an Austen a year
and in the seventh year starting over. (There are only six novels.) So
that’s my advice today — and you don’t need to be ill. Pride and Prejudice is the
best known, even though Austen, otherwise so generous in detail, leaves to
the imagination the final love scene we’ve been anticipating for more
than 300 pages, but some (including Austen herself) believe Emma to be better. There’s lately grown an industry of sequels,
parallels, or even prequels of famous books. We now know how connubial life
was for Jane and Rochester (not good) or visit Gone
with the Wind from another viewpoint.
I’ve found the Austen continuations (try Google; there are too many
to enumerate here), interesting but not to be reread. Elizabeth
Aston’s Mr. Darcy’s wealthy daughters face the opposite
problems in marrying that the impoverished Bennett sisters did, and the
adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy cannot quite rival Lydia Bennett’s.
I’ve not yet sampled the 10 novels of the Pemberley series by Rebecca
Ann Collins (an unfortunate last name, though I understand she killed off
her namesake in an early novel). The recent Jane
Austen Book Club barely rates a description of
“mediocre,” though the movie is rumored to be better.
But let me call your attention to a mystery series
available at Lincoln Library in print and tape. Jane Austen has a
“hidden” period in her life — one during which she
produced no books — and this period, like Christ’s life between
the ages of 12 and 30, has been the subject of much conjecture. Stephanie
Barron has filled this void by having Jane keep a journal and solve
mysteries. Barron, a scholar, knows her Austen and the period impeccably,
and she writes with a tone and detail that will delight Austen lovers and
could well create new ones. Her tales are a little uneven, as are
Austen’s — no Fanny Price can equal Elizabeth Bennett as a
heroine — but all are worth reading. At one point Barron introduces a
dashing love interest, but the reader knows that, alas, there will be no
Pemberley in Austen’s future. Judith Everson, long a teacher of always-full Austen
seminars at the University of Illinois at Springfield, says, “Jane
Austen has inspired more clever and creative riffs than any of her
contemporaries,” and she recommends In
the Steps of Jane Austen, by Anne-Marie
Edwards, for your next trip to England. I say don’t miss Fay
Weldon’s Letters to Alice on First
Reading Jane Austen, a treasure you give your
daughter, granddaughter, or niece (or even a son; surely Willoughby and
Wickham are villains enough for any teenage reader and Mr. Darcy and
Colonel Brampton sufficient heroes) when she’s 12, along with her
first complete set of Austen hardbacks. And speaking of England trips, I
never fail to visit Winchester Cathedral and stand alone before the grave
marker on the far wall that reads only “Jane Austen —
Spinster.” I confess to tears. The newest Barron, A
Flaw in the Blood, “an enthralling
suspense novel centered on Queen Victoria’s troubled court —
and a secret so dangerous it could topple thrones,” is due in early
2008. Jane will fix things, I’m sure. I am eagerly awaiting my copy.
Jacqueline Jackson,
books and poetry editor of Illinois Times, is a
professor emerita of English at the University of
Illinois at Springfield.
This article appears in Nov 29 – Dec 5, 2007.
