The Life of Jane Austen by John Halperin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Originally, I had rated this biography four stars, but after a few day’s consideration I have decided to change it to three stars. As part of my research in preparation for my graduate thesis, I am reading a handful of texts with increased scrutiny.
I found the biography, generally speaking, very informative. The author explains in his introduction that he decided against footnotes in order to provide the reader with a more continuous reading experience, since footnotes have the tendency to distract and break up the flow of the text. The chapter notes at the end were very helpful.
It is thoroughly researched and the writing is engaging and maintains the reader interest in the subject matter, although it is a bit outdated.
This is were my reduced rating comes into play. I understand that much work has been done on the subject of Jane Austen’s life since 1984 and that what appeared to have been fact is now being disputed as embellished by family members after her death.
For example, the notion that immediately following the news of having to move to Bath permanently Jane is supposed to have fainted. During my most recent trip to the Jane Austen Centre in Bath and through my own further readings, I have to agree with their argument that it is highly unlikely Jane actually did faint.
As a very outspoken writer against the ridiculous notion of having female characters constantly faint in novels, most of her early works, especially Love & Freindship, satirizes swooning and fainting. Furthermore, Jane’s friend Martha Lloyd was present at the time and only commented on Jane’s distress about the news. Distress could mean fainting, but since no other records exist of her having a constitution prone to fainting, it makes this claim rather unlikely.
The author also makes a rather big assumption and puts the label of an outdated condition on her behaviour and the comments she writes. The author attributes her moodiness to neurasthenia.
According to my research, the term is not in medical use anymore and was used to described mental fatigue, headache, irritability and is connected with emotional disturbance.
Jane does mention throughout her letters her annoyance with loud noises and feelings of being crowded. She had a sharp wit, rather dark sense of humour and, like most of us, suffered from melancholy or even depression. This is not enough evidence to label her with a condition that has been classified as a neurotic disorder, lacking any substantial proof of such in her.
She may as well could have been suffering from mysophobia, phonophobia or hyperacusis. Or she could have just been very sensitive to unaccustomed noise, considering she grew up and lived most of her life in the Hampshire countryside, a very quiet, peaceful location compared to London or a house filled with 11 nieces and nephews.
Something else that bothered me has to do with the formatting and organization of the entire text. The edition I was able to get from the library is about 341 pages of text, without the author’s introduction, bibliography, chapter notes and index. The font used is a 10 pt., making for pages filled with extremely small typing.
There are only 8 chapters in the biography with some of them being over 100 pages long. The chapters are simply sectioned by using roman numerals, which aren’t listed in the table of contents and without any further subheadings. This made it impossible to read for longer stretches of time or make any mental notes as to where a certain point was made in relation to the rest of the chapter. I spent about 20 minutes trying to find the word “neurasthenia” in the text, which was used a handful of times. I finally gave up and was able to find it through my browser’s search history.
On a positive note, I appreciated the autobiographical connections the author pointed out between Jane Austen’s life and her works. Each book and even her teenage writings are discussed in detail and included in the chronological description of her life.
Overall, it was a rich biography that kept my attention, although I did need to take frequent breaks from reading the small text. It gave a complete overview of Jane’s life and I think it is worth a read for anyone, who is interested in the life and works of Jane Austen. It was recommended to me by my thesis supervisor and I would in turn recommend as well.
