Customer Reviews

Cassandra and Jane: A Jane Austen Novel

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Ever since I read "Just Jane" by Nancy Moser and watched "Becoming Jane" starring Anne Hathaway, I've come to adore Jane Austen's sister Cassandra. There is so little known about her yet her story still fascinates me. The older sister of a well-known author, an amateur artist, a woman who never looked at another man because her one true love died at a young age. So when I discovered "Cassandra and Jane: A Jane Austen Novel," by Jill Pitkeathley, I was eagerly expecting a book about the Austen sisters' unique relationship. No two sisters could be closer (with the exception of my sister and I). I won't outline the story; any Jane Austen nut already knows what it is. And if you don't, you'll just have to read it for yourself.
There is nothing objectionable in the story's content. Sex is referred to as a woman's duty to her husband and whenever the topic is brought up, they characters are vague about it. Faith in God and prayer is held in high esteem; in fact two of the Austen sisters' suitors believe they are called of God to serve Him rather than just viewing the church as a means of making a living. As a Christian who is pretty picky about what she reads, I think that this is a novel that could easily be sold in the Christian market or at a religious bookstore.
However, as an avid Austen-ite, I was disappointed. From the multiple biographies out there about the author, it is believed that the characters Jane Bennet and Elinore Dashwood are loosely based on Cassandra, yet this portrayal of her in no way resembled those characters. She comes across as bland and boring, with no references to her own personal interests or passions.
As a first person narrative told in Cassandra's perspective, Cassandra herself isn't really given much of a personality, just observations of the events in her life. When reminiscing about her relationship with Tom Fowle, the author doesn't go in-depth about Cassandra's feelings. In this book, he is rarely ever mentioned. I can understand that she mourned for him on her own, but this being a book from her point of view, I expected that because of her steadfast devotion to Tom that the author should have at least depicted it more than she did.
Truth be told, this story focuses mostly on Jane Austen; her characterization is another disappointment for me. Before her fling with Lefroy, Jane behaves almost as ridiculous as Lydia Bennet and afterwards she is more like Marianne Dashwood. I had imagined Jane Austen to be a vast deal more mature and reserved. What bothered me the most was that Jane relied heavily on Cassandra's opinions, even when it came to writing. Instead of applauding Jane's own creative genius, Cassandra is credited with assisting her sister in naming the Dashwood sisters and for titling "Persuasion." Often enough in the book, Jane is unable to think for herself and goes running to Cassandra to work out troubles for her.
Maybe I'm just being nit picky; perhaps if you read it you'll like it better.
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This is my first fictional take bookwise on any part of Jane Austen's life, though I have seen a couple movie versions. While I'm just a plain and simple Jane Austen fan, and no expert of her life, what I do know I usually don't want people changing to make something more exciting or the like. . . so, in the end. . .

I really liked this book! :)

FIrst and foremost, I like how the author used Cassandra as the narrator, instead of someone else, a third person point of view or different family member. Using Cassandra made it more personal and we got to hear the story directly from the other person that mattered in the relationship between the sisters. We get what I thought was a great look at them. . . they loved each other, knew each other, and understood each other through the good and the darker times. It speculated on the imperfections of Jane, making her more human. In the end, I really liked this author's speculations into the life of Jane and Cassandra and their interactions with each other, while staying within the letter that did survive through history.

CASSANDRA & JANE is a fictionalize story of the historical author Jane Austin. The story is told through the eyes of the person who knew her best, her older sister Cassandra.

Jill Pitkeathley begins with the author's birth and carries readers all the way to her death. With such a realistic presentation, it was hard to see the line between fact and fiction.

Normally biographical-type books, fictionalized or not, bore me to tears. From the beginning, Pitkeathley formed an emotional web attaching me to the characters. I felt each painful disappointment as though I was there. In the end, when Cassandra lost Jane, I felt it too.

This is a powerful portrayal of a beloved historical figure and Pitkeathley's tale stayed with me days after the final page was read.

"She knew herself that sometimes she overstepped the proper boundries and could only do so safely with me. In later years, when she wrote something particularly scandalous she would urge me, `Take the scissors to this at once.' She was right to surmise that others might judge her comments more harshly, but with me she knew she could be frank and that I understood her turn of mind." Cassandra Austen on her sister Jane, Chapter Two

What is the most tragic and disappointing thing you know about author Jane Austen's life? My immediate choice would be that she died too young and wrote too few novels, and at a close second would be that after her death in 1817, her sister Cassandra destroyed many of her personal letters to protect her privacy. This act of sisterly devotion is greatly lamented by historians, biographers, scholars, and Austen enthusiasts, limiting what information that we do know to her edited letters and family recollections. The complete reason why they were destroyed will always be a mystery, but one can imagine from Austen's surviving letters and novels that her keen sense of social observation and biting irony played a key factor in her sister's decision to remove them forever from family and public scrutiny.

In author Jill Pitkeathley's recently re-issued 2004 novel Cassandra & Jane, we are offered a chance to explore that chasm left by Cassandra Austen's bonfire of humanity as Pitkeathley imagines the back story of two beloved sisters who were the best of friends, honorable confidants and devoted to each other through all the ups and downs of their heartbreaking life in rural 18th-century England. This bio fic is told from the viewpoint of Cassandra's experience of their life together, as only she would know, and is a creative blending of historical fact with a fictional narrative that is both believable and compelling.

The story begins with a prologue to their story. It is 1843, and Cassandra Austen now seventy years old is still residing at Chawton cottage in Hampshire, the house where she and her sister Jane lived together until her untimely death at age forty-one in 1817. She has kept everyone of the letters that her sister ever wrote to her safely stored in her sister's rosewood trunk after her death. Her family has known of their existence, but she has safeguarded them for twenty-six years from their perusal. She fears that when she is gone, that they will pour over them examine and discuss every detail and then publish them for posterity, and profit. She has now re-read them and sorted them into two piles. She must not forget her responsibility to her sister, and to her memory, as Jane had previously warned her "No private correspondence could bear the eye of others."

As we are transported into Jane Austen's world, Cassandra shares their story together in an honest and open manner, dropping her protective older sister mantle for glimpses of the influences that shaped Jane's personality through her family, social sphere, environment and 18th-century social stricture that bound her financially and emotionally. Their remarkable friendship is the highlight of this novel as they suffer and survive together through romantic aspirations and disappointments, frustration on their financial dependence on their relations, and rejoice in Jane Austen's early success as a writer.

Austen enthusiasts will recognize many historical facts known of their lives that permeate through the novel, and in turn revel in the allusions from their real lives that are transported into Austen's novel's. Life imitating art, or art imitating life? Without overt sentimentality, author Jill Pitkeathley has skillfully blended the tragic and joyful lives of two remarkable 18th-century women who chose different avenues to leave their footprint on posterity; - one who would become a literary legend by remarkably revealing social foibles through wit and guile in her novels, and the other renowned for what extreme measures she took not to reveal them in her own sister. This moving and enjoyable rendering of biography and fiction tops my list of favorite Austen inspired novels for this year, and I highly recommend it.

Three typos by the time I got to page 9, and it's not an "advance copy" or anything else that makes an allowance for such errors. Sentences that make no sense or need a couple attempts to make them have a semblance of sense; a serious lack of proper punctuation. Language that was awkward and stiff, not natural and flowing. Emphatically not reminiscent of Austen. And I'm an accountant, so if you're an English major, you really might want to have help nearby if you read this book.

This bit from the book pretty much sums up everything that is wrong: Jane, "like me, would not have wanted light to be shone upon the times we were estranged, my jealousies, her depressions. She most certainly would not have wanted her secret love, her fear of childbearing, her contempt for married women and her dislike of our mother, to be known and examined by anyone who cared to do so." I know of no "estrangements" or "jealousies" between these two extraordinarily close women; I know of no depressions suffered by Jane. I know of speculation that she had at times strained relations with her mother - but dislike? Secret love, fear of childbearing? Please! I ask myself, why am I reading this? Is this how I want to think of Jane and her family, particularly when every page has something that makes me groan?

So to be fair, this book was so terrible I didn't even finish it. And I have suffered through some really awful Jane Austen sequels, prequels, same story but different POV, etc.

On the plus side, the cover art is lovely.

Besides being the devoted sister to one of the most cherished and beloved authors, Cassandra Austen is best known for her devastating destruction of many of Jane Austen's letters and correspondence. What was in these precious letters that Cassandra didn't want the world to see? What new insight to Jane Austen's personality would they have provided? Admirers of Jane Austen's novels cannot help but harbor a desire to know more about this wonderful woman's character, yet, because of her letters being destroyed we are only able to know what Cassandra wanted us to know. In her biographical fiction novel, author Jill Pitkeathley envisions the special relationship between Cassandra and Jane, displaying what she believes might have been the true character of Jane Austen and provides answers to questions like: Was Jane Austen ever in love? What occurred in those long years where she did not write?


What is unique about this novel is that it is told from Cassandra's perspective and narrated through her voice. Cassandra's story begins with Jane's birth, which almost at the age of three, Cassandra has a slight memory of, and continues with her childhood, adulthood, and death. The relationship between Cassandra and Jane is filled with sisterly affection and intimacy. Ms. Pitkeathley portrays the wonderful candor between the two sisters and the dependence they had upon one another. However, Ms. Pitkeathley makes a point to show that the relationship between Cassandra and Jane was not a "picture of perfection." While still maintaining that Cassandra and Jane meant the world to each other, Ms. Pitkeathley illustrates that there were times where jealousy, insecurities, and distance crept into their relationship. Moreover, she depicts our beloved Jane as having faults such as impatience and sometimes bitterness.


What a delightful and illuminating biographical fiction novel! While some aspects of Jane Austen's life and family history were already familiar to me, there was still plenty for me discover and learn in this novel. I greatly enjoyed how the author inferred Jane Austen's feelings and thoughts about the events in her life and found myself in complete agreement with her conjectures. I do believe that with three sister-in-laws who died in the midst of or as the result of childbirth that it is completely natural to assume that Jane Austen would be a little frightened of the danger of having children. In addition, I find it very reasonable that with the move to Bath, her father's death, their looming financial predicaments, and her acceptance/rejection of Harris Bigg Wither's marriage proposal that Jane Austen would go through a period of depression that would forestall her writing.


One aspect of this novel I took pleasure in was observing the connections and similarities between Jane Austen and many of her character creations. Through this novel I was able to imagine her as a Marianne Dashwood when she was young and in love with Tom Lefory, a satirical Elizabeth Bennet with her biting wit, and perhaps a little bit of a Charlotte Lucas when she contemplated a marriage of convenience. I was also able to observe how Cassandra was the inspiration for Jane's quieter and gentler characters such as Jane Bingley and Elinor Dashwood. I think Ms. Pitkeathley did a marvelous job of re-imagining and rendering the personalities of these sisters. There is no way of knowing how accurate she is, but I found her interpretations and assumptions to be viable and well-supported. Occasionally there was a moment where I felt that Jane was a little too harsh or self-absorbed and Cassandra a little too insecure, but those were few and far between.


If you are interested in Jane Austen's missing correspondence and the relationship between Jane and Cassandra Austen, or if you are enamored with all these biographical fiction novels that have recently been in vogue, Cassandra and Jane is a novel you will not want to miss! I cannot get enough of these bio-fic novels, I have loved each one I have had the good fortune to come across! I eagerly anticipate reading Jill Pitkeathley's newest novel, Dearest Cousin Jane: A Jane Austen Novel(published in March 2010), as I am curious to learn more about Jane Austen's lively and independence-loving cousin, Eliza de Feuillide, and her influence on Jane Austen's life and writing.

Cassandra & Jane Austen were more than sisters; they were best friends sharing their desires for a romantic world though depending on relatives for sustenance made romanticism difficult. Neither finds much beyond disappointment as their family is at the lowest rung of the aristocracy; this means they must behave with decorum and obey the rules of the Hampshire Ton, as they are not high enough or wealthy enough to flaunt their standing as the poor relative. Making matters worse, romance proves bitterly disappointing for the siblings who each finds love only to lose love. However, when Jane dies at forty one, a grieving Cassandra destroys the letters from her sister that she always kept.

This is an engaging refreshing look at the life of Jane Austen through the eyes of her older sister. Cassandra and Jane are fully developed characters as the readers through the former's perceptions learn much about what happened to Jane. Although the facts and the fiction do not always blend together the avid Austen audience will fully relish this biographical fiction as the novel is loaded with tidbits about this wonderful author whose works almost two centuries old remain in vogue today (unless you are Clueless).

Harriet Klausner