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2.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting peripheral material, mediocre to poor biography, June 28, 2005
I find it impossible to trust any would-be interpreter of Jane Austen who, in her analysis of Pride & Prejudice, writes the line: "Her [Mrs. Bennet's] restored faith that Lydia and Wickham will turn out very well is wonderfully brought to pass". This is easily my least favorite among the seven or so biographies that I have read; I was particularly disappointed after marvelous beginning that Tomalin made in describing Jane's birth and earliest life. I made myself read it a second time in order to be fair.
I am left with the feeling that while Tomalin genuinely admires Jane Austen, she has considerably more pity for her life than sympathy for her point of view. Ms. Tomalin places a great emphasis on the importance of passion and enthusiasm that I doubt Austen so uncritically shared. Indeed, Ms. Tomalin has to interchange JA's heroes and villains in order to come up with interpretations of the book that please her, and in several cases, insist that JA got things wrong in her epilogues. This leads to some odd juxtapositions that fit right in with Tomalin's somewhat overwrought thinking. Tomalin cannot accept that Marianne could move on and love Colonel Brandon, but she is also upset that Cassandra Austen spent the rest of her life mourning her dead fiance. Isn't perpetual mourning for a lost love what Tomalin would have Marianne doing, given that Willoughby married someone else? Consistently inconsistent, Tomalin lambastes Fanny Price for declining to marry someone that she doesn't love (or like or trust), at least while her true love remains available. Claudia Johnson, in her book
Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, has some acerbic and apropos remarks about the tradition of women remaining true to their first love, generally by dying, as Marianne almost did.
Tomalin is apparently one of those who feel that it is not enough of an achievement for Austen to be one of the very few authors who, after two hundred years, remain both critical and popular successes. No, she wants to convert JA to a heroine suitable for the late 20th century. This is particularly ironic since she faults the Victorians for their attempts to remake JA in their own image. She attempts, failing dismally in my case, to convince us that JA had an eventful life. She turns to posthumous psychoanalysis for this, interpreting eventful as traumatic and finding psychic wounds from the Austens' childrearing techniques. The book rapidly takes on a whiny quality that I found tedious and annoying.
I comment on this being 52, having been born in 1953. As such, I can remember when "experts had proven" that the child is born a blank slate through the present day when parents are held to have little effect on their children's psychological development except for the responsibility to keep them alive and healthy. I am also well aware that "expert" child-rearing advice has changed over the centuries, some eras recommend techniques that in other eras were considered certain to produce psychopaths. (readers might want to read Sarah Hrdy's
Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species or Stephen Pinker's
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature). While my own tastes in childrearing certainly would align more with Tomalin's, I find it foolish and irritating for her to excoriate Mrs. Austen because the Austen children were raised according to the accepted pattern of their day. (And for all that Tomalin may bring in feminist interpretation, she is clearly engaging in mother-blaming here: all decisions that she doesn't like are charged to Mrs. Austen.) While her arguments of how this affected JA may seem logical, does it make sense when considering that so many other people of the time shared similar experiences? The reader may want to read Elizabeth Jenkin's arguments in her 1938 book,
Jane Austen: A Biography, that Jane Austen was in fact writing through most of her "years of silence", as well as David Nokes arguments in his 1997 biography,
Jane Austen: A Life, that Jane was having too good a time to write as much, before accepting Tomalin's explanation of Jane as falling into a severe depression after a repetition of childhood trauma.
I think in her efforts to make JA into a martyr, Tomalin slights her as a social critic. She also fails to fully appreciate the problems of dependent daughters in interlocked families, the tension between wanting and needing family unity, and the desire for personal autonomy. I have no doubt that JA keenly felt and resented the disadvantages imposed upon her as a younger unmarried daughter, but this is not a unique problem imposed by her particular family. The conventions of the time meant that Jane and Cassandra really were financial drains on their family: their society had failed to make any accomodation to the realities of making women financially dependent but expecting companiate marriages. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the popularity of JA derives from her attention to this double-bind that so many of her female readers shared.
Tomalin sees the effect only on Jane, not on her other family members. I can sympathize with JA's distress at leaving Steventon, but surely her 72-year old father was entitled to retire? Her parents spent decades in Hampshire whether they liked it or not because that is where Rev. George Austen's living was - didn't they have as much right to live somewhere else for a change as Jane had stay where she was? Tomalin faults James for not offering his sisters a home independent of his mother; I presume that Jane could have asserted her wishes on the basis of his offer to house all three women, but, independent of Jane's dislike for James' wife Mary, how practical would that have been? If Jane has lived with James, would Cassandra have been with her or with their mother? At that time, given their resources, it may have been impossible for Mrs. Austen and her daughters to independently pursue the course that each preferred. Several solutions suggest themselves, but they all involve Mrs. Austen living as a dependent relation or the brothers Austen coming up with a lot more money.
Tomalin also by this makes JA something of a hothouse flower. Tomalin makes a point of mentioning servants, but in a somewhat contradictory fashion is arguing that Jane's family should have understood her genius and supported her in the leisured style to which she was somewhat, and would have like to have been even more accustomed. I would have liked that myself. How many people have the luxury of choosing quiet or excitement and work or leisure just as they choose? If JA had lived today, would she have been able to write if she had also been required to earn her own living?
Tomalin has done some wonderful research on peripheral matters such as Austen's neighbors that anyone who is very interested in Austen or her period should find very interesting. Indeed, has this been written as a book on the associates of the Austens, I would probably have given it 5-stars as long as Tomalin left out her psychologizing. This includes much more about Jane's cousin and sister-in-law Eliza Hancock than is warranted by her importance in the author's life. It is very interesting, and I am happy to read it, but it does remain that the real biographical information on JA herself is somewhat scanty compared to other biographies of this length. I would not recommend this as either a first or only biography. My own recommendations for biographies so far are Carol Shields (short),
Jane Austen (Penguin Lives); Valerie Grosvenor Myers'
Jane Austen, Obstinate Heart: A Biography (moderate length, seriously flawed by a lack of notes); and John Halperin's
The Life of Jane Austen (long). Elizabeth Jenkins'
Jane Austen: A Biography is considered a classic biography, but it can be difficult to get and doesn't strike me as worth the trouble given the other material now available.
The notes are beautifully done so that it is easy to match the note with the citation in the text. There are also useful family trees and a map of the Hampshire neighborhood of the Austens. I cannot begin to guess what the logic for arranging the bibliography was.
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