I have been thinking about the latest Masterpiece Theater for days. I didn’t like it. I have a hard time identifying why exactly things bother me. So I’ve started writing this and then walked away several times. I think I might have a more solid idea now. For one, we don’t really know much about what Jane Austin thought or felt because most of her personal letters were destroyed by her sister. And secondly–the main point seemed to be that Jane had to choose loneliness in order to bring us her 6 classic novels. Like she sacrificed herself for acedemia. I do not want to believe that you can’t have love and family and write good fiction. Is it true? Can you write about love so succinctly without ever having felt it? Would it have been possible for her to marry, have children, and write? Apparently, parenting wasn’t as hands-on in Austen’s time. She herself was sent off at a couple month’s old. (From Wikipedia)
“After a few months at home, Mrs. Austen placed her daughter with a woman living in a nearby village who wetnursed and raised Austen for a year or eighteen months.[23] Following this, Austen was educated at home, largely by her father, until leaving for boarding school with her sister Cassandra early in 1783.”
I’m trying not to judge, but it seems to me if the culture you are a part of gives child-rearing over to professionals, you’d have enough time on your hands to pursue your own work. But I don’t know. I don’t have servants to oversee. Maybe what bothers me most is that the way it was presented, we’re to feel sorry for Jane. Maybe. I really think that when you are following your ambition, your heart, your passion in life you are happy. Austen could have married, been wealthy and provided for her family but she chose not to follow the conventions of the day. She chose not to accept a marriage proposal to a wealthy (but possibly ugly and annoying) man. She chose her destiny. And she instructed her niece to do anything but marry without love.
“I shall now turn around & entreat you not to commit yourself farther, & not to think of accepting him unless you really do like him. Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection”
I choose not to believe Jane had regrets. She spent her life doing what she wanted to do. She wrote amazing fiction, poetry and prose. She was committed to her work so much that she continued to write as she was slowly dying of some terrible disease. I can’t compare myself to Jane Austen by any stretch of imagination. Except that I know I’m doing what I want to do with my life. I can look at where I’ve been, what I’ve accomplished and most importantly who I’ve loved–and loved into existence and I feel tremendous joy. It would really aggravate me if someone were to take liberties with my thoughts a hundred years from now and assume that I regret a single moment of my life. Every thing I’ve done and every decision I’ve made has brought me to who I am. I think they got one thing right in the movie–the scene where Fannie the niece learns that Jane turned down a marriage proposal in her youth and that knowledge changes how she thinks of aunt Jane–as if it somehow validates Jane as a woman. Jane turns on the niece and says, “You can hate me if you want, but don’t you dare feel sorry for me.” That should have been the title and central theme.
