Jane Austen: Obstinate Heart: A Biography by Valerie Grosvenor Myer

From the Publisher

At the heart of Jane Austen's story lies a mystery: how a woman of "genteel poverty," the seventh child of a country clergyman, an unmarried spinster for whom life was often a struggle against the indignities of financial dependency, could have produced works of such magnificent warmth and wisdom. Valerie Grosvenor Myer's flawless research proves Austen's books grew from the preoccupations of her social set - respectability, financial security, and most of all, marriage. "It is a truth universally acknowledged," begins Pride and Prejudice, "that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." In that one line are revealed the principal forces at work in Austen's novels - and in the world from which they were drawn. For many middle-class women of Austen's day, marriage was paradoxically the only method of achieving independence. Marriage could also be a life sentence. Myer shows that by many accounts Austen was pretty and flirtatious (though occasionally also sharp-tongued), and the object of at least two proposals, but obstinate in her refusal to marry for other than love. Her obstinacy condemned her to reliance on her family for financial support. As Myer points out, it also enabled Austen to write her immortal novels. Using letters, family memories, and of course the novels themselves, Myer provides a detailed and revealing look at Jane Austen - her relationship with her beloved sister Cassandra, her devotion to and pride in her brothers and their children (who remembered "Aunt Jane" with warm affection), and her independence of mind and spirit. Austen's fondest dream was to establish herself not as another "silly female novelist," but as a serious and self-supporting writer. She reveled in the reviews of those of the novels published - anonymously - during her brief lifetime. Yet as Myer shows, no one, least of all Austen herself, could have imagined her posthumous popularity.

Publishers Weekly

In her teens and 20s, Austen was nearly as witty, pretty and delightful as her heroine Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice) and, at later times, as mousy and mean-spirited as Fanny Price (Mansfield Park). Though she was, for her place in the English world, very poor and socially vulnerable, her "obstinate heart" prevented her from accepting any of the many proposals she received from men she did not love. Myer sensibly takes for granted her reader's admiration of Austen's novels, and seems to see her duty as clearing up little prejudices and likely misunderstandings about Austen's life and times. And about those times, Myer, a novelist herself, is fine, relating and explaining the mores and manners of Georgian and Regency England: "Her generation popularized the concept of sightseeing and holidays away from home, reviving the habit of traveling for pleasure which had declined after the Reformation when religious pilgrimages were outlawed." This is serviceable and learned without seeming academic. But if a reader wants to know Austen without a middle-woman's interpretation, any edition of her letters is more immediately and completely revealing. Austen's personality, lightly sketched in this book, is bold and vivid in the letters, which Myer paraphrases or too grudgingly excerpts. The biography's finest passage, affectingly narrated, describes Austen's death, which came at 41 amid her recent fame but before the publication of Northanger Abbey and that of her beautiful and marvelous Persuasion. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Apr.)

Library Journal

Given the continuing popularity of her novels, these two publications will be of particular interest to new and longtime aficionados of Austen. In her biography, historian Myer dispels the wholly sweet and kind image of Austen as presented in family memoirs by showing evidence of Austen's human frailties and speculating about others. Drawing from family papers and letters and accounts from friends and acquaintances, Myer provides details of not only how Austen looked physically but of her flirtations, dancing, frustrations, etc. Myer focuses primarily on members of the close-knit Austen family. In this context, Myer easily and naturally melds Austen's life and writings, providing speculative conclusions with which readers may not always agree. Editor Selwyn, in association with the Jane Austen Society, has scrupulously prepared a poetry collection representing over 50 pieces of verse written by three generations of the Austen family, including ingenious riddles and charades written for family entertainment. Organized by author, the work includes a complete collection of poems by Jane Austen, although Selwyn notes that it was her brother James who was the most prolific and gifted poet. Selwyn, who took the texts from autograph manuscripts or from the earliest known manuscripts, provides detailed explanatory and textual notes plus a bibliography of original manuscript sources at the end of the collection. Both the biography and the poetry collection are recommended for academic libraries.Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.

Booknews

A new biography of the English writer Austin (1775-1817) who has been afforded increased popularity with the recent filming of her novels. Drawing on her letters and those of friends and contemporaries, explores how a spinster daughter of a poor country clergyman could write so eloquently about love that she seems never to have experienced. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Kirkus Reviews

This gossipy sketch by a poet and critic accurately outlines the life of the beloved novelist, without however fully sounding the depths of her character.

Austen (17751817) grew up in the Hampshire village of Steventon, where her father was rector. When Austen was in her mid-20s the family moved to Bath for a few years, before returning to quiet retirement in the Hampshire countryside. Throughout her life, Austen was trapped by her family's genteel poverty and by her restricted status as an unmarried woman. She found an outlet in composing novels, which she began to publish, anonymously, in 1811, starting with Sense and Sensibility. Her novels were sensationally popular, but she never received much personal recognition. In 1817, an illness (now believed to have been Addison's disease) tragically cut short her life. Until her brief professional success, Austen lived what was by conventional standards an uneventful life. She never ventured out of England, never fought for a cause or fell into scandal. Drawing from memoirs by friends and acquaintances, and in particular from remaining letters (Austen's sister and confidante Cassandra destroyed their correspondence from bleak periods), Myer ably stitches together a patchwork account of Austen's family life, social scene, tentative and failed romances, and literary pursuits. But without a solid record of the novelist's disappointments or lack thereof, Myer's title conceit, that Austen's "obstinate heart" led her to refuse unworthy suitors, seems somewhat beside the point. Also, while Myer dwells on Austen's sometimes vicious sense of humor, she doesn't really convey the radical creativity that Austen invested in ironic pleasantries and cruelties. To Myer, "making jokes on painful subjects" represents Austen's "way of coping": It might have been more fully explored as a way of life and a means to art.

While those made curious by the large (and small) screen versions of Austen's works could do worse, true Austen fanatics will not be satisfied.

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