“What chance would the craftiest biographer stand against the subject
who saw him coming and decided to amuse himself.” – Wrote Julian Barnes
about Gustave Flaubert, in Flaubert’s Parrot (Click here to read review), a semi-biographical fiction on
Flaubert. Essentially his point is let the writer be, as a person, that is. Jane
Austen makes for an even difficult person to be traced. Mr. Austen Leigh (Jane
Austen’s nephew) wrote about her, “I
doubt whether it would be possible to mention any other author of note whose personal
obscurity of was so complete.” It
sure does help when we consider the work of a writer which defined the way we
looked at things for generations to come. That is the reason having spent one
chapter arguing against it, Barnes ended up writing Flaubert’s Parrot and I end
up writing here about Jane Austen. But this is not a biography, not even a biographical note (which can be found on Wiki - Link here), rather a homage and an ode.
Jane Austen was borne this day, on 16th of December,
1775. I am always in awe of women writers. The amount of attention they pay to
the words they pen is evident in the exquisite arrangement of the language, and
how the works of most women writer caresses the soul. Virginia Woolf might beat
me up with a stick, if only she were alive today, for suggesting women’s writing to be different from that of the writing
of male writers. But then it is true. Both Heart of Darkness and Orlando for
that matter are great work of literature, but there is a wry baritone which
runs in your mind when you read Joseph Conrad, which is distinctly different from the soft
and elegant tenor of Virginia Woolf or Jane Austen. I am particularly fond of
the writings of women author from Eighteenth and early Nineteenth century. There
is certain calm, a noticeable peace and patience about those writings. Probably
it reflects the time in which they were written. When you read these books,
they don’t leave scars on your soul, they leave your soul smiling and satiated.
She died at the age of 41 on 18th of July,
1817. She published six novels in this short time- Sense and Sensibility, Pride
and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Emma; her first-
Sense and Sensibility written at the age of Twenty-One. She wrote about the
dogmas of her times, and without any bitterness of feelings or shrillness of sound she describes her
world as a neutral narrator, with an almost uninterested vantage point. But
that is nothing but a smart and successful tool to fool us. We know she is not
merely a talkative bystander when she wrote what was to become the most famous
first lines of a novel for all times- It
is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good
fortune must be in want of a wife" in Pride and Prejudice. As
we read through the anxiety of a mother of five girls, Mrs. Bennett, struggling
to get her daughters married in a prosperous and respectable family, we know
that Jane is breathing in not only Mrs Bennett or another woman in the story. She is in all the women
of the story, while Elizabeth Bennett is what she strives to be. Elizabeth, the
scholarly girl, is not a cynic; she has a deeply romantic world view. She is not the one wanting to
let go of her intellectual moorings to leap into the world of love. She
represents the girl who gets it all by refusing to let go of her true self. She
thus becomes a woman of aspiration for all girls, and remains so now after more
than two centuries. Her stories are happy and hopeful with the bright sunlight
pulsating across the pages, even in the rains and storms.
Jane Austen, George Elliot, Charlotte Bronte and Virginia Woolf
are the writers, whose work stand as light houses, on the voyage of women emancipation
across the centuries and their glory lies in the never-fading,
never-diminishing charm that their work holds, in the timelessness they
encompass. There work irrespective of the styles they represent, have one
common theme- of women discovering the inner beauty of their soul, of women choosing intellect above the skin. All these writers, build amazing characters, way ahead of their
times. All these writers did not write critiques of their times, they were much
smarter. They instead created lovely characters who were ahead of their times
and thus their characters became their argument against the inconsistencies of
their times. That is why they succeeded so
profoundly. Their heroins are incongruous to their times, but by God, they are so adorable
that one want to be them. For a young girl, no sermons would set her on a path
of intellectual discovery swifter than a reading of the character of
Elizabeth Bennett; and Jane does it without killing the softer romance. Miss Elizabeth Bennett's emancipation is not in quarrel with her desire for love, it rather created the
foundation for a self-respecting and real romance. They did not give their
readers a shrill slogan; they gave them a dream to pursue. She celebrates
womanhood, she is proud of being a woman. For Jane, her story is the message,
her characters are the slogans. Her slogans never shout, they whisper softly, they speak to the soul- about identity, about social divide, about intellectual discovery, about refinement of the soul.
It is this tenderness of representation which makes Virginia Woolf compare her
with none other than Shakespeare when she writes in A Room of Her Own, “Here was
a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without
fear, without protest, without preaching. That is how Shakespeare wrote.” And
she didn’t have a room of her own, she wrote in her sitting room, hiding her
papers whenever someone walked in. She
would never come in the way of the story she told, she would only breathe into
her words at a very subliminal level.
It is not easy to write about
Jane Austen. It is not even brave; it is actually foolhardy to try to explain
that greatness. Virginia Woolf wrote
in 1924- “Anybody who has had the
temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of two facts: First, that of all
great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness;
second, that there are 25 elderly gentlemen living in the neighborhood of London
who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult offered to the
chastity of their aunts.” I still attempt to write about her, not as
a literary historian or an author of such worth to attempt to evaluate her, rather as a fan and an admirer
of the limitlessness of woman’s mind when she decides to soar high. I also write as a father to a little girl, in whom I see Elizabeth Bennet of Jane Austen, Jane Eyre of Charlotte Bronte, Dorothea Casaubon of MiddleMarch and well, I would confess, Dagny Taggart of Ayn Rand. I hope I
will be forgiven for this audacity. Happy
Birthday, Jane. May your stories be read for all the centuries to come, may our
girls be intellectually as brave as Elizabeth Bennet who would look into eyes
of every challenge and proclaim in a soft yet unwavering voice , “My courage always rises with every attempt
to intimidate me.” Forget the grays, girls, true emancipation will come
about in the bright sunlight of Ms. Austen’s world. We need more, not less of
it.
My Review of Middlemarch - Click here to Read
Comments