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- Published on: 1986
- Format: Import
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Wrong Man for the Job
By C B
What in Jane Austen made her capable of writing novels that have given such enjoyment and enlightenment that they have been read again and again to personal profit for generation after generation over two centuries? Any biographer able to answer that question will have done literature and Austen's readers a major service. Alas, Professor Halperin has not found the key.
Not only has he not found the key, Halperin in writing a biography of one of the great satirists in the English language starts with a dour view of satire and satirists.
"What distinguishes [literary satire and social comedy], perhaps, is an element of ridicule of mockery, of contempt even, which emphasises the faults and vices of others. There is a lot of hostility in satire. To write in the satirical vein demands a certain detachment, a moral distancing from the object of criticism. It demands a cold-blooded assessment of aesthetic and moral values." (p. 36, ch. 3, pt. I)
With an attitude like this Prof. Halperin was not the best person to write a biography of one of the great satirists in English literature.
Halperin's view of satire results in a peppering of his text with descriptions of Jane Austen as mean, malicious, scathing, arch, prickly, unforgiving, cold-blooded, waspish, petty, snappish, impatient, irritable, vindictive, ungenerous, censorious, heartless, nasty, sour, tasteless, snarling, etc.
Therein lies a problem. Halperin admits that the Jane Austen of the letters is the same Jane Austen who wrote the novels. (p. 60, ch. 4, pt. I) How could a woman of such character write novels which have been comedy and fiction favorites for two centuries of readers who find the novels entertaining, enlightening, humorous, brilliant and even fun? It's a problem Halperin cannot resolve.
Halperin gives the novels a leeway which he doesn't give Austen's letters. He calls the novels "black comedy" but not nasty, tasteless or snarling. After all, who would believe any biographer who said they were?
Halperin's inability to explain Jane Austen's comedy genius comes out in his dull reading of many of the letters. Too often he sees harshness instead of comedy. An example is when Halperin asserts that for Jane Austen
"[e]ven parties are described with scathing sarcasm. Guests who come to one are 'permitted to . . . take their share of the heat and inconvenience, to which their arrival must necessarily add.'" (p. 85, ch. 4, pt. III)
That's not scathing. It's humorous and insightful, as anyone knows who thinks about the heat a body emits and nevertheless goes into a hot, crowded room.
Perhaps Halprin's most jaw dropping failure to catch the humor in Jane's letters is shown in his description of her letter to Cassandra of January 8, 1799. Halperin thinks it expresses "moodiness--the writer is alternately sunny and snarling". Thus, the wit of "You express so little anxiety about my being murdered [on the way] that I have a great mind not to tell you whether I was or not" is explained as Jane's testiness at "not been sufficiently inquired after by Cassandra" about Jane's visit with friends. (p. 96, ch. 4, pt. V) This despite the fact that Austen's humor is written in letters a foot high (like Twain's famous "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."). One wonders at Halperin's basic ability to catch an Austen joke.
And Halperin completely misses Austen's propensity to satirize and laugh at herself.
"In Cassandra's absence a good deal of the housekeeping duties have fallen to her: 'I am a very good housekeeper . . . I really think it my peculiar excellence, and for this reason--I always take care to provide such things as please my own appetite, which I consider as the chief merit in housekeeping.'" (p. 80, ch.4, pt. III)
Halperin sees this only as a comment on the fact that Jane Austen had extra housekeeping duties in Cassandra's absence. He doesn't see the fun in parodying good housekeeping as arranging things for Austen's own pleasure. This is the sort of satiric description which Jane Austen often used to draw her marvelous literary characters.
Halperin's penchant to see ill-humored testiness in Austen results at times in opposite takes on the same subject matter in order to fit his thesis. On one page Halperin indicates that Cassandra is a better correspondent than Jane:
"On Cassandra as a correspondent: 'You are very amiable & very clever to write such long letters; every page of yours has more lines than this, & every line more words than the average of mine. I am quite ashamed--but you have certainly more little events than we have.'" (pp. 161-162, ch. 6, pt. II)
Halperin puts this down to "competitiveness" and "[s]ibling rivalry" rather than good grace in Jane's praise of Cassandra's letter writing. Yet, on the next page Halperin has no problem asserting that "apparently Cassandra was a less willing and enthusiastic correspondent than Jane". Well, which is it? Was Cassandra more enthusiastic or dragging her feet in correspondence?
Because Halperin is concentrating on competitiveness and sibling rivalry instead of wit he sees "a sour note" in Jane's comment on the rigors of writing and the joy of receiving long letters.
"'I assure you I am as tired of writing long letters as you can be. What a pity that one should still be so fond of receiving them.'" (p. 163, ch. 6 pt. II)
Halperin asserts throughout the book that Austen was not fond of children. But after learning that her nephews who had just lost their mother would be sent to her older brother's house, Austen writes:
"[P]erhaps it is best for them, as they will have more means of exercise & amusement there than they cd have with us, but I own myself disappointed by the arrangement;--I should have loved to have them with me at such a time."
In light of this Halperin does not rethink his thesis that Austen didn't care for children, but instead asserts on nothing else but the words quoted above that Austen's desire for the boys was due to jealousy of her sister-in-law to whose house they were going. Halperin:
"Once again Mary Lloyd Austen at Steventon had taken something that Jane felt as a matter of principle belonged to her--in this case custody of her nephews." (p. 166, ch. 6, pt. II)
A page later Jane's jealousy of Mary Lloyd Austen is supposedly assuaged when the sister-in-law writes to ask if Jane and her mother would like the then boys staying with Mary be sent to them.
"'[W]e decided on them remaining where they were,' Jane says. Undoubtedly Edward `will do us the justice of believing that in such a decision we sacrificed inclination to what we thought best . . . The poor boys are, perhaps, more comfortable at Steventon than they could be here, but you will understand my feelings with respect to it.'" (p. 166)
Not doing the "justice" Jane hopes from her brother Edward, Halperin again pushes Jane's coldness and hard-heartedness to children.
"The reference to her (italicised) 'feelings' is a bit cloudy; perhaps she and her mother disagreed yet again--this time on the question of the boys' visit. However, the plain fact is that, all her protestations of concern to the contrary, the novelist did not volunteer to care for any of Edward's children during this crisis period of their lives (and in later years she gave Godmersham a very wide berth indeed). . . . It is clear that the novelist did not especially like children, and certainly she did not like to be near them; grieving, sniffling, children were perhaps a particularly appalling prospect. In principle, in theory, she was all kindness; in practice, something less." (pp. 167-168, ch. 6, pt. II)
But, as Halperin is forced to admit on the following page, Jane was kind in practice. Two of the boys ages 13 and 14 did stay five days with Jane and her mother within days after this letter, and Austen praised the boys to Cassandra. More than that Jane spent quality time with them lifting their spirits. Halperin records that Jane was attentive to and played with the boys "bilbocatch, spillikins [jackstraws], paper ships, riddles, conundrums, and cards" and took walks with them. Still Halperin can't give Jane Austen credit. He ends this episode with his jealousy-conflict theory,
"'Mrs. J. A.' [Mary Lloyd Austen] has written a pleasant letter about them, 'which was more than I hoped'; obviously the novelist could not see her sister-in-law coping as well with two adolescent boys as she herself was doing." (pp. 168-169, ch. 6, pt. II)
In this biography Austen too often is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't.
For those who know Jane Austen and her writings well enough to fill in their own understanding of the fun and love of life expressed in her writing this can be a helpful book. Halperin goes meticulously through the letters and sets down a very good time line. But, unfortunately, he fails with the central issue of understanding Jane Austen and connecting the woman with the beauty and insight of her brilliant writing and satire.
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