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The Jane Austen Society of Australia
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Book review
Jane Austen
by Carol Shields
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2001
Reviewed by Pamela Nutt
This is one of a series of biographies whose subjects range from St Augustine to Andy
Warhol, from Mozart to Marlon Brando. This volume on the life of Jane Austen is written by
Carol Shields, a novelist shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1993 and winner of the
Pulitzer Prize.
As biographies go, this one is a slim volume (154 pages.) The advantage of this is that
it can be read at a very few sittings, or at a single sitting on a self-indulgent day. The
expected disadvantage (that it will skim over material dealt with more fully and
satisfactorily in a range of recent biographies of Austen) is not the dominant impression
gained in reading Shield’s account of Austen and her work. This is largely because
this work is very consciously the reflections of one writer on the life and work of
another. Shields’ response is shaped by the fact that she is one of ‘those who
interest themselves in the creative art’. She feels the anger Austen directs to the
publisher Crosby and Co as they neglected to publish Susan/Northanger Abbey. It is
an ‘outrage (which) can be understood by any contemporary writer who has been treated
in a disrespectful way by a publisher’.
Shields also feels particularly Austen’s writing ‘behind a wall of
isolation’ at Steventon and at Chawton. Writers, she believes ‘are hugely
dependent on the shared experiences of other writers’ and that, although Austen had
‘sympathetic readers’, she lacked the ‘shared presence…friendships and
correspondence’ that Shields herself values.
The years spent in Bath and the ‘abrupt cessation of her novels’ during this
period is also understood by Shields from the writer’s perspective. Citing Virginia
Woolf, Shields reminds us that a writer does not need stimulation, but rather its
opposite, regularity – ‘the same books around her, the same
walls…self-ordered patterns of time, her own desk, and day after profitable day in
order to do her best work’. None of these qualities characterised Austen’s life
in Bath. The ‘delicate balance between solitude and interaction’ was disrupted.
That Austen achieved what she did – alone – is central to Shield’s
admiration of her. Indeed, Shields presents a picture of Austen which often emphasises her
loneliness in the family as well. She makes much of Jane Austen’s coolness at times
to her mother, to her brother James, and even towards Cassandra at one period of her life.
Aspects of the novels’ heroines reflect, for Shields, aspects of their creator’s
own capacities, but it is Anne Elliot who ‘combines Austen’s sense of loss and
loneliness, her regrets, her intelligence and, in the end, her unwillingness to lead a
disappointed life’.
This is not to say that Shields’ portrait is predominantly sad or gloomy. It
certainly isn’t. The excitement of being in print and the impetus and confidence that
this gave to Austen’s work are once again viewed through the eyes of a fellow-writer.
So, the emphasis in this book is on the act of writing – its models, processes,
frustrations and joys. The details of Austen’s life are familiar, and Shields
acknowledges a very respectable list of sources, most of which will be familiar to Austen
devotees. Aspects such as Mrs Austen’s arrangements for her young children, Jane
Austen’s schooling, family details, Tom Lefroy, the move to Bath, a chronology of the
novels, Harris Bigg-Wither, life at Chawton and Austen’s final illness are dealt with
more fully, and at times more accurately, in many other places.
Even in this abbreviated form, however, they are connected well by the biographer to
the development of the writer and her work. The poin of literary biography, Shields
believes, ‘is to throw light on a writer’s works, rather than (to comb) the
works to recreate the author’. There is, unfortunately, some evidence that Shields
did not ‘comb the works’ carefully enough. Something is lost when Shields refers
to ‘Mr Knightley (providing Emma) with lists of improving books he hopes she will
read’. It is much more fun to picture, as Austen did, Emma’s making and
disregarding these lists herself.
At times I have to admit to being frustrated by longer biographies of Austen, not
because of their deficiencies, but because finding the time to give adequate attention to
them is not always an easy matter. Shields’ approach to her subject has the advantage
not only of introducing readers unfamiliar with this material to some details of
Austen’s life but also of creating succinctly, strongly and memorably an impression
of Austen and her work.
It is also a relief to find that a contemporary novelist is more concerned with writing
about Jane Austen than with writing in the style of Jane Austen.
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