Book Review

Small Things and Burney circle, as well as why it mattered fashion herself New Insights that several of Austen’s distant female as a professional relatives were authors. “The Daughter writer?” The Real Jane Austen: A Life in of Mansfield” chapter considers Lord Naturally, we Small Things Mansfield’s adopted black daughter, know the answer By Paula Byrne. Dido Belle, “the most celebrated mixed- is not option A. New York: Harper Collins, 2013. Xii + 381 pages. race woman in England,” arguing for her But must we B/W and color illustrations throughout. as the inspiration for Sanditon’s Miss therefore accept Lambe. Byrne’s investigating red velvet Review by Devoney Looser. every word of chapel cushions and Stoneleigh Abbey option B? The title of Paula Byrne’s book The will have you seeing Mansfield Park in Byrne’s biogra- Real Jane Austen is a tease. Of course, new ways. Also splendid is the chapter on phy emphasizes, following Jan Fergus, Byrne doesn’t give us “the real” Austen, Austen’s writing desk, although Byrne Austen’s professionalism as a writer. As as if that were possible. A dearth of preciously re-christens it a “laptop.” cold, hard facts about Austen’s life Byrne writes, “Jane Austen was a work- means most biographers traffic in There are, however, more irksome er.” This is well and good as a corrective speculation, inference, and wishful things than declaring a writing desk to past myths, although just one part of a thinking. The importance of this book the precursor of a computer. More multifaceted life. than a handful of far-fetched readings is not in its greater authenticity but in The other aspect Byrne emphasizes is of the novels are stretched to suit its unusual structure, superb anecdotes, Austen’s personal attractiveness and Byrne’s sense of Austen’s process and cleverly connecting previously “eloquence and wit” with men. If Byrne and motivations. I was particularly unconnected dots. The Real Jane Austen is to be believed, Austen charmed a frustrated when these readings moved is a refreshing, groundbreaking, and suitor in every drawing room. Ironic sneakily from speculation into assertion. astoundingly original book. asides in Austen’s letters are taken for Austen’s cousin Eliza de Feuillide goes men’s serious if unspoken declarations of Byrne’s book uses the word “real” in the from “perhaps” inspiring aspects of love. Every romantic rumor or innuendo sense of “material”—the “small things” Persuasion’s two Elizas to keeping the is spun out. Byrne goes to great pains of the subtitle. Some of them are not so entirety of the French Revolution out to characterize Austen as desirable and small, such as carriage-sized bathing of Austen’s oeuvre. Byrne concludes, sought-after by men. machines; some are people, not things. “Loving Eliza as [Austen] did, it would But Byrne’s impressive contextualization have been too painful to let her pen dwell Has it really come to this? It’s time of the minutiae of Austen’s life and on the guilt and misery of revolutionary to ask whether newfangled stories of times—of the materiality of her world— Paris.” Occasionally, the book engages the irresistible Austen who actively offers a bird’s eye view into previously in sentimental psychologizing on partial refused marriage in order to choose a overlooked items and their connections information, as when Jane Austen is passionate life of writing are any more to Austen’s fiction. Each of Byrne’s likened to Catherine Morland, and “real” than the tired old accounts of the eighteen chapters is named for an Byrne points out that “There was indeed undesirable spinster who made fiction her object or a person, and each is skillfully a green slope at the back of Steventon compensatory passionate destiny after introduced and described among rectory, perfect for rolling.” a lack of—pace Harris Bigg-Wither— Austen’s milieu. The book is not a birth- romantic opportunities. Patterns of Also provoking—in positive and to-death march through Austen’s life. It imagining Austen’s personal charms (or negative senses—was the portrait that is like a delightful rummage through a lack of them) are indeed “small things.” emerged of Austen. I don’t mean the Regency chest of drawers. But as The Real Jane Austen ably proves, supposed new portrait of Austen that small things may add up to stunning new As a reading experience, The Real Jane Byrne now owns—which I encourage insights. At its best, that is what Byrne’s Austen is entertaining, pleasing, and you to read about elsewhere than in tour de force book has the power to do. provoking. The chapters on the East Byrne’s own book—but the book’s Indian Shawl and the topaz crosses, overall sense of Austen as a person. It is a speculating on the Austen family’s Asian Devoney Looser, Professor of English at picture revealed on the book flap, which Arizona State University, is a roller derby connections and involvement in the asks, “Who was the real Jane Austen? A player who skates as Stone Cold Jane opium trade, are brilliant. The chapter on retired spinster who confined her novels Austen. She is featured in Deborah Yaffe’s the subscription list to Frances Burney’s to the small canvas of village life? Or Among the Janeites and has a chapter in Camilla offers a compelling reading a strong-minded woman who took the The Cambridge Companion to Pride and of Austen’s close connections to the bold decision to remain unmarried and Prejudice.

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