Cassandra’s Sister, Growing Up Jane Austen (2007) by Veronica Bennet surprised the daylights out of me. First off, I normally don’t delve into the young adult fiction trenches for fear of running into too much syrupy angst. I also am probably functioning under the wrong assumption that most books are about vampires, makeup, prom and twitter faux pas.
Cassandra’s Sister came to me through a book swap club and I had actually totally forgotten that I requested it. It sat on my shelf and I decided to give it a go on Thursday. By the end of the day Friday I had it finished. This is a feat for me because I have such an international jet setting lifestyle.
The book explores the possible dialog, lifestyle, feelings and emotions Aunt Jenny (a young energetic Jane Austen) would have experience while she was penning her first novel at the age of seventeen. A key figure in her life, her sister Cassandra, has long been engaged to be married to Thomas Fowle and Jane herself would soon be thrown into the path of eligible young men.
I wonder how well this book was received being classified as YA. I say this because the beginning is heart wrenching and graphic. A detailed account of how Jane’s beloved cousin Elizabeth’s husband dies in France at Napoleon’s evil hand. While speaking with her about the loss of her love, her cousin is frank with her about her first marriage.
“I had money of my own and I used it to attract the kind of gentleman I sought. I realized what you too have understood, that women are dependant upon marriage for social status, which we cannot achieve for ourselves.”
The book’s characters (which were real people in Jane’s life) soon take shape are we are given glimpses of the future characters in her books. We find see how a young woman growing up during the regency period would have had to conform to custom. Jane feels stifled by her meager prospects. Her writing keeps her mind sharp, but that only intensifies her lust for more.
How satisfying it must be, she thought, to have some money, however little, that one has earned oneself!
We also see what it was like to meet what literary historians have long said was the love of Jane Austen’s life, Tom Lefroy. Those of us who are Jane experts know the heartbreaking end to that tale, but it was both wonderful and gut clenching to read it from the perspective of a young Jane experiencing love for the first time.
I highly recommend giving this book a try. As I stated, much of this is conjecture, the author freely admits, but I felt comfortable reading the dialog from the start and suddenly I was lying under the covers in a bed with the room Jane and Casandra shared. I wanted to stay awake and talk all night about the ball, sleep in late, have nuncheon and spend the morning talking about the ball again.
As Jane gets older and Cassandra’s fiancé dies, we see that the fate of women and their entrepreneurial spirit was a shadow lined path. The author ends the book when the family moves to bath. I wish she had continued.
5 out of 5 stars!
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