REVIEW: Intimations of Austen by Jane Greensmith
Charlotte Brontë famously wrote of Jane Austen, “Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman.” One can only imagine what sister Emily thought (though we like to think that Anne enjoyed Austen’s novels, and just didn’t tell her big sister). Though of course we disagree most vehemently with Miss Brontë’s opinion, we get what she was saying. Jane Austen herself wrote, “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery,” though she wrote it with a wink and a smile. Though her books are grounded thoroughly in real life, they rarely stray into the darker side of it; Jane preferred to stay in the sun, and we love her for it.
We think Miss Brontë might have liked Jane Greensmith’s collection of short stories, Intimations of Austen. While we recognize Jane Austen’s characters, there often is as much shadow as anything “light, bright, and sparkling.” Many of the stories are quite short, and most in first person; character sketches and bits of backstory, filling in where Jane Austen smoothed over and sometimes delving a little deeper than Austen felt necessary. The stories are by turns poignant, funny, thoughtful, suspenseful, and romantic, and none insult the reader’s intelligence.
The stories include a dark fairytale of three sisters who aren’t quite who they seem; mischievous fates sorting Captain Wentworth’s love life; Mrs. Edmund Bertram embarking on marriage while seemingly stumbling into another familiar novel; and other tales, short and long, glimpses into Jane Austen’s characters’ lives outside her purview. Ms. Greensmith wisely trusts her own narrative voice and does not attempt to imitate Jane Austen’s, with excellent results. These are very much her own takes on the characters, but respectful of the original, and we think most Janeites will recognize the characters and novels that they love and perhaps be given some food for thought about them, just the sort of paraliterature that we like best.
For readers not quite sure about this collection, you can sample the stories first on Ms. Greensmith’s website.
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Charlotte Bronte was a ninny, and her feeble, addled brain was clearly insufficient to comprehend the depth of Austen’s accomplishment and art.
There is love, sex, drama, politics, war…every facet of the human condition, present in Jane Austen if you only take the trouble to scratch below the surface. She just refuses to become alarmingly melodramatic about it, unlike the ridiculousness that is Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, for that matter.
Oh I’m so looking forward to getting this book. Great review. Thanks.
I think there are two different kinds of people in the world: Austen people (who wonder why all those Bronte people are fussing so about everything) and then there are Bronte people (who look down their noses at those unruffled Austen people – where is their *passion*?), and never the twain shall meet, or something like that. I’m sure 18 comments will appear below, assuring me that one can love Austen and Bronte equally, but I think I’ll stick with my theory.
Ah, I knew this would get me in trouble.
While I don’t like the Brontës as much as Austen, I do like them. (Well, I’m not that crazy about Wuthering Heights, but Anne’s work in particular I quite like.) I’ve never held that stuff she wrote about Jane against Charlotte Brontë. I do understand that Jane Austen’s work wasn’t her particular cup of tea. I prefer it, myself, but I understand what she’s getting at; I just don’t think it’s a failing as she did. And my point in the review is that the things she liked–deeper emotion, deeper delving into characters, darker shadowing–are more present in the stories under review.
I also wonder if Charlotte read Persuasion, and if she would feel the same way about Jane Austen’s work if she had.
Reading the books that Jane Austen read were kind of a revelation for me. The eighteenth century novelists were more humorous. Fanny Burney’s books are fall-down hysterical, but they also have a dramatic arc that tends to the melodramatic. I have a theory that Jane Austen set out, in her novels, to “fix” those–to show that you can have humor, you can have the light, bright, and sparkling, as well as deep feeling and drama while still keeping it “natural” as they said then, or true to life and not melodramatic. That’s why she is a genius and why we are still reading her books today. Also that’s why the adaptations that remember her humor are more satisfying to Janeites than those that amp up the drama and romance.
I also wonder, if Jane Austen had lived into her 70s or 80s and kept writing, if her own work would have begun to drift into that deeper, darker place along with many of what would have been her contemporaries, like the Brontës and Eliot and Gaskell and Dickens (though the latter two at least were successful at keeping the humor in their work).
Oh, I like the Brontes too (particularly Anne). But they can’t hold a candle to Austen, for me. I think I agree with everything in your comment, Mags.
When I was first reading Austen, I remember sitting at the kitchen table, reading, and dying of laughter. My dad asked me what was so funny, and I said “Jane Austen.” His response: “Jane Austen isn’t funny!” Little did he know…. I think I have since educated him on that point.
That is a fascinating point: whether Jane Austen would have become affected by the Victorian era. I need to sit down and think about that one for awhile.
Don’t you think that the fragment of Sanditon already shows hints of Austen moving in a slightly different direction with its satire of hypochondriacs and its emphasis on commerce and the real estate development of a seaside resort?
The comparison of the Bronte sisters and Austen is so interesting. I read the Bronte’s before Austen, and I always connect their work with my reaction as a young girl to the romance and mystery of Cathy’s ghost, the moor, being a Governess and living in Rochester’s house. I found myself re-reading Austen more as I got older and now prefer her work. Cathy now seems annoying and self-centered. I read the Tenant of Wildefell Hall once, but I would like to give it another chance.
I really like these short stories by Greensmith, they are intelligent, believable and well written. I am glad she kept them to short stories, allowing a glimpse into another way of viewing Austen’s characters.
Bronte Britches vs. Jane Austen? Hah! nolo contendere that is : No Contest! Jane Wins!