The cynical part of me wonders whether Helen Ashton had embarked on writing a biography of Jane Austen when she decided it would be easier to make it a novel instead. That’s probably unfair, since she turned her hand to a number of biographical novels for a range of figures – but I’ll admit that I couldn’t quite get the thought out of my head throughout my whole time reading Parson Austen’s Daughter.
The ‘novel’ (more on those inverted commas later) follows Jane Austen from before her birth through to her death. Along the way, the majority of the focus is on her personal and romantic life, with a few interventions about her writing – though rather less than I’d have liked.
The positives? I think Ashton does a great job of capturing Jane Austen’s character. You can see where this version of Jane would have found the humour and spiritedness of the people she creates in her novels. She is funny and flippant, often to the chagrin of her more considered, reserved sister Cassandra.
“Oh! I love to watch her at it,” said Jane, tossing her arms in the air. “She has so much French address. To captivate Henry, who knows all her faults, who has made up his mind not to fall in love, that would be a conquest indeed. She is the most finished coquette in England, and I must learn to imitate her.”
“I am afraid she is a bad example for you to copy,” said grave Cassandra, but Jane only laughed. “The men do all they can to make us wretched,” she vowed, “so why should we not take our revenge where we can get it? It is all very well for you, my dear Cassy, you will have no trouble with your Tom. He is devoted to you and you want nobody else; but I am not going to put up with the first comer. I intend to break a few hearts on my own account before I settle down to the stupidity of married bliss, and Cousin Eliza shall teach me how to do it. I owe it to myself,” said Jane, looking in the mirror. She was the nineteen.
I also appreciated how Ashton evolved her character – so that, as the years go by, Jane becomes more mature, more serious and perhaps a little sadder – while retaining enough of her irrepressibility to entertain us. There are moments of genuine pathos throughout, and Ashton makes the most out of what little we know of Austen’s connection with Tom LeFroy and her very brief engagement – as well as the tragedies and triumphs faced by Cassandra and other members of the family.
And the negatives… sort of everything else? That’s not quite fair, because Ashton writes well throughout, and there is never a weak moment in her writing style or characterisation. But the issue is that you can’t – or at least you shouldn’t – simply write a biographical novel as though it were a biography with made-up conversations. The structure of a traditional biography just doesn’t translate well into a novel.
Case in point – we have to wade through various members of the family and how they all interconnect before we even get to Jane. There is no immediacy or urgency, or even focus. And that continues throughout the novel. It is very good when focused on Jane – and quite tedious when the canvas extends further and further. Not only does Ashton insist on telling us everything significant that happens to Austen’s brothers and sister, but she also throws in cousins and neighbours and anybody else she can find research about. And, alongside that, we constantly get updates about Napoleon and other major historical points that would be useful background information in a biography – and totally unhelpful in a novel.
Ashton can be a brilliant novelist, and perhaps she would have been a brilliant biographer, but this half-way house is not a success, in my opinion. If she had written a shorter, much more focused novel that is actually about (and solely about) Jane, or perhaps Jane and Cassandra, then I think it could have been brilliant. But this sprawling, loose, exhausting book is all the more frustrating because you can see the kernel of something brilliant in it.
