Cassandra and Jane: A Jane Austen Novel

CASSANDRA & JANE is a fictionalize story of the historical author Jane Austin. The story is told through the eyes of the person who knew her best, her older sister Cassandra. Jill Pitkeathley begins with the author's birth and carries readers all the way to her death. With such a realistic presentation, it was hard to see the line between fact and fiction. Normally biographical-type books, fictionalized or not, bore me to tears. From the beginning, Pitkeathley formed an emotional web attaching me to the characters. I felt each painful disappointment as though I was there. In the end, when Cassandra lost Jane, I felt it too. This is a powerful portrayal of a beloved historical figure and Pitkeathley's tale stayed with me days after the final page was read.

"She knew herself that sometimes she overstepped the proper boundries and could only do so safely with me. In later years, when she wrote something particularly scandalous she would urge me, `Take the scissors to this at once.' She was right to surmise that others might judge her comments more harshly, but with me she knew she could be frank and that I understood her turn of mind." Cassandra Austen on her sister Jane, Chapter Two What is the most tragic and disappointing thing you know about author Jane Austen's life? My immediate choice would be that she died too young and wrote too few novels, and at a close second would be that after her death in 1817, her sister Cassandra destroyed many of her personal letters to protect her privacy. This act of sisterly devotion is greatly lamented by historians, biographers, scholars, and Austen enthusiasts, limiting what information that we do know to her edited letters and family recollections. The complete reason why they were destroyed will always be a mystery, but one can imagine from Austen's surviving letters and novels that her keen sense of social observation and biting irony played a key factor in her sister's decision to remove them forever from family and public scrutiny. In author Jill Pitkeathley's recently re-issued 2004 novel Cassandra & Jane, we are offered a chance to explore that chasm left by Cassandra Austen's bonfire of humanity as Pitkeathley imagines the back story of two beloved sisters who were the best of friends, honorable confidants and devoted to each other through all the ups and downs of their heartbreaking life in rural 18th-century England. This bio fic is told from the viewpoint of Cassandra's experience of their life together, as only she would know, and is a creative blending of historical fact with a fictional narrative that is both believable and compelling. The story begins with a prologue to their story. It is 1843, and Cassandra Austen now seventy years old is still residing at Chawton cottage in Hampshire, the house where she and her sister Jane lived together until her untimely death at age forty-one in 1817. She has kept everyone of the letters that her sister ever wrote to her safely stored in her sister's rosewood trunk after her death. Her family has known of their existence, but she has safeguarded them for twenty-six years from their perusal. She fears that when she is gone, that they will pour over them examine and discuss every detail and then publish them for posterity, and profit. She has now re-read them and sorted them into two piles. She must not forget her responsibility to her sister, and to her memory, as Jane had previously warned her "No private correspondence could bear the eye of others." As we are transported into Jane Austen's world, Cassandra shares their story together in an honest and open manner, dropping her protective older sister mantle for glimpses of the influences that shaped Jane's personality through her family, social

Cassandra & Jane Austen were more than sisters; they were best friends sharing their desires for a romantic world though depending on relatives for sustenance made romanticism difficult. Neither finds much beyond disappointment as their family is at the lowest rung of the aristocracy; this means they must behave with decorum and obey the rules of the Hampshire Ton, as they are not high enough or wealthy enough to flaunt their standing as the poor relative. Making matters worse, romance proves bitterly disappointing for the siblings who each finds love only to lose love. However, when Jane dies at forty one, a grieving Cassandra destroys the letters from her sister that she always kept. This is an engaging refreshing look at the life of Jane Austen through the eyes of her older sister. Cassandra and Jane are fully developed characters as the readers through the former's perceptions learn much about what happened to Jane. Although the facts and the fiction do not always blend together the avid Austen audience will fully relish this biographical fiction as the novel is loaded with tidbits about this wonderful author whose works almost two centuries old remain in vogue today (unless you are Clueless). Harriet Klausner

This is my first fictional take bookwise on any part of Jane Austen's life, though I have seen a couple movie versions. While I'm just a plain and simple Jane Austen fan, and no expert of her life, what I do know I usually don't want people changing to make something more exciting or the like. . . so, in the end. . . I really liked this book! :) FIrst and foremost, I like how the author used Cassandra as the narrator, instead of someone else, a third person point of view or different family member. Using Cassandra made it more personal and we got to hear the story directly from the other person that mattered in the relationship between the sisters. We get what I thought was a great look at them. . . they loved each other, knew each other, and understood each other through the good and the darker times. It speculated on the imperfections of Jane, making her more human. In the end, I really liked this author's speculations into the life of Jane and Cassandra and their interactions with each other, while staying within the letter that did survive through history.