More superaunties
Alert Janeite Lorraine sent us a link to a review in the Guardian of The Complete Book of Aunts, which includes not only information about Jane Austen–herself a much-beloved aunt, according to her nieces and nephews–but on aunts in her work.
As this last example suggests, Christiansen is not afraid to take on iconic texts and lives, reordering them through their family relations. Jane Austen, for instance, reveals herself to be a model aunt, treating her nieces as both equals and playfellows, taking their not-very-good writing seriously and urging them on to the sort of love affairs that she never quite managed for herself. Austen’s literary aunts, by contrast, fall far short of these exacting standards. Darcy’s aunt, Lady Catherine de Burgh, is a monster of self-regard, while Fanny Price’s aunts Bertram and Norris are, respectively, a passive-aggressive tyrant and a bully. Interestingly, one of Austen’s few helpful literary aunts turns out to be that liminal thing, an aunt by marriage. In Pride and Prejudice it is Mrs Bennet’s brother’s wife, Mrs Gardiner, who is able to give Lizzy the kind of calm, straight-speaking advice in which the species is supposed to specialise.
