Madwomen in Gothic Mansions: Rebecca and Jane Eyre

I read a comment recently that Daphne du Maurier’s classic gothic horror story Rebecca is the same story as Jane Eyre. So I had to think about that and catalog the similarities that struck me.

Name

Jane Eyre is a plain, short name, like her character appears to be physically, and it is indicative of her nature as well. The narrator of Rebecca never reveals her name. She implies that it is one often misspelt, for she comments that Maxim de Winter spelled it correctly on his note to her in Monte Carlo. Her lack of a name is significant: it symbolizes her lack of her own identity, about which more later.

Point of View

In both novels, the narrator is a woman whose story is told, but Jane is the eponymous subject of the title, while the Rebecca of the other title is the dead first wife. As I said, the unnamed narrator reveals her story, but not so much as of Rebecca.

Personal Appearance

Jane Eyre is a very short woman, small and childlike. She is between 18 and 20 years old through most of the novel, though we meet her when she is about 10 at the very beginning. Her hair is plain, her face is plain, and her figure is not described as attractive, especially when compared to Blanche Ingram. Mr. Rochester says she is “almost pretty” the morning after their engagement. Her choice in clothes is very plain and severe.

ANonymous Narrator (hereinafter Ann for my convenience) is about 21 and has a thin figure. She considers her face plain, although Maxim de Winter seems to think her attractive, as do others around her. She has a childlike, innocent quality in her expression that is lost later on. She cares little about clothes and wears any old thing until the episode of the masked ball.

Background

Both are orphans and as young adults enter humiliating positions.

Jane Eyre was orphaned when she was a baby and was reared by her maternal uncle and his wife, the Reeds. Mrs. Reed resents her and treats her severely after Mr. Reed’s death. She is sent to a school where she is mistreated, and she becomes a teacher, and then a governess.

Ann lost her mother some years back and her father only a year or two back, and she subsequently advertised to become a paid companion to Mrs. de Hopper of New York, who treats her condescendingly to the point of humiliation.

Personality

Though shy, Jane Eyre is strong-willed and resilient. Mistreated to the point of abuse, she never becomes a victim, even though Rochester could be said to be abusive before he is humbled through circumstances and they marry. Jane is firm in her strong values and stands up for herself and her own best interests against both Rochester and St. John Rivers.

Ann is shy, dreamy to the point of escaping reality, romantic, sensitive, and unaware of either her effect on others or of their attitudes toward her. She shares little of herself, nor does she ask for information even when it’s in her best interest to do so. She is unassertive, submissive, and reacts to Maxim de Winter’s abusive tendencies by adopting a strategy of anticipating what will set him off and avoiding it at all costs, a typical abuse victim’s pattern of behavior. She seems to have no desires or thoughts of her own except in reaction to Maxim de Winter. She has no sense of right and wrong except as it relates to loving Maxim de Winter and gaining his love in return.

Red

In her childhood, Jane Eyre is punished by being locked into the Red Room, where her uncle Reed died. Red is symbolic of fear and terror. In Rebecca, Ann calls attention repeatedly to the red rhododendrons, overgrown and menacing, outside the morning room where she feels forced to sit after breakfast, day after day.

The Mansion

Thornfield is the ancestral home of Edward Fairfax Rochester. It is set among the rather bleak Yorkshire moors, and it has lush gardens surrounding the house. The third floor and the attics are forbidden to visit. Or at least strongly discouraged, as that’s where the madwoman is kept secretly.

Manderley is the ancestral home of Maximilian de Winter. It is set on the Cornish coast and has mysterious woods leading down to the boathouse and its cove, but it has an appealing valley called the Happy Valley leading to an adjacent cove. The drive from the lodge to the house is three miles long and overgrown in a menacing way. The house east wing is where the couple have their rooms. The west wing is supposedly shut up and if not forbidden, then certainly discouraged by Maxim de Winter, though Mrs Danvers encourages Ann to explore and discover more about Rebecca there. (Why Maxim de Winter did not order the servants to completely clear out the west wing at the same time as he sent the orders to renovate the east wing for himself and his new bride, remains a mystery. Guilty conscience?)

Art

Jane Eyre learned to draw and paint at her school, and she is proficient. A couple of her paintings are described in detail in the novel, both wild and romantic in nature, with dark colors and stormy themes that reflect aspects of her own nature and of her life experiences. She frequently takes her things out into the grounds at Thornfield when she becomes the governess there, for she finds much inspiration. In Rebecca, on the other hand, Ann is said to have an interest in art and is given plenty of supplies that she even takes out into the grounds at Manderley, but she does not produce anything outside of the house. Inside the house, she makes a few sketches that she tears up and tries to throw away, and she is mortified by Mrs Danvers bringing them back and questioning whether they were meant to have been discarded.

The Love Interest

Both young women fall in love with the first men they meet. Neither really knows the man.

Jane Eyre falls in love against all sense, since Edward Rochester mistreats her, later telling her he was only trying to make her jealous. There is much conversation between the two, and Jane requires to be convinced of his love for her. With the first wife on the prowl at night, Jane suffers from nightmares and a feeling of being haunted. Then when Jane finds out about the first wife and Rochester’s attempt to commit bigamy, she rejects him. She further rejects his proposal that they run away and live together as if they were married. She leaves him. When she meets a more honorable man, St. John Rivers, who proposes to her, she refuses to marry him because she is still in love with Rochester. She goes to find Rochester, discovers he is now widowed, and takes the initiative in courting and proposing to him. They live very happily together.

By contrast, while Ann similarly falls in love with Maxim de Winter despite his almost running off a cliff on purpose with her in the car, she knows little more about him than that his first wife died. Their courtship consists of two weeks of day trips around Monte Carlo and dinners together, but we get no descriptions of them growing close, no idea of their discovering each other’s character or personality. From Ann’s daydreams and thoughts about him, we know they do not communicate much. The proposal is a complete surprise to her, and it seems very impersonal rather than romantic. The few descriptions we learn about their honeymoon are only that the bride feels happy and that the bridegroom looks almost young (he is 42) and seems relaxed. Their marriage after arriving at Manderley is filled with the haunting presence of Rebecca everywhere, leading to considerable tension between them, with her becoming more and more obsessed with a need to become like Rebecca, since that is what she imagines Maxim wants. When she is surprised into knocking over a china figurine and breaking it, she feels somehow that she will be punished because it was Rebecca’s, and she hides the pieces, which leads to an awkward and uncomfortable scene wherein she is forced to confess to Maxim to keep others from being punished, and that leads to her husband treating her like an errant child. When Mrs Danvers leads her into ordering the exact same ball costume that Rebecca wore to the last masked ball, she reacts to everyone’s horror at seeing her by assuming she herself is to blame and that her husband certainly blames her. Her morbid thoughts are out of all proportion to the mistake, and Maxim’s silent reaction contributes to the feeling of a gulf between them. It never occurs to her to tell him Mrs Danvers suggested the costume, but by this time their pattern of not communicating is pretty well set. When she finds out that he murdered Rebecca, she thinks only that it proves he never loved Rebecca and must instead love her after all. No moral principles here! She turns her attention to the lies they must tell and the truths they must withhold to get away with it, which is simply more of the pattern of not communicating, but this time it is them against the rest of the world. She cares for neither truth, nor principle, nor morality, nor law. She uses language to change the crime description from “murder” with the blame on Maxim, to “suicide by husband” so that the blame is on Rebecca.

The First Wife

In Jane Eyre the mansion is haunted by Bertha Rochester, the madwoman in the attic, who frequently escapes and wreaks havoc on the narrator’s psyche until Jane finds out the woman is not a ghost or demon. Bertha Mason was a West Indies beauty from a family with a history of genetic insanity. The fact of the insanity is deliberately kept from Rochester until after the wedding. After Rochester marries her, he discovers she is vulgar, perhaps an alcoholic, profligate and promiscuous, and of diminished mental capacity. He takes her to England, locks her up in the Thornfield attic, and hires a woman to guard her. But the woman, Grace Poole, is an alcoholic and Bertha frequently takes advantage of her stupor to steal the keys and escape. She sets fire to the house several times, the last time causing the entire place to burn, and she flings herself to her death from the roof, escaping her husband’s attempt to save her.

Rebecca’s presence is felt by the second wife to be everywhere, starting with the morning room where Mrs Danvers informs her she is expected to spend the time after breakfast. The room leading to it seems to the young bride to be imbued with Rebecca’s personality, and in the morning room, where every piece of furniture and decor, even the very stationery and pen in the writing desk, all were chosen by Rebecca, this sense feels very strong. Rebecca’s presence is also felt on the path through the woods to the boat cove where the boathouse is standing. The young dog wants to lead the second Mrs. de Winter on that path, which is the usual one for him, but Maxim takes them along the other fork through the Happy Valley instead. The dog persists in going to the usual cove, and his new mistress follows, despite her husband’s objections. Rebecca had converted the boathouse into a little love nest for herself and her lovers, though the young second wife does not catch on to the evidence and only knows her husband does not want her there and that it has Rebecca’s presence. But Rebecca’s presence is strongest in the west wing where Rebecca’s rooms were. When the young bride inadvertently goes there, Mrs Danvers at first seems jealous of her presence, but later she encourages the girl to look at Rebecca’s things and draw unflattering comparisons to herself. She even tries to convince her to jump out Rebecca’s window the morning after the masked ball, hypnotically telling her death would be better than a fruitless attempt to take Rebecca’s rightful place. However, that spell is broken and the young wife escapes the evil influence.
     The next thing is that Rebecca’s dead body is discovered in her sunken boat, and Maxim confesses to his wife to having shot her in the boathouse and put her into the boat, sailing it out to where he sunk it. His reason is that after their marriage, Rebecca let him know that she did not love him and intended to continue her independent lifestyle, being promiscuous, gambling, drinking, doing drugs, etc. Because Maxim has a horror of negative publicity, they agreed that Rebecca was free to live this way in London under a different name and to pretend to be the perfect wife and hostess while at Manderley. She broke the bargain by bringing one lover, her cousin Jack, to Manderley, and by attempting to seduce Maxim’s estate manager, Frank, and Maxim’s brother-in-law, Giles. While Maxim was away, she brought her evil friends to Manderley. In a showdown at the boathouse, she told Maxim she was pregnant and that she intended to force him to rear her child as his heir, though it cannot be his. Actually she had just discovered that she had incurable cancer and would die within months. She taunted Maxim to get him to shoot her, and died smiling, having won. (How she was supposed to “know” that she could make him do this, or even that he would have a gun with him, I’m not sure!)

Fire

Thornfield and Manderley are both destroyed by fire. Thornfield is set afire by Bertha Rochester, the first wife. Manderley is set afire probably by Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper/maid who was devoted to Rebecca de Winter.

Aftermath

In an epilogue, Jane Eyre Rochester reveals she has been married to Edward Rochester for ten years and they have a son. They are very happy together, and Edward is regaining the sight in one of his eyes. He is still partly a cripple, having lost part of one of his arms in the fire. He is a good husband to Jane, and everyone says that she has successfully tamed him. What she has actually done is exert her good influence on him to bring out the gentle side of his nature.

In the first three chapters of Rebecca, the narrator reveals that she and her husband have been married about ten years. They have no children. They live abroad on an island, in a very small hotel, and they try to stay anonymous. Her husband is an invalid whom she has to help to be physically comfortable, he having been injured in a fire. She says they are happy, but the evidence is against it. They still do not communicate much. She reads to him, but she has to stay away from reading him anything that reminds him of home. She likes reading about it but is content never to return. Yet, the novel opened with her nightmare of returning to Manderley.

Madness

Bertha Mason Rochester was insane. There is a lot of evidence that the second Mrs. de Winter is mentally ill as well. The amount and depth of her daydreams doesn’t seem to be normal, as they progress to the point that she has a hard time coming back to reality. She avoids interacting with people to the point that it interferes with her ability to carry out her responsibilities. She allows her imagination to carry her away into absurd terrors, such as that the rhododendrons are menacing. When she is tricked by Mrs Danvers into having the same costume created for herself as was made for Rebecca, the aftermath is that she sits on her bed in a catatonic state, and her sister-in-law and brother-in-law cannot bring her out of it; her only motivation to come out of it is to avoid allowing others to see plainly that she and her husband are not unified. When her husband goes away overnight, she feels a sense of freedom that appears to show that their relationship is unhealthy; and indeed it is, for she cannot be her own person with him around. When she finds out about the murder, instead of being shocked, she seems to drop all her childishness, reticence, diffidence, and uncertainty at once in favor of protecting Maxim from any consequences of his crime. But she cannot protect him from himself, and she reaps the dire consequences of her pattern of avoiding unpleasant reality.

Conclusion

Where Jane Eyre treats Mr Rochester’s revelation of a living first wife as a moral and legal impediment to their union, Mrs. de Winter treats the revelation of her husband’s having murdered his first wife as a catalyst to cementing their union, as a threat to that union if he is found out, and therefore it is something to be hidden. In this she acts as Mr Rochester proposed that Jane should act: run away with him and pretend to be married; the de Winters run away and pretend to be normal. Jane would not base her union on a lie; Mrs. de Winter will.

Where Edward Rochester tries his best to save his first wife’s life in the Thornfield fire, thus completing a character arc in refining himself to do a noble deed, Maxim de Winter meets his crisis by murdering his wife, trying to cover it up, and doing his best to erase the past. When her body is discovered, he confesses to his wife, and they repeat his earlier pattern of trying to cover it up and doing their best to erase the past. Thus the second Mrs. de Winter has had no effect whatever on the character of her husband. He is the very same person after marrying and living with her as he was before he met her. She remains a cypher in its earlier meaning: a zero, a naught.

Thus Rebecca is a nightmare version of Jane Eyre; it is as if the main character had lost herself, and the entire tale turns into one of madness and ultimately horror.

Jane Made Me Do It

I just finished reading an anthology of short stories called Jane Austen Made Me Do It, edited by Laurel Ann Nattress and published back in 2011. The 22 short stories collected here share the premise of being about Jane Austen, or her works, or her family, or inspired by her somehow. Some succeed brilliantly. Some are merely good. Some are awful. All would benefit from a courtroom scene imagined in the final tale in the book, in which they are judged against a standard of “intolerable stupidity.” I’m putting myself in the position of the judge, and there is no jury here.

1. “Jane Austen’s Nightmare” by Syrie James is a fun imagining of a dream in which most of Jane Austen’s fictional characters are unhappy with her giving them all unpleasant character traits. Her only characters who are happy are the four main lovers from Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth and Darcy, and Jane and Bingley. That they overlook their character faults and that the story fails to plumb the issue of Jane Austen’s highly satiric view of the inconsistency and silliness of almost everybody is the only drawback to the story. 
2. Jane Odiwe’s “Waiting” continues the story of Persuasion through Capt. Wentworth’s interview with Anne’s father, informing the other members of the family and detailing their reactions, and a flashback to how the pair fell in love eight years before. The current scenes have little point to them; no further character developments occur, no new information is added to our understanding of anybody. The flashback has serious problems in that it is overly sentimental with almost cringe-making scenes, and it skips the details that would have added understanding to what sort of person Anne was in those days. 
3. “A Night at Northanger” by Lauren Willig is a modern tale with a wicked sense of humor as the ghost of Jane Austen firmly disapproves the antics of a television ghost-hunting crew who create all sorts of special effects but are totally unprepared for the real thing. The tone is pitch-perfect as the spectral author advises young Cate on romance. 
4. Stephanie Barron’s “Jane and the Gentleman Rogue” adds an episode to her series of Jane-as-sleuth novels, set between Jane and the Wandering Eye and Jane and the Genius of the Place. Lord Harold Trowbridge, secretly a government agent, is on the track of a beautiful opera singer who is working for the French. He enlists Jane to help him recover a crucial paper that must not fall into French hands. Stephanie Barron remains one of the few who can closely mimic the real Jane Austen’s voice in print. 
5. “Faux Jane” by F.J. Meier is a witty modern romp through Jane Austen forgeries and con artists, with the sly invoking of the Nick and Nora Charles Thin Man movies of the 1930s, using the names: Charles and Nicola, their dog Nora, and Charles’s restaurant, ASTA. Charles comes from a con artist family, so he’s in the position to spot the con and use his family contacts to put things right in a somewhat dubious but satisfying way. The naming fun extends to the targets of the con: famous Austen actress Anne Elliott and her English lover, Lord Pemberley (whose name at one point changes to Pemberton, I think accidentally). 
6. Monica Fairview’s “Nothing Less Than Fairy-land” might have a silly title, but the tone is spot on Emma, and Fairview provides intriguing possibilities for the development of Emma’s characters as this continuation of the story shows Mr. George Knightly in the process of moving into Hartfield. There are difficulties galore, all perfectly plausible and all providing intelligent development. 
7. “Love and Best Wishes, Aunt Jane” by Adriana Trigiani fails to achieve anything like Jane Austen’s voice in a letter to a niece who has just become engaged. It fails on two levels. The first is that it is supposed to be Jane Austen, but she is supposed to have lived 200 years later and yet be the same novelist. This leads to strange anachronisms. The second failure is that nothing here is witty or satirical; all is saccharine and insipid. 
8. “Jane Austen and the Mistletoe Kiss” by Jo Beverley is misleadingly titled. This is the romance of a fictional widow newly moved to Chawton about 1816, and when the protagonist briefly meets Jane and Cassandra Austen, Jane chances to remark on the Christmas tradition of kissing beneath a mistletoe bough to discover one’s true love. (Gag.) Hence the title. The story involves the widow and her 16-year-old daughter and which of the two will win the heart of the local fictional nobleman. Cringe making on several levels and especially in the details. Ick. (If only the author had chosen to channel Lady Susan and make the mother utterly wicked and charming!) 
9. “When Only a Darcy Will Do” by Beth Pattillo puts her heroine into Regency costume as a way of luring tourists to her “bootleg Jane Austen tour” in London so that she can earn money for her next college term. The appearance of a Regency-costumed gentleman to take her tour provides the intrigue, humor, and character unfolding. Good presentation of possible romance. 
10. Margaret C Sullivan’s “Heard of You” is framed as a continuation of the Persuasion story. It’s a flashback tale told by Frederick Wentworth to his new wife, Anne Elliott, about how he ended up introducing his sister, Sophie, to Admiral Croft, who was his Captain at the time. It’s done well even with the element of predestination that is always extremely tricky to pull off, not to mention that Wentworth is quoting his letters throughout the tale without it being obvious. 
11. Elizabeth Aston’s modern tale “The Ghostwriter” is hugely fun and witty. A young author’s lover has just left her, fed up with her Mr. Darcy obsession, and to make matters worse, the author’s last three novels have been rejected and her agent is threatening to drop her. Enter the ghost of Jane Austen at her most acerbic to set this young woman straight. The solution is problematic, which mars an otherwise excellent setup. 
12. In Amanda Grange’s “Mr Bennet Meets His Match,” the author has set herself the most delicate of tasks, of rendering a plausible explanation of how silly, shallow, but pretty Miss Gardiner succeeded in getting shy, serious, bookish young Mr Bennet to propose to her. It almost works, but Miss Gardiner does not seem quite the same character as Mrs Bennet of Pride and Prejudice. The parents of Mr William Collins appear and are wonderfully terrible. 
13. In Janet Mullany’s “Jane Austen, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!” a young teacher in the 1960s reaches three students in her detention class by comparing Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility characters to each of the Beatles. It’s an offbeat, but successful tactic. There are plenty of amusing lines in this story. 
14. Maya Slater adopts Maria Lucas’s voice in “Letters to Lydia,” in order to tell certain events of Pride and Prejudice from that young lady’s viewpoint. It’s amusing and effective. 
15. “The Mysterious Closet: A Tale” by Myretta Robens draws on both Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and The Mysteries of Udolfo by Mrs Radcliffe for the setup of the mysterious room and its contents and the hero/ghost, but it fails to deliver either the fright or the fun of either original, and it does nothing to skewer the genre like Jane Austen’s story does. It included too many ick-factors to work. 
16. In Diana Birchall’s “Jane Austen’s Cat,” the setting is Chawton Cottage, and Jane Austen herself entertains her young niece Caroline by retelling her tales with the characters as cats. The Austen nieces Fanny and Anna also feature, and Jane herself has a strong allergy to cats that adds to the fun. This all provides the author with the chance to offer interesting interpretations of Jane Austen’s work. The characters are realistic and well done. 
17. Alexandra Potter’s “Me and Mr. Darcy, Again . . .” is a sequel to Potter’s own novel in which the supernatural apparition of Mr. Darcy helps a young American woman resolve romantic issues. This short story has the heroine back, having had a major fight with the hero of the novel. She’s with a very funny sidekick who provides a lot of the humor and entertainment in this story. Otherwise, it’s a little too weird and too smarmy for me. Exhibit A, this quote: “I feel as if I’ve been dipped in melted happiness.” Ick. 
18. “What Would Austen Do?” by Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway has 14-year-old James Austen solve high-school identity politics by becoming a major Janeite after being tricked into a summer Regency Dance class. While the premise is cute and the hero engaging, his heavy use of 2010-era slang is already making the story feel curiously dated. But I liked it very much. 
19. “The Riding Habit” by Pamela Aiden is almost mean. It’s a sequel to Pride and Prejudice in which a fearful Elizabeth Darcy is pressured into learning to ride a horse in Hyde Park. She’s meant to be courageous and overcome all obstacles, figurative and literal, but I didn’t like it. That plot is set against Elizabeth’s fears about planning Georgiana’s coming-out ball; Elizabeth has had time to realize the truth of Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s warnings about how ill-fitted Elizabeth was for taking a place in snobby London society. Darcy’s solution is that Elizabeth should consult another of his aunts, Aunt Matlock, who is supposed to be an expert at these things. And that is the end. Not a real resolution at all. 
20. “The Love Letter” by Brenna Aubrey is an inventive use of Persuasion in a modern setting. The page with Captain Wentworth’s letter to Anne Elliott is torn out of the book and sent anonymously to the hero of this story in order to get him to look again at an old romance he thinks is dead. Of course it isn’t after all. Well done, and deserving of the contest prize of being included in this anthology.
21. “The Chase” by Carrie Bebris is one of the most skillful stories in this book. She tells the true-life tale of how Captain Frank Austen, one of Jane’s brothers, captured no fewer than five French warships in one day of patrolling the Mediterranean Sea in 1800. This is written in limited 3rd-person from Frank’s point of view, and it is a great story. 
22. “Intolerable Stupidity” by Laurie Viera Rigler is the final entry, and its premise is a hoot. In a mysterious courtroom presided over by Judge Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the literary trial of a certain segment of Jane Austen Fan Fiction is about to begin. The opposing counsel are secretly attracted to one another, the judge is far from impartial, and the chief witness, Mr. Darcy, is difficult to see because his features are in constant flux due to different descriptions and actors, and he is constantly being doused by female fans with buckets of water that soak his thin white shirt and leave him shivering. Should fan fiction be allowed to thus tamper with the original characters? This is either an indictment or an endorsement of the stories in this collection. I disagreed with the final verdict. It needed more nuance, which I shall provide myself! 

“Intolerable stupidity!”
(Photo Credit: PBS)

My verdict: Eight stories are good, five are very good, and two are brilliant. This anthology is worth keeping if one avoids the five not-so-very-good stories and glues together the pages of the two that are awful.

Ferman, What Have You Done?

In researching my Selgrath family, I think I might have found yet another troubled loner. (I have been researching Selgraths and their kin in Germany, the Schmelzers, for over a year now. I wrote some blog posts about them in the winter of 2017.)

Ferman Selgrath was born in the early years of the 20th century to one of the Selgraths whose ancestors arrived in Pennsylvania from Germany in the 1830s. Ferman was an only child. When he was five, little Ferman’s father was baptised in the Presbyterian Church. The next month, little Ferman was allowed to be baptised, just like his daddy. Then the family disappeared from all records. The parents never did appear again.

Two decades later Ferman and his wife had two daughters. Then Ferman’s wife married someone else and dropped all reference to ever having been married to Ferman Selgrath.

Ferman married the daughter of Italian immigrants just as the Second World War started. Within very few years she resumed her maiden name and never again married. She lived the rest of her life in her parents’ home, caring for them until they died. When she worked, she made no reference to her once-married name, and when she died, all the records show only her maiden name.

Ferman’s two daughters married when they were teenagers. They named him on their marriage records, but by the time each of them passed away, their respective obituaries named their mother’s subsequent husband as their father.

Ferman should have signed up for the military draft for World War Two, but I can’t find any record of it. Either he must have evaded the draft, or he was dead by then. I cannot find any record of anything more about him. I have not found record of his death or burial anywhere.

I do wonder what happened in his life that made his wives leave him and his daughters disown him one after another. Was he cruel? Did he run away? Was he mentally ill? What was his story?

I won’t call him a villain. People are so complicated, and you never do know about anyone, not really.

Christmas in August (Being a Jane Austen Mystery)

As an antidote to the extreme heat of August and the unrelenting smoke of wildfires here in the western U.S., I have just reread Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron and have a Christmas-y review for you, with no spoilers. It helped to beat the heat just to open the book and read the first few pages in which the Austen ladies are caught in a snowstorm.

Time: 24 Dec 1814 – 5 Jan 1815; Afterword, 2 March 1815
Place: Hampshire, England: traveling from Chawton to Steventon, thence to The Vyne, back to Steventon, to Ashe Park, to Sherbourne St John, back to Steventon, to the Vyne. Afterword at Chawton.

The Austen ladies (Mrs. George Austen, Cassandra, and Jane) at the opening of the novel are traveling from Chawton to Steventon for Christmas. After an accident and chance encounter with Raphael West, the son of the famous painter Benjamin West, they are invited with the Steventon family of James and Mary Austen and their children to stay at The Vyne, a great house 17 miles north, for the twelve days of Christmas. With Mary Austen (Mrs. James) presented as a model for hypochondriac Mary Musgrove of Persuasion, and with James Austen presented as so sanctimonious that he is almost Cromwellian in his suspicions of the pagan origins of Christmas traditions, their removal to The Vyne is a portal into cheerful festivity. The juxtaposition of pre-Victorian Christmas traditions, with their emphasis on communal merriment, against two murders and a third attempt with all the subsequent detective activity, provide the narrative structure.

But let us concentrate on the fun.

The Christmas festivities the Austen ladies look forward to include the burning of a Yule log (a giant oak log that burns slowly for days); decorating with greenery but not a tree; playing at Snap-dragon (snatching nuts and raisins out of a shallow bowl of burning brandy with one’s fingers, without getting burned); playing charades (not our modern version, but writing riddles that the other team tries to decipher correctly); observing the Festival of St. Stephen on the day after Christmas, when the servants are given the day off and the family shifts for themselves; and holding a Children’s Ball on Twelfth Night at which children are crowned King and Queen, adults are their servants, and most everyone assumes a comic character given out at the entrance (Jane Austen gives herself the role of Miss Candour). The twelve days of Christmas are counted from Christmas day until the 5th of January. In 1814 Christmas day was on a Sunday, so everyone went to church that morning. (I don’t know if there would be a Christmas morning service in other years when the day was not the same as the Sabbath.)

Jane and Cassandra Austen have created a series of gifts for their ten-year-old niece Caroline: a doll with changes of clothes for every occasion. They give her the doll on Christmas eve, in spite of their brother James’s disapproval, and in spite of acknowledging that it is more usual to wait until Twelfth Night to exchange gifts. They then give her a new outfit for the doll every morning of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and each change of costume is tied somehow to that day’s activities or discoveries. It is a good example of Stephanie Barron’s talent for structure and thematic development. The presentation of the gifts also functions as a lightening of the mood, except in one case in which the effect of the murders on the precocious ten-year-old is acknowledged by Jane Austen comforting the child when she finds her wakeful and frightened, and one other occasion when it functions as a means to resolve a minor plot twist.

In this tale, the only exchange of gifts described on Twelfth Night is a group exchange of the truth. And that may be the best gift Jane Austen can concoct for everyone involved.

Finally, this book is a gift to us Jane-as-sleuth fans. From what I read of Stephanie Barron’s plans for the series following Bantam’s refusal to publish any more books, I think that she had planned only one more for Jane, the one she was tentatively calling Jane and the Carlton House Set, which would become Jane and the Waterloo Map. I suspect that in negotiating the contract for that last book with Soho Crime, Ms. Barron gave us a Christmas treat in adding this book to the series before ending with a skewering of the icons of the Regency period.

Happy Christmas in August!

For my full comments on this novel, including spoilers, see my Jane Austen as Sleuth post.