On Becoming Jane Austen a Book Review

If you call yourself a Jane Austen fan and have not yet read John Spence's On Becoming Jane Austen, you are missing out on the deepest taste and tenor of the Austen biographical world yet published. John Spence serves us a succulent dish of events in Austen's life that shaped the prose and narrative of England's most beloved female authoress. For a deeper understanding of Jane and her works, first, you must read Spence's On Becoming Jane Austen and then chase it down with a healthy dose of Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones.

Spence takes us on a journey from Austen's humble beginnings as a child at the Steventon, Hampshire rectory of her father George, to nursing Brother Henry back to health in London, to her shackled dependency move to Bath when her father retired, to her last, declining, yet peaceful days in the country at Chawton where she began her unfinished novel, Sandition. All the while, Spence entertains us with the metaphysical and physical events that shaped the mind and soul we know as Jane Austen. Moreover, he explores how these events affected the plot and storylines of Jane's best works and the relationships she had in real life that found their way into her works in the guise of loveable characters such as Mr. Darcy, Colonel Brandon, and the beloved, Lizzie Bennett.

The critical import of On Becoming Jane Austen is the literary criticism that betrays a greater breadth of understanding of Austen's mind and primary works. Two seminal people from her real life transpose themselves into the very fiber of Austen's entire corpus of work, Eliza de Fuellide and her brother Henry. Spence exhaustingly brings these real life people to life to help illustrate the shaping of the Austen canon.

Eliza de Fuellide was a distant cousin of Jane's mother on the Steventon-Liegh side of her mother's relations. Eliza visited Steventon in 1798 and an affair sparked between Eliza and Jane's brother Henry. The real life Eliza, literary muse to at least three Austens, became the apple of Henry's eye-her 12 year junior. The Austen families' literary tastes and flair for the theatre sparked the budding romance and pitted brother against brother, son against parents, brother against sister, and created a whirlwind life of excess for Henry before financial failure led him to a life of the clergyman.

Older Brother James, editor of the Loiterer at Oxford between 1788 and 1789, wrote a number of short essays about the virtues of serving the church and a life devoted to God, the Austen family was overtly trying to convince Henry at this time to join the clergy, and Henry would rebut on the virtues of loving an older, worldly woman and the rewards of becoming a man of the world. It was during this discourse in 1789 that Jane published her first work in the Loiterer defending her younger brother's love for Eliza and vindicating him by turning the short piece of fiction into a didactic parable that turned the tables on the mercenary man and shifted all blame on that of the older woman as an overtly deceptive temptress. Jane will spend her life adoring and protecting her beloved Henry.

The ultimate marriage of Eliza and Henry after Eliza's husband died in the French Revolution seemed to be the spark that fired Jane's muse. In 1783, the year Eliza and Henry married, Jane began writing in earnest. Her first two works, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, spring from the petty jealousies that arose when she feared she had forever lost Henry to the 'older' woman. However, though, even beyond the myopic scope of sisterly jealousy, one event changed the literary world and Jane's life forever--a distant, maternal cousin, Thomas Lefroy.

Trying to educate their daughters to the fullest and to help them gain the rewards of a benevolent relative that could bestow an annuity, or legacy, on them, the Austen's sent their daughters across the English countryside to expand their horizons and increase their visibility to wealthy relatives and eligible young men. Jane struck up her great apprenticeship with Anne Lefroy--cousin from her mom's side of the family lineage.

Anne Lefroy was a gentle poet and voracious reader that bestowed the gift and delight of reading with a young, then 12, Jane Austen. Lefroy, as a published poet and a highly educated woman of her time, urged Jane to explore her writing. Whilst she was urging Jane to explore her writing, she inadvertently introduced her to her Thomas Lefroy. Lefroy was a young man from the Scottish line of the Lefroys and was in London to study law. He met Jane and for three weeks the rumors abounded that he was to propose. The proposition never materialized and Jane was left wondering why the proposal never came.

Sadly for Jane but luckily for us, her sisterly jealousy of her sister-in-law, Eliza de Fuellide, and her unexplained snub by eligible beau Tom Lefroy gave Jane the inspiration and introversion of empty space that forced her to find a way to write herself out of the romantic relationships that had so unhappily confined her. Jane's output from this period until her death gave us all of her six published works.

The intricacy and depth of which she explored these relationships and the relationships of her family and friends in general are succinctly explained in Spence's On Becoming Jane Austen. Spence deconstructs each work and character and tries, and succeeds, to reconstruct the works in the context of Jane's daily relationships, mental approbations, and her daily world. If you are a student of Jane's, it is imperative to use On Becoming Jane Austen as a companion reader to any of her works. Read John Spence's On Becoming Jane Austen.