LECTURE

"CASSANDRA & JANE"

Baroness Pitkeathley, author, on 25 May 2004

Jill Pitkeathley was born in Guernsey and gained a degree at Bristol University. In 1986 she became Chief Executive of the Carers National Association (now Carers UK). She became a Life Peer in 1997 and is Chair of the New Opportunities Fund, which distributes the largest Lottery fund, and of the Children and Families Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS).

Jill Pitkeathley began her acquaintance with the novels as part of an examination curriculum;she became a complete devotee. She.never goes on holiday without at least one in her luggage.

In 2001, whilst recovering from an operation, she re-read the novels yet again and the idea began to form in her mind of trying to find a way of giving some new insights into Jane's character and offer some answers to those familiar questions about her such as:

In many ways the interaction of personalities and the conflicts caused by financial considerations, together with the continuing debate about the position of women, have echoes in our own times.

Jane Austen herself never married and lived most of her 41 years within a restricted social circle, in company with her immediate family and local acquaintances and friends. The facts we know about her character are tantalisingly few and only make us long to bring a new focus to the person behind the work.

We know something about Jane’s life from her letters, the marvellous biographies and her early writings. Frustratingly, the same questions are posed about her all the time, yet are never satisfactorily answered. Perhaps that is part of her endless attraction to both old and new readers.

Trained as a counsellor herself, Jill Pitkeathley is used to casting light on a person’s character through their relationships with others. For Jane Austen, there was no closer relationship than that with her elder sister, Cassandra.

So she began to consider writing a biography of Cassandra. Her research revealed that the last book about Cassandra had apparently been written in 1937 and then only as part of a story about the sisters of four famous writers. Most of what we know comes solely through her connection with her famous younger sister. Almost nothing is known about Cassandra herself, except that she supported her sister by attending to most of the domestic routine for the household, leaving her sister free to write her novels.

What is generally known is that Cassandra Austen destroyed some of Jane’s letters and it was on these letters that Jill Pitkeathley began to concentrate. What was there in the contents that had caused Cassandra to destroy them; what extra insights into Jane’s character and the relationship between the sisters could they have offered?

The story "Cassandra and Jane" is a fictional account of what might have been. It is intended to be a homage to Jane and to the sister whom she loved more than any other person. Some of the conversations that Jill Pitkeathley has suggested could have taken place, may indeed have happened; others may not have done. She hopes that those who read her ‘fictional memoire’ will accept that the book is offered with respect and admiration to the memory of these two remarkable women.

She illustrated her lecture by quotations from "Cassandra & Jane". She apologises unreservedly to those who may be offended by her adding imagined conversations to the facts already known about the sisters’ lives together, although she hopes that, in doing so, she may have helped others to feel something of the wonderful interaction, devotion and the occasional problems between Cassandra and Jane Austen.

Jean Brushfield

Bibliography

Jill Pitkeathley, Cassandra & Jane, (Copperfield Books, 2004), ISBN: 0952821052.

Jill Pitkeathley and David Emerson, The Only Child: How to survive being One (Souvenir Press Ltd., 1994), ISBN: 0285631829.

Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life (Penguin Books, 2000), ISBN: 0140296905.