‘She relates to every age we’re at’
Romantic love, money, class… Austen’s themes are as relevant as ever, says Joanna Trollope
Elinor Dashwood is wonderful – like Saffy from Ab Fab!
Iread all of Austen in my teens, and re-read Sense And Sensibility, Emma, Pride And Prejudice and Persuasion every three years. I pick up new things every time I read them because you’re at a different stage of your life and, like all really good novelists, Austen is relevant to every age you get to.
I reworked Sense And Sensibility for The Austen Project [in which six modern writers updated Austen’s novels]. By the time I’d finished writing it, I thought she was a complete genius.
Novels were still new when Jane Austen was writing, but she understood in the most instinctive way that the three great themes of fiction were going to be romantic love, money and class – and so it has proved.
She wrote on a table about the size of a postage stamp at the house her brother Edward allowed her and her mother and sister to live in after her father’s death. Every time I think about that, my jaw drops. I am just in awe of her.
One of my favourite characters is Elinor Dashwood from Sense And Sensibility because of her good sense. She’s a bit like Saffy from Ab Fab, and tries to keep her very dippy mother and sisters’ feet on the ground.
Elinor is a wonderful example of
emotional suffering. She’s in love with Edward Ferrars, who is promised to someone else. You can see his flaws in the book; he is a depressive by modern standards, but she thinks she can make him happy and knows he is the man for her.
At that stage in history, marriage was really the only career for an educated, gently-born woman. It is terrifying to think of. No wonder women sabotaged each other so violently to get to a wealthy man. There is something about Elinor’s stoicism and endurance that I find very attractive. I know stoicism isn’t admired as a quality at the moment, but I continue to admire it!