Sister act
In her latest novel, Gill Hornby takes us into the home of Jane Austen, but rather than dwell on the star author, she prefers to tell the story of elder sibling Cassandra, writes Sarah Hughes
When it came to finding inspiration for her third novel, Miss Austen, Gill Hornby didn’t have to look far. The younger sister of best-selling novelist Nick Hornby and wife of best-selling novelist Robert Harris, Hornby was drawn to the story of Cassandra Austen, the less celebrated sister of Jane. “I’m absolutely used to being batted out of the way at cocktail parties as people try to get to the main event,” she says, laughing.
Hornby, who worked as a television producer and raised four children before publishing her first novel in 2013 at the age of 54, argues that the person you have shoved to the sidelines may well turn out to be more important than you realise.
“We live in a culture of genius but I’m always very interested in the people who support the genius,” she says. “Because they don’t function alone. None of us does.” Hornby suggests that, far from being a bystander, Cassandra Austen was “the midwife of the novels.”
“Cassandra runs the house and says to Jane, ‘You get on with it,’” explains Hornby. “She was capable, understood Jane, managed her and can take a huge amount of credit for the existence of the novels.”
Miss Austen, which follows an elderly Cassandra as she deals with her deceased sister’s legacy, is something of a departure for Hornby. Her sharp debut, The Hive, satirised school-gate cliques long before Sharon Horgan’s Motherland. It was followed by All Together Now ,a warm-hearted story of a local choir.
“Miss Austen is the book I’ve really always wanted to write but didn’t have the nerve,” says Hornby. “The idea of my first novel having Jane Austen walking and talking and expressing thoughts… I mean, can you imagine the bashing over the head I would have got?”
The waiting paid off. Miss Austen is an enthralling combination of historical fiction, mystery and satire that feels both original and true to the spirit of the author it celebrates.
“One of the things that annoys me about so many of the biographies is this notion of poor Jane, a spinster who longed for marriage,” says Hornby. “Did she? There’s no evidence to suggest that. The other myth is that the last years of her life in Chawton were miserable, spent with dreary Cassandra, plain Martha and their mother – and that that’s why she wrote all this escapist stuff. Rubbish.”
While many are swift to dismiss Cassandra as dull, in the book things play out differently. “I don’t think Cassandra was insipid,” says Hornby, arguing that part of the problem is that, unlike her celebrated sister, she grew old. “Jane was in her prime when she died and that is an enormous advantage. You stay fresh in people’s eyes.”
Writing the fictional Jane was still a daunting proposition. “I was so nervous,” says Hornby. “I kept putting it off and thinking, ‘Oh well, she doesn’t have to come in yet.’ Once I started writing her, though, I couldn’t shut her up.”
Yet it was Cassandra whose voice spoke strongest. “The family memoirs might be all ‘Jane the goddess’,” says Hornby, “but it’s clear that Cassandra was the one who nursed the infants and was there for the sisters-in-law when they were in labour.”
Many years later, she would also open her doors at Chawton to a young niece who had infuriated her family by eloping, which, says Hornby, “shows you the kind of woman she was”.
“I’d read some of the meanspirited recollections of her and think, ‘You cow.’ The Cassandra they show is nothing like the one Jane is writing letters to. I wanted to give Cassandra her due.” n
Miss Austen by Gill Hornby is published by Century on 21 January, price £12.99