RUTH WILSON
Author Ruth Wilson, 89, settled into a cottage and spent time re-reading Jane Austen’s six novels, reflecting on her own life through the words.
The result was The Jane Austin Remedy, her recently released memoir and inspirational account of the lessons learnt from Austen. Here, she shares life lessons with granddaughters Jessica and Kate.
My dear Jessica and Katie,
What a blessing it is to have two adult granddaughters. On this Mother’s Day, I am thinking about how you have both inhabited my heart since you were children. You are now women who have made career choices that I find fascinating and commendable: Jessie in the field of international relations, and Kate delving deep, as a psychologist, into human relations. The connection is as strong today as it was then.
Perhaps your choices resonate with me because the concepts of “relations” and “relationships” have puzzled and fascinated me all my life. For nine decades I have been thinking about the significance of relationships, sometimes painfully but often to my own edification. So I am happy that, at an earlier stage of your lives than I did, you are learning that the concept of relationship, in whatever form it takes, is complex and often ambiguous.
And if I may, I would like to share with you something of f what I have learned about the nature of relationships: to bequeath my thoughts about relationships as a sort of legacy.
Let me start at the very beginning. Relationships within families can be a blessing, we all know that. At the same time they can present huge emotional challenges to adults.
Despite shifts in beliefs and theories, Freudian views of early family relationships have not lost currency. And the poet, Philip
Larkin, nails it when he suggests that mums and dads, even though they don’t mean to (and expressing it more politely than the poet), often do mess up their children’s lives.
It seems to me though that our memories of childhood, often daunting and haunting, can be redeemed. I left it until late in my life, but eventually I reread my own parents in the light of what I thought I had learned about them, consciously and unconsciously, and about the culture that produced them.
I wish I had done it sooner, replacing introspection and resentment with reflection and, hopefully, empathy. In that way I think I have come to terms with negative emotions and developed
a sense of wellbeing about the better parts of the relationship.
Just a tip that might highlight some happy memories and nourish your inner lives at the same time.
Then there are relationships with friends. They are important, even to people like me. I enjoy my own company much of the time, but I still need friends in my life, people I can trust with my affection and my secrets.
I remember how both of you grappled during your childhood and especially your adolescence, with feelings of insecurity and ambivalence about friends. So here is a suggestion gleaned from my own experience. If you want to understand and reassess your own values, it’s not a bad idea to examine the nature of your friendships; even to ask yourselves why you cling to relationships that shake you up.
No one scrutinises friendship more meticulously than novelist, Jane Austen. She exposes the dangers of charm while allowing her readers to see how seductive it is.
Good friends don’t just entertain; they add lustre to the nature of a relationship.
Take it from me, even at my age it is not too late to relinquish friendships that bring no joy, and to make new friends who do.
And so to the final item in my legacy to you both on this special Mother’s
Day.
I wish I had thought sooner about the significance of our relationship to ideas. Sometimes ideas can be too resilient; the resilience of patriarchy, for example. That’s why I advocate a continuing reexamination of the ideas that you hold dear, encouraging you to re-read them in light of changing circumstances.
That may be the best legacy I can pass on to you: the idea of re-reading yourselves from time to time, just as you might re-read a much-loved book; finding new and different meanings; continuing to grow and flourish, continually renewing your understanding of yourselves and your lives.
With grandmotherly love, Nanna