Byrne uses objects associated with the author - jewellery, a miniature, notebooks, the bathing machine - to illuminate Austen's life and character. What emerges is both individual and convincing, a portrait of a woman with a keen grasp of the world around her, a mordant line in humour, a deep but understated faith, sometimes financially stressed but increasingly placing her writing above the possibility of marriage. The tame spinster in a narrow circle is banished in favour of a real, formidable person.
(Tony Pratt - bwl 86 Autumn 2017 ) |
