An interesting question that came up at the Canterbury Kipling Conference was – “Why Jane Austen in The Janeites? Why not some other writer?”
As I remember, Kathryn Sutherland in her excellent analysis of the story in Jane Austen’s Textual Lives quotes Kipling as saying that the story could as easily have been about golf or any other interest that bonds enthusiasts together. Which is true as far as the structure of the story goes, but the connotations of Austen are very different from those of golf – and it was Austen that he chose. Why?
A suggestion made at the conference was that it’s because Austen’s novels are about the complexities of human nature – as, in its different way, is The Janeites – and I think this is right. Someone else suggested it’s because Austen’s novels are about a closed society with definite rules, and that too matches the story.
The Janeites is also about the power of literature to help and console and give a sense of a wider world. Yes. If ever I went into battle, I’d rather like a copy of Northanger Abbey in my knapsack.
Jane Austen is also an example of an author whose appeal (like Kipling’s) cuts across barriers of age and class. The soldiers, the schoolmaster, the dragonish nursing sister all respond to her work, and so does dear old Humberstall. C.S. Lewis huffed and puffed about Kipling’s use of Jane Austen as the focus of the story. He wrote:
Finally something so simple and ordinary as an enjoyment of Jane Austen’s novels is turned into the pretext for one more secret society, and we have the hardly forgiveable Janeites.
Has he maybe missed the point – that there is no secret society except in Humberstall’s imagination? It’s a club that welcomes anyone.
I was made aware of this a few months ago when I met one of my ex-pupils. Three years before, I had tried to guide her through the rather unexciting GCSE syllabus, but with little success. She was a bit of a wild child, and frequently absent; her coursework folder was a mess. When I met her at a bus-stop though, she proudly told me that she was now reading her way through Jane Austen. She had started with Pride and Prejudice after seeing the film, had moved on to Sense and Sensibility, and was now half-way through Mansfield Park.She had also got past her erratic stage, and was training to be a legal secretary. A worthy member of the Janeites, I’d say.
Another possible reason for Jane Austen’s presence is that she brings a reminder of femininity into what is otherwise a story dominated by males.The same thing happens in the later Fairy-Kist. In that tale, Kipling uses another female author, Juliana Horatia Ewing in a similar way, but while Humberstall’s head has been deliberately filled with Jane Austen (so that he will think about her books rather than about more disturbing matters) Wollin in Fairy-Kist is rather accidentally obsessed by Mary’s Meadow, the children’s book that a nurse read to him. This is a very charming children’s novel from 1883, telling the story of a well-off family of children who, when their parents are away develop a fantasy-game based on stories inspired by books found in their library. They become devoted to gardening, especially to planting wild flowers by the wayside for the comfort of travellers. It’s a more sentimental book than any of Austen’s, but it is one of those children’s books that combine a clear sense of morality with an interest in the variety and richness of human behaviour.
What I have been wondering is – when did Kipling read Mary’s Meadow? He was 18 or 19 when it was first published, so hardly the age to appreciate it then. Later he read aloud a great deal to his children, so the likeliest probability is that this is one of those books that he shared with them. (I think that this would be a very good book for reading aloud – plenty of lively conversations for a reader who enjoys doing the different voices.)
In which case, can we speculate that Mary’s Meadow had special meaning for Kipling – as a work that he shared with one of the children who died? And if that is so, mightn’t Jane Austen’s novels too have a personal significance for him too – one that we can only guess at? For example, that he read them at a difficult time of his life, maybe.
