Like all writers Jane Austen reserves subtlety and nuance, not to mention backstory, for her major characters, reducing her minor characters oftentimes to caricatures, albeit ones so deftly drawn that they frequently steal scenes right out from under everyone else on the page. No one makes me wince more than Mrs. Bennet or cringe more than Mr. Collins. 

But here Rachel Parris chooses to lend her subtlety and nuance instead to those same minor characters, turning them from caricatures into human beings. This is Charlotte Lucas’ story and they are seen through her eyes, which are much kinder than Elizabeth’s albeit every bit as much amused.

During weeks when she had not spent many hours with him, she could think that, in time, she might come to love him, in a companionable sort of way. On days when he was buzzing around her, like a persistent wasp, she thought that, at most she would be able to tolerate him indefinitely. And at other times, she pinned her hopes on the notion that a sudden apoplexy would carry him off.

The novel begins with Charlotte’s acceptance of Mr. Collins’ proposal and follows the narrative of Pride and Prejudice fairly faithfully, but in this case with Charlotte as our hero, who makes a choice to settle for what she can get. She sticks to it no matter how great the temptation is to do otherwise when offered true love, only to be rewarded for following (mostly) the honorable path as approved of by society. It’s a happy ever after ending, but it’s earned.

There are as in the OT (Original Text) epistolary interpolations and more of them in different voices which gild the narrative lily throughout, including a superb letter from Mr. Bennet to Mr. Collins in response to that infamous letter Mr. Collins wrote to Mr. Bennet following Lydia’s elopement:

Lydia is not the most sensible of young ladies, but she is of good heart, and she does not judge others for their errors, as some do. “Judge not, that ye be not judged’ in Matthew is a passage well-thumbed in my Bible; presumably that chapter remains pristine in your own copy.

The flashback scenes involving Mr. Collins’ past will satisfy any question anyone has ever had about why Mr. Collins is the way he is, Colonel Fitzwilliam is allowed to show Charlotte (and the reader) the true cost of the Napoleonic Wars to the men fighting them, and most astonishingly and without losing any of her joie de telling-everyone-what-to-do Lady Catherine de Bourgh displays a shocking amount of empathy. Anne de Bourgh is given her own voice, Maria Lucas is transformed into more than just a pretty airhead, and through Charlotte’s superior understanding and tolerance Parris even manages to bring some perspective to the awful Mrs. Bennet.

…consider her situation. She is a widow who has lost her home—the home in which she raised her five daughters—thanks to some old legal papers she has never even seen. I think I would be angry forever.

There are a few false notes (I don’t remember Austen’s characters ever grinning and certainly Elizabeth, Jane, and Charlotte never behaved in “raucous” fashion in their lives), but of all the  multitudinous Jane Austen spinoffs I have read this is the best one yet, written perhaps in a minor key but not a lower one. Bravo!

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And a happy 250th birthday, Jane! (NYT gift link beneath the image)

And just ’cause, a superlative channeling of Jane Herself by Emma Thompson.

Book Review Monday Chatter Introducing Mrs. Collins jane austen Rachel Parris