The other Jane Austen

She has made a life of smiling politely when people mention her name. She feels that her book loving parents made a predictable choice, though it was her father who was the Jane Austen fan, her Mother drunkenly confided once that she wanted to name her Jean, as in Brodie. If she’d been a boy her Mother wanted to call her Tyrone, after Slothrop from Gravity’s Rainbow. “Your father”, she’d said with contempt “wanted to call you Fitzwilliam.”

A professor of linguistics, she made a conscious choice to avoid English literature while still at school, she found all the questions about whether she wanted to be a writer tedious beyond measure but, over the years, managed to perfect the ability to hide her irritation. It’s always annoyed her that this is somehow expected of her, and she’s aggravated that she, a successful and professional woman, still keeps some of her opinions to herself, but the habit is too deeply ingrained to break now. Even when colleagues, who you’d think would know it was an old joke, ask her if she’s in the wrong department she inclines her head to one side and smiles with enough warmth and sweetness to suggest it’s genuine, and this is the first time she’s heard this. Every time she does this she hates herself for doing so.

In later years she has become more irritated that she is more well known as the woman who survived a murder attempt. Her husband of many years had always been coercive and emotionally abusive, deliberately distancing himself when he knew that she needed emotional support. With the increasing success of her career his behaviour grew worse, and when she reached full Professor he tried to kill her by paying a man to run her over. She suffered a broken leg but was otherwise uninjured. The level of local celebrity afforded her by this infuriates her beyond measure. As she always says, it makes him the story, not her. She rarely speaks of it and never mentions her ex-husband by name. When pressed she inclines her head, and smiles, with enough sweetness and warmth to suggest that it’s genuine.