Don't you think...
Posted by Helen on April 17, 1998 at 11:04:28:
In response to Tomalin bio---don' you wonder...?, written by Barbara on April 15, 1998 at 10:07:55
... that as well as containing 'biting commentary' (and I agree, there were probably many comments Cassandra didn't want the victims to read), she may also have unveiled her emotional life quite extensively, for instance, comments on who she really loved. Or perhaps not so much witty comments on her family as anger and frustration.
As a JA fan, of course I regret that these letters were destroyed. But I can also understand that JA might not have wanted family and friends to see what she wrote about them in private or in the heat of the moment (she did love them, after all). And I can also understand that she would not have wanted her private emotions to be unveiled to the general public. She seems to have been quite reserved in a lot of ways (certainly her heroines are).
And I also think that it makes her work all the more interesting to deal with, because we can't look at her work solely in relation to her life.
Here's a question: if you found, miraculously, a cache of JA's letters to Cassandra, would you publish them?
Helen
] Of course we will never know, but as I read this biography and the frequent mentions made of the efficacy of Cassandra's scissors after Jane's death, I am just burning with curiosity at what, what?? might have been in her letters that her sister felt necessary to destroy?? The surviving letters do have biting commentary about acquaintances and events, so one can only assume that the letters which were destroyed must have had more pointed comments, possibly more about members of the closer family circle??? I feel such a sense of loss that all of this was destroyed and that much of JA's life remains such an enigma.
- Her private emotions Barbara 12:30:14 4/17/98
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- of course...! Kate 11:37:56 4/17/98
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