THE ELOPEMENT

An affecting, and even somewhat feminist, return to the world of the Austen family and its offshoots.

Fanny Knight—Jane Austen’s niece and a principal character in Hornby’s Godmersham Park (2022)—appears early in this pleasingly long ramble through the life cycles of two families, the Knights and the Knatchbulls. When she accepts Sir Edward Knatchbull’s proposal of marriage, she becomes stepmother to his five children as well as the tie between her family’s modest estate, Godmersham Park, and her husband’s grander one at Mersham-le-Hatch. But the heroine of this third volume based on Jane Austen’s relations is Fanny’s stepdaughter, Mary Dorothea Knatchbull. Just 13 when her father remarries, Mary conducts a war of détente with Fanny that might have impressed Napoleon, peppering their infrequent exchanges with deadly pauses: “…Ma-ma.” As Fanny falters under her husband’s defenses of the status quo, Mary Dorothea lives with the Knights for a bit and discovers a happier lifestyle, becoming close to Austen’s nieces Louisa and Cassy. There’s a method to the author’s impeccably researched look at 19th-century manners: Not only does she get to the titular event (never fear, there’s an Austen-worthy young gentleman involved), but she shows the choices available to the era’s women. For every mother of five or seven or even 15 (like Austen’s niece Lizzie, who lived to “a long and happy old age”), there’s an interfering Lady Banks, a coquettish Lady Elizabeth Bligh, or a stalwart helpmeet like Miss Cassandra Austen (who, in real life, burned many of her brilliant sister’s letters after Jane’s death). Fortunately, as Mary grows into her own, readers will find observations from her and others that underscore changing notions of how women can gain a measure of control, even if it’s only over whom to marry. At her coming-out dance, Mary thinks: “It was almost as if humans only truly examined their own selves, and took little to no notice of others.” Austen herself would approve.

Janeites, rejoice! This novel is long enough to suit the largest pot of tea, and non-Janeites might like it, too.