Austen powers
As Radio 4 marks 250 years since Jane Austen’s birth, Philippa Perry explains why the author remains so influential today
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- Caroline Frost
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This year, the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, has seen ample celebration of the life and works of this singular observer of English life in the early 19th century. So far on TV, we’ve had a three-part documentary exploring Austen’s rebel spirit, the drama Miss Austen starring Keeley Hawes, and soon to follow is another version of Pride and Prejudice, this time with some big Netflix bucks and an all-star cast.
When it comes to Austen, it seems broadcasters never scrimp, and Radio 4 is proving no exception – celebrating this important anniversary in style, with a dedicated season that has already featured a new take on Northanger Abbey, Radio 4 Extra mining its archive of classic dramas, and newly commissioned radio dramatisations of Pride and Prejudice (see below right) and, next weekend, Sense and Sensibility. The latter is also explored in a special episode of Bookclub on Tuesday (Austen’s 250th birthday) with Emma Thompson.
Fans can also feast on a ten-part factual series, When I Met Jane Austen, in which her biographer, Dr Paula Byrne, asks a star line-up of guests – David Baddiel, Katherine Rundell, Val McDermid, Kate Atkinson, Andrew Davies, Amy Heckerling, Gurinder Chadha, Marlon James, Colm Tóibín and Philippa Perry – about how Austen’s work has shaped and influenced their lives and own creative efforts.
She observed humans rather than reinventing them
Like so many of Austen’s many millions of fans across the world, psychotherapist and bestselling author Perry can barely remember life without recourse to the wit and wisdom of the author she credits with “changing her life” after she first encountered her work aged 12, and studied Pride and Prejudice for English O-level.
So, what is so special about Austen’s small but peerless collection of works that includes six novels (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion), one novella (Lady Susan) and the tantalisingly unfinished The Watsons and Sanditon? “It’s like having a gossip with a good friend when you’re working out what people are like,” says Perry, who has been working out what makes people tick for more than 40 years, since she first volunteered for the Samaritans.
Perry is the author of four bestselling books, including the ground-breaking The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did), which was published in 2019 and became one of the great breakout publishing hits of lockdown. She takes a keen psychologist’s eye to Austen’s writing and is convinced that, despite the author writing about social mores observed more than 200 years ago, she continues to have a great influence on her own work today.
Philippa Perry. Kate Green/Getty Images
“She is such a great observer of human behaviour,” she reflects. “I remember quotes from her that remain fresh and relevant. For example, ‘To be sure, you knew no actual good of me – but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.’ This is Elizabeth Bennet explaining to her suitor Darcy that no one falls in love with someone because they are good.”
Austen was an observer, not a speculator, adds Perry. “She never had a scene where men were talking together without a woman present because, being a woman, she had never observed that.” For Perry, that makes the author the most reliable of documenters of the human condition. “Observation, observation, observation. She may have made up the stories, but she observed humans rather than reinventing them.”
What subjects would Austen be writing about if she were alive today? Perry doesn’t believe her style would be any different: “She’d be noticing how humans are with each other and what becomes of them because of how they are with each other.”
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Speaking as one observer of the human condition in consideration of another, would Austen have made a good psychotherapist? Perry has no doubt. “She and Shakespeare would have had a phenomenal practice!”
Authors
Caroline Frost
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