Dear Jane (Austen)

To Jane, thanking her for the comfort and joy she gave me.

(Translation from Italian by Valeria Esposito)

Introduction

Dear Jane is an epistolary novel inspired by Jane Austen's novel and her biographical events.

I imagine that Cassandra, her sister, writes to the women who had inspired the protagonists of Jane's novels, asking them to write to Jane to comfort and distract her in a difficult moment, due to the illness that will lead her to death.

Therefore, it begins between Jane, Elizabeth Darcy, Marianne Brandon, Maria Bertram, Catherine Tilney, Ann Wentworth and Emma Knightly an epistolary correspondence that reveals aspects of Jane's life and tells us what happens to Austen's characters after the end of her novels. Since I am also an opera singer, you can expect some tragedies and many "coup de théâtre"!

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Chawton, 25 October 1816

To Mrs Eleanor Brandon

Mrs Elizabeth Darcy

Mrs Fanny Bertram

Mrs Catherine Tilney

Mrs Emma Knightley

Mrs Anne Wentworth

Dear friends,

Surely you will be amazed by my letter and I beg you to believe that I have reflected a long time and I started writing and threw in the fire at least ten letters before sending it to you. I know very well that I am breaking a promise made with my sister, but it is only for her well-being that I do it and this is what I care most about.

Unfortunately, in the last few months, Jane has started to suffer from symptoms of a disease whose origin we cannot understand, perhaps because of sad and serious events in our family. She alternates moments of well-being with moments of great weakness and fatigue. She suffers from bile attacks and fever, but above all from rheumatism that at times prevents her from standing up. Jane tries to mask these symptoms and present herself happy and good-humoured as always. However, when I see that she spends most of the day lying on the sofa in our living room or in bed, I know that my concern is right. Then, after days of drowsiness, she wakes up reassured and goes to the living room, at the beloved desk given to her by our father; she spends hours writing, completely lost in her inner world. Then I feel relieved and I hope for a definitive improvement, remaining disappointed every time.

Often she is oppressed by moments of depression. I see that she reads the pages written, tears and throws them angerly into the fire. She is never satisfied and she writes and rewrites every paragraph many times. It was not like that before: her pen ran lightly like the spring rain on the window and in a few days she completed whole chapters of her novels with few corrections:

- When I start writing - she was usual to say - I have already weighted every word and every line writing it mentally and every page is already fully formed in my mind.

Now, alas, it is not like that anymore. She is preparing for publication a novel she cares about very much. She has also started a new one, but she is proceeding very slowly.

Lately, she told me she feels a sense of remorse and guilt towards you who inspired her stories. Previously she argued that a writer needs to be free to take inspiration from reality, since every work of fiction is always a mixture of truth and fantasy. Now she fears of having been too indiscreet appropriating the events of your lives, and of having offended you.