Helen - By the bitch that Jane Austen took down!

As you can see the marketing department had a very clear idea here: pretend this book is a Jane Austen novel and then trundle the money along to the bank in a wheelbarrow.

After a bit more doodling and staring out of the window they decided to spice things up with a cat-fight in bonnets and slapped 'The Bestseller by Jane Austen's Greatest Rival' under the author's name. It's silly but it's how they earn their money. I like money too (as did Austen) so I'm not going to say anything more about that side of things except to suggest the title of this post as an alternative.

Helen is, of course, a very different kind of book from Pride and Prejudice or even Emma and one worth reading on it's own considerable merits. Having said that, it is difficult to read it without automatically making comparisons because Maria Edgeworth clearly influenced and inspired Jane Austen.

The blurb reads:

On the death of her guardian, honest, generous-spirited Helen Stanley is urged to share the home of her childhood friend Lady Cecilia. But this charming socialite is withholding secrets and Helen is drawn into a web of white lies and evasions that threaten not only her hopes for marriage but her very place in society.

It's then described as 'a fascinating panorama of Britain’s political and intellectual elite in the early 1800s and a gripping romantic drama.' In my opinion 'yes' to the first part of this and 'not so much' to the second. But it does highlight the main difference.

This is a book about the elite: the very rich, the very bright and the very influential. Jane Austen's characters, even D'Arcy with his however many thousands a year, are all rather middle class in comparison. They are provincial, short-sighted - and therein lies the humour and charm. Helen, on the other hand, is neither humorous nor particularly charming. It's actually rather grave, thoughtful and far-seeing. One illustration of this is that the activity the young people in Helen get excited about is medieval hawking (reproduced at enormous expense), while their peers in Highbury go strawberry picking in Mr Knightley's backgarden.

The love story between Helen and Beauclerc is not really the focus of the novel, which is the consequences of even small lies: lies for the benefit of other people's feelings, lies to save face or help avoid conflict. It examines how such a character could come into being (lack of parental involvement and bad influences) and the dire consequences of lying - the ruin of one marriage and the prevention of another.

That a wife's white lie to her husband ('I never loved anyone before you, darling') could have desperate consequences seems quaint now or at least melodramatic. But this is actually a book about the (painful) getting of wisdom and about moral courage, which will always be relevant. I certainly recognised this fault in myself:

"There are many persons in this world who, brave though they be, would rather beard a lion, sooner seize a bull by the horns, than, when they get into a dilemma, dare to ask a direct question and tell plainly what passes in their own minds. Moral courage is, believe me, uncommon in both sexes, and yet in going through the world it is equally necessary to the virtue of both men and women."

It's a good book, read it. But you can see why the marketing department chose this cover.

Other stuff:

Take a look at Helen on Amazon.
Read John Mullan on Helen in The Guardian.