Henry’s mythology of perfection: the troublesome biographical notice

Jane Austen’s family, after her death and under the influence of her renewed popularity during the Victorian era, went to some lengths to rewrite her personality into a more acceptable, more consumable form. Under their auspices, Austen was refashioned as a typical Victorian ‘angel of the hearth’ and even her portrait was made prettier. I believe we lose something of the real person Jane Austen was if we unquestioningly accept this remaking. If Austen can be said to have made her womanly self into an author, then her family certainly unpicked the author and remade her into the acceptable female. And while it may seem unfair to begin by critiquing what is essentially Austen’s epitaph, this re-writing of the real person certainly began with well-intentioned Henry. Henry Austen’s biographical notice of his sister Jane is dated 13 December 1817, just a week before she would have turned 42, and it prefaced the posthumous publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in that month. It is ultimately fictional, and Austen's own writings confirm that Henry was creating a myth of the perfect female.