Growing Up Jane
By Sara Mountjoy-Pepka
I wish I could remember the exact moment I first read Jane. I cannot. I can say it was somewhere in late middle school or early high school, when I was consuming every book in the house I grew up in — my grandmother’s crumbling beach house, inherited from her second husband who was a WWII vet, inherited from his mother who was an award-winning gardener and married to a WWI vet, purchased from a sea captain who sailed around the world in the early 1900’s and married a Hawaiian princess and settled in the woods of the Key Peninsula on the Puget Sound in Western Washington, where he built this three-story treasure trove. So by the time we moved in when I was six years old, desperate and grateful for the mossy roof over our heads and competing with the mice for claimed territory, this house was already filled to the ceilings with exquisite vintage clothing and antique furniture, military trunks stuffed with forgotten history, and thousands of books purchased by various owners, from completely outdated anthropology to the old classic adventure stories, all in musty, moldy bindings. It was difficult to keep anything from molding, between the excessive rain and the ancient walls.
And I know exactly what the book looks like because it’s still the complete works volume I read from today: a plain maroon hardback (no dust cover, as long as I’ve known it), with a cover bound upside-down to the pages… or the pages placed upside-down to the cover (I don’t know how publishing works, but when I am reading it in public, it appears as if I’m completely looney). This book has moved with me from frigid autumns at the beach house to icy winters in Chicago to drizzly springs in Seattle to year-round barely bearable heatwaves of Los Angeles. It still slightly smells of the Key Peninsula and that house. When I pick up this book, for a moment I am home again, the sound of the waves and seagulls and the wind in the maples and willows and pines and that musty scent of beloved decay that will always be home for me no matter where else I live for the rest of my life.
So somewhere in there, I began reading Jane. I was a lonely kid, and spending time with friends was not a significant part of this time in my life, not because I didn’t have them (sometimes I didn’t), but because coordinating it outside of school seemed like an undue burden on my struggling parents. I started with Pride and Prejudice (probably thanks to Wishbone, bless him). Then Sense and Sensibility. Repeat. Repeat. I come from a family who fixates rather than discovers new things. Lizzie wasn’t wealthy but she was smart, and Elinore and Marianne were living off the charity of kind relatives, similarly displaced in someone else’s home. The isolation of their rural worlds were intimate and familiar, and I could look out my spattered window at grey skies and whipping branches and truly believe I was Marianne: agitated, artistic, and full of thoughts but no one to whom I could direct them. The agonizing love stories spoke to my teenage longing for a boy named Tim, and then a boy named Travis, both of whom I could not engage with due to the societal constraints of my strict Christian upbringing and momentous awkwardness. Jane’s language felt confusing and odd, but I was curious and had no other distractions.
My junior and senior years of college, more lonely years, but I had moved there with my book. I met Emma (though I did not like her, rich and superior). I traveled to Northanger Abbey (Catherine’s poor choices still make me uncomfortable, and I dread the early chapters) and Mansfield Park (Fanny became my new favorite for nearly a decade before I loyally returned to Lizzie). Repeat. Repeat. Tim and Travis had long been replaced by Colin Firth, and I watched him smolder in the corner at Jennifer Ehle at the end of every semester to celebrate being done with finals. I began adapting comedic, full-body, multiple-character clown audition pieces out of Catherine’s fateful carriage ride, though I still did not know whether to use a hard or soft “g” when pronouncing the title. In my late 20’s, I matured into Persuasion, and wondered why I had waited so long.
Jane has spoken to me, for me, for nearly three decades of my life. When I read her today, I am amazed by her double-take comedy, which stands unrivaled in my mind to any other author (except, perhaps, David James Duncan), and I am still catching new moments of commentary every time I read her. Like Shakespeare, her writing has incredible depth and I do not claim to understand it all at once. On a personal level, for me, there is no time that isn’t ripe for Jane, no time that I would not be excited to direct Jane. But of course, as a theater company, we must holistically ask what our audiences want and need as well, and ask ourselves why this story, why now. And here is my answer for that:
Jane deserved more recognition than she ever received while living, and she had more stories to tell than her life had years to tell them. And, she was an exception to her gender in that her voice actually managed to break through… Most women of her day, and ours, are not so lucky. We are still on the historical incline, struggling to find our way to an era when women’s voices, women’s stories, women’s spirits hold the same space in our narratives as men, and I love celebrating this woman who beat the odds in her own way. I love what she does to our storytelling: Jane demands her women be placed at the center of their own lives, more so than many contemporary authors do for their heroines, or many real-life women are able to do for themselves today. But in case I am making this sound burdensome, I will say again: Jane’s comedy and tactics to make us yearn for love are exquisite. And ultimately, that is why I am so excited to be directing this show right now, after two (six, actually) of the darkest years we have collectively faced. Not because I believe she’s the only way for us to achieve parity on the stage, but because I can say confidently: Jane will help you believe in happy endings again. She will renew your hope that decency is a virtue. She will make you laugh.
And don’t you need a good laugh right now? I certainly do.
