Catharine or the Bower by Jane Austen Completed by Leo Rockas

 

Catharine or the Bower is an incomplete juvenilia novel by Jane Austen.  I read the incomplete novel probably twenty years ago.  I was excited to read this version completed by Leo Rockas as one of the March picks for the Northwoods JASNA Book Club.

Catharine is a young orphan being raised in the country.  Her best friends are the four children of the vicar.  After the vicar’s death, they have been sent off to various locations to make their way in the world.  Mr. and Mrs. Stanley come to visit Catharine and her guardian aunt.  They have a daughter Camilla, and a handsome son Edward.  Camilla and Catharine become friends and Camilla is sure that Catharine and Edward will become a couple.  Catharine is soon visiting London as well.  Will she reunite with her friends?  Will Catharine and Edward become a couple?

Unfortunately, this short novel was hard to read through and took me longer than expected to finish.  The sentences were very long, convoluted, and hard to read.  The characters are not fully developed. Rockas tried to copy Austen’s style in this book and he continued with this type of sentence style in his section of the book.  This novel did give me an appreciation for how well Austen’s fully developed novels are written.  As she grew older and had time to edit her works, it made a great difference.  The first part that was written by Austen did show hints of her wit, and Camilla and Catharine reminded me of Isabella Thorpe and Catherine Morland from Northanger Abbey.  I loved that Lady Susan from another Austen juvenilia also was mentioned in the later part finished by Rockas.  Lady Susan is my favorite Austen juvenilia piece.  I would like to see this work fully developed by another writer to see what they do with it.

Favorite Quotes:

“She professed a love of books without reading, was lively without wit, and generally good humored without merit.”

“To suppose that a young man would be seriously attached in the course of four and twenty hours, to a girl who has nothing to recommend her but a good pair of eyes!”

Overall, Catharine or the Bower, was interesting to see how Austen developed her style over time but falls flat as a work on its own.

Book Source:  Purchased from Amazon.com