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Colleen McCullough ... much like the heroine she creates in Mary Bennet — intelligent, eccentric, and underwhelmed by what people might think or say.

Photo: Gloria Bruni

Colleen McCullough, The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

(Angus & Robertson; 480pp hardback; $49.99)

Is it brave or foolish to write a story with your main character taken from one of the best known and loved works by Jane Austen — Pride and Prejudice? Perhaps it is just shrewd. Whatever, the whole Bennet clan — family and friends ‚ are present and centre in The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet, a ‘sequel’ to Austen’s 19th-century English novel.

It is inevitable that comparisons will be made to the great novelist and they will not all be kind, but I don’t think writer Colleen McCullough will care. I suspect she is much like the heroine she creates in Mary Bennet — intelligent, eccentric, and underwhelmed by what people might think or say.

McCullough’s description of a childhood where her parents always tried to pull her nose out from books, and with a mother she describes as “bitterly anti-intellectual” (The Sun-Herald 28/09/08 Extra p12) suggests an identification with Mary Bennet and may cast light on her choice of this particular subject for her work.

As the title suggests, the book deals with the liberation of Mary after years of spinster devotion to her designated family responsibility — the care of her frivolous and vacuous mother. Mrs Bennet’s care for 17 years would be enough to test out anyone, so to retain sanity and satisfy her natural intelligence, Mary has apparently read her way through a sizeable library of most unsuitable books for women.

So unsuitable that she has developed individual thoughts, independent ideas, a questioning nature and a social conscience. Truly shocking.

Unfortunately her sheltered life experience has meant she has not developed much commonsense. So after the death of her mother, Mary’s decision to set off alone to the North — on public conveyances, to investigate the exploitation of the poor, with gold guineas loose in her purse, but nothing to indicate her social standing (which seems to have mattered in those days) — well, it was bound to be a troublesome course of action.

A lot happens — including the capture of Mary by a religious, woman-hating fanatic who heads a Children of Jesus sect — nothing changes. In true Historical Romance style, all is resolved happily. And that includes the side stories of Mary and Angus’s courtship, Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage, Charlie’s alleged devotion to Socratic love — etc, etc, and so on.

McCullough admits she did not do a lot of research for this book, and it does show. I can imagine that scholars of Literature who decide to take it seriously will be horrified at inconsistencies in language, manners and social customs, but all that is just academic.

For those who take the novel as it is and just want an entertaining read, none of that debate will matter at all. Enjoy.