| PERSUASIONS ON-LINE V.27, NO.1 (Winter 2006) Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy: Stories LINDA ROBINSON WALKER Linda Robinson Walker (email: lrwalker@comcast.net University of Iowa B.A., University of Michigan M.S.W., is a freelance writer and the author of Why Was Jane Austen Sent Away to School at Seven? An Empirical Look at a Vexing Question , published in Persuasions On-Line (Winter 2005). During a festive four-week period over Christmas and New Years, 1795-1796, Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy, both just twenty, met, talked, laughed, danced, and then parted. Was it only a giddy flirtation or did they fall in love? Biographers rely on two sources of information for answering that question: the letters that Jane wrote her sister Cassandra at the time, and subsequent events that involved Jane and Tom. If we rely on the letters themselves we might concludedue to Austens use of a flippant, adolescent language of romancethat it was only a light-hearted affair (Cecil 70). But recent discoveries suggest that the couple had a longer relationship and that Janes feelings were deeply engaged (Radovici 8-10, Spence 98-99). In light of new evidence of the intensity of their bond, the tone of the letters seems perplexing until one realizes that Austen employed many of the phrases and situations she had invented in 1792 when she was sixteen and writing Catharine, or the Bower. | |
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