Musing on Aunts

 

The incomparable Aunt Jane.

Perhaps the last card that 
my sister sent to me.
A lovely Quentin Blake.

I was over at my niece’s house last Sunday with my daughter, my nephew and his family, and obviously, the hosts, my niece, husband and son. Their mother, my sister, my best friend, died just over a year ago and I was musing silently and sadly on her absence; she is much missed as a mother, sister and aunt. And it was later that day that I idly started to consider the role of an auntie! My sister and I were always close friends and filled our separate auntie roles probably without much conscious thought. It was just part of who we were. I am, too, a mother and grandmother, but aunt is also a valued relationship. An aunt can be a combination of almost-mother and friend to whom one might turn for advice or for family news or making memories or undertaking joint activities.

As a Jane Austen fan, I remember a letter of hers, written in 1815, on October 30th^, to her niece, Caroline.

A sample of Jane's writing in 
part of a list she made of her
novels' titles. 1814.

"Now that you are become an Aunt, you are a person of some consequence & must excite Interest whatever You do. I have always maintained the importance of Aunts as much as possible, & I am sure of your doing the same now. --- Beleive me my dear Sister-Aunt.”

And in another letter to another niece, Anna, written in November 1814, Jane is commenting on an early draft of a novel by Anna:

"His having been in love with the aunt gives Cecilia an additional interest with him. I like the idea --- a very proper compliment to an aunt! I rather imagine indeed that nieces are seldom chosen but out of compliment to some aunt or another. I daresay Ben [Anna's husband] was in love with me once and would never have thought of you if he had not supposed me dead of scarlet fever."

Letters of Jane Austen. Brabourne Edition.

Jane was aunt to over 30 nieces and nephews and James Edward Austen Leigh wrote the first of many biographies of her. 

"Though in the course of fifty years, I have forgotten much, I have not forgotten that Aunt Jane was the delight of all her nephews and nieces. We did not think of her as being clever, still less as being famous but we valued her as one always kind, sympathising and amusing."

Aunting: surely an Americanism!

Social science researchers, Laura Ellington and Patricia Sotirin, have published a paper on Aunting and the Cultural Practices That Sustain Family And Community Life in which, intriguingly, they move the word Aunt from noun to verb. They suggest that there are different paths to being an aunt; biology, marriage, circumstance, or choice, and there are lots of different ways of ‘doing aunting’; the fact that there is some discussion and research happening around a long-stereotyped role is, at least, a sign of change. They see today’s explorations of aunt-hood as part of a broader re-evaluation of the role of women in society. In fact, because aunts are unencumbered by a defined role or by the social pressure on parents, they have more freedom to “take us off into other directions, show us what else could be”; they can take on a normative maternal role if they choose or they can “liberate us from ideas about family relationships that hold us back, that don’t reflect the realities of how we actually live.” For Ellington and Sotirin aunts, whether mothers themselves or not, are “sort of leading the way in terms of opening up not only what women can become, but how families can change and what it means to be part of communities.”

While they acknowledge that for some women, to have to remain childless is very painful, a contributor declares that she would give a “very robust” response to anyone who asked her whether she was sad to be ‘only’ an aunt. “I wouldn’t say, if anyone saw me, my lifestyle, my relationship with the kids, that they would feel any sense of pity,” she says. Instead, her experiences of aunt-hood – as confidante and cheerleader for her brother’s children – have made her a firm “advocate for an auntie role.”

Beloved Aunty Lily with her sister Jane,
also loved but treated warily! 1965.

Thus far, thus positive. The experience of my sisters and me with one particular aunt, darling Aunty Lily, completely shaped our view of that role. OUR Aunty Lily pretty well walked on water; always there when needed, always approving, always modest and yet deeply interested in our self-focussed little lives. She had a dependably calm and sweet personality and, though we never noticed the fact, never asked anything in return for herself. Although now I see that what she did appreciate, I am sure, was our uncritical and endless adoration. She knew that she was very important indeed, in our lives and she somehow, brought out the best in us. When we had grown up, when my own children were growing up, Lily always came to stay for at least a week over Christmas, always bringing a choice bouquet of [for me then, unaffordable] huge yellow show chrysanthemums to decorate the hallway. From a small income, she saved up to buy them every year from a retired miner neighbour who lavished love and protective brown paper bags over the emerging blooms, as his chief hobby. Beloved Aunty Lily died in 1997 just days before her 90th, I miss her still and remember strongly all that she meant to me.

On the other hand, the incomparable P. G. Wodehouse either invented, or experienced, a terrifying breed of aunts as outlined below:

                                                                     1885-1975

                       A comic genius, with much of his work set in the Twenties and Thirties.

“Aunt Agatha is like an elephant ---not so much to look at, for in appearance she resembles a well-bred vulture, but because she never forgets.”  "My Aunt Agatha, the curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all”.

“My Aunt Agatha, for instance, is tall and thin and looks rather like a vulture in the Gobi Desert, while Aunt Dahlia is short and solid, like a scrum half in the game of Rugby football. In disposition too, they differ widely. Aunt Agatha is cold and haughty, though presumably unbending a bit when conducting sacrifices at the time of the full moon, as she is widely rumoured to do, and her attitude towards me has always been that of an austere governess, causing me to feel as if I were six years old and she had just caught me stealing jam from the jam cupboard: whereas Aunt Dahlia is as jovial and bonhomous as a dame in a Christmas pantomime."  Although,  ”It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them!”

AND I have just discovered that the splendid Wodehouse actually wrote a book entitled, “Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.” A 1974 Jeeves and Wooster story which I must read!

What potentially interesting Aunting/haunting lives the Wodehouse family must have enjoyed!

P.G.Wodehouse in 1930 age 48.

Q.E.D.