Brad Watson says
that writing Miss Jane was on
his mind for a long time because the protagonist is based on his
great-aunt. The book’s publication in 2016, though, came at a
particularly timely point, as American society was growing in awareness
that not everyone neatly fits the category of “normal” female or male.
Jane Chisolm is born in early–20th century, rural Mississippi with a
genital malformation that doesn’t yet have a name. Today it’s called
persistent cloaca, and it can be surgically corrected. Then it was
being researched, but there was no treatment. Marriage, sex, and
motherhood are denied Jane. The anomaly also causes incontinence,
subjecting her to a lifetime of diapers and the embarrassment of
telltale smells. Potential embarrassment keeps her from going to
school. As a teenager she is attracted to a neighbor boy, and he to
her, but she breaks off their relationship because of what she can’t
give him.
Watson compounds Jane’s misfortune with his depiction of her parents as
depressed, loveless antagonists. A youngest child born when her
parents thought they were through with babies, she is mostly ignored by
her bitter mother. Her father cares for Jane, but he is a closemouthed
alcoholic.
Yet Watson doesn’t portray Jane as a pitiful victim. On the contrary,
she learns to deal with her condition and lives a long, rich life. Jane
has a devoted relationship with her doctor, Ed Thompson, for her first
35 years until dies. Thompson, progressive for his time, is a steady
source of companionship and encouragement to Jane, as well as of
advocacy for a medical solution. Their tender bond is like the ideal
father-daughter relationship. It pervades the bulk of the book, since
Watson focuses on the first half of Jane’s life.
Jane is also enriched by her bond with nature. Remaining on her
parents’ farm after they die, she is keenly attuned to its flora and
fauna. She relates to nature in terms that are almost romantic —
finding the shape of some tomatoes vaguely sexual, a peacock’s cry a
lullaby, the behavior of chickens and pigs comical.
Miss Jane is a very inspiring
book. For those who think they must have this or that to be fulfilled,
the novel shows the possibility of taking what you’re given and making
a meaningful life.
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