Helen Moffett

Helen Moffett is a writer and editor. She worked on the late Cricket guru Bob Woolmer's Art and Science of Cricket as well as several other high profile projects. Helen's latest novel Charlotte takes the character of Charlotte Lucas from Pride and Prejudice and reimagines her life after her marriage to the clergyman Mr Collins. It is published by Manilla Press on 3rd September, £14.99 or you can order it from the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.

Who were your literary heroes and heroines as you were growing up?

My parents gave me Persuasion as a birthday present when I was about ten or eleven, and I loved Anne Eliot, who remains my favourite Austen heroine to this day. I also had a bit of a crush on Captain Wentworth -- today I think he needs taking down a peg or two! I was equally crazy about the characters/figures in the Arthurian legends, and absolutely intrigued by the characters in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (funny that all these years later, as a South African, I ended up writing about an English country house -- Pemberley).

But many of my fictional heroes/heroines were actually animals: Flicka and Thunderhead in Mary O'Hara's Wyoming series, Thowra and Baringa in Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby series. I managed to sneak a horse as a character into Charlotte -- Dobbin is based on an actual Friesan horse I used to ride, a huge and gentle fellow who belonged to the horror writer Sarah Lotz, then my neighbour in Cape Town.

As a Cricket fan I have to ask how did you find working with Bob Woolmer on his Art and Science of Cricket?

Bob was magic. He was a truly great cricketer, but an even greater teacher: he was absolutely passionate about coaching, and he never lost that spark of enthusiasm when teaching a stroke, analysing a technical flaw, trying out innovations. He'd talk to me in his office at home, a photo of Brian Lara playing a hook shot off one leg that read "Teach that, Coach!" on the wall. He'd get so enthusiastic as he spoke, he would jump out of his chair and wave a bat around. He was thoroughly decent, trustworthy, dependable and a real family man: not always common in international sportsmen of the time.

It was such an incredible privilege and opportunity for me to work on that book -- many male sports journos were outraged that a woman had got the job. But it didn't even seem to occur to Bob that my gender might be a barrier to me ghostwriting a major book on cricket.

Your latest book Charlotte is about Charlotte Lucas from Pride and Prejudice. Charlotte is generally regarded as the poor lady with no prospects who marries the unfortunate Mr Collins. Did you feel a duty to rescue her literary reputation?

I always felt that both P&P's Lizzy Bennet and general opinion were too hard on Charlotte's decision to accept Mr Collins's proposal. This was pointed out to me by my university lecturer, Jeanne Heywood. She insisted that Charlotte was shrewd rather than self-serving; she showed real gumption in jumping at her only chance of marriage, and that in rolling up her sleeves and making a decent, well-ordered life for her new husband, she showed courage and integrity.

I think growing up in South Africa, not only a racist but also a sexist society, where married women were effectively legal minors until the late 1980s, I had known many women who saw no future for themselves beyond marriage to a man who would support them. I belong to a generation of South African women that pretty much had to choose between marriage and a career, so something about Charlotte's plight struck a chord. 4.

When you were writing Charlotte did you feel you had the freedom to take the characters in your own direction or were you constrained by the original material and people's expectations?

At first I was very nervous of deviating from the original. I revered Jane Austen and didn't want to take liberties! The original manuscript (much altered later on) was very closely modelled on Pride & Prejudice, but told from Charlotte's perspective. And yet some of the main story lines -- the love and the loss she experiences -- were there from the beginning. They seemed audacious, but they would not go away. So I took the risks, knowing I would offend some folk. It did help having read other Austen sequels and modern interpretations, including the more spoofy ones.

Why do you think Jane Austen's work still resonates with readers hundreds of years later?

They offer all the “escapism” of historical novels, a route into a past that looks attractive and peaceful from our perspective -- all those demure bonnets and strolls in the park, but there’s so much more. In truth, Austen's concerns are very contemporary, especially if we consider the economic and legal standing of women around the globe. Nowadays we think that someone like Charlotte, instead of depending entirely on marriage for a roof over her head, could learn a trade or get an education and go get a job, so that she could least enjoy economic independence. But looking around the world and even our own communities, these are still impossible goals for many women.

Jane Austen’s novels are hugely popular with readers all over anglophone Africa and the subcontinent, for instance, precisely because the issues she deals with are so pressing in societies where women are under huge cultural and social pressure to marry for financial security and family obligation. So she plugs into real, if often hidden, practical dilemmas, at the same time on insisting on the most potent fairy tale of all: that a man will alter his entire personality and behaviour for love, even when there is no hope of his affection being returned. 6

Is there anything you can tell us about your latest project?

My next historical novel is set in PreRaphaelite times and circles (Britain in the mid-nineteenth century), and so far it features Charlotte's eldest daughter, Sarah, and her adventures in this Bohemian set. I'm weaving other myths and legends in as well, rather the same way the PreRaphaelites themselves turned to the Arthurian and other medieval legends, along with Greek and Middle Eastern mythology.

Can you recommend a book that you have read recently?

I've found that both the pandemic lockdown, and the experience of having long-haul Covid-19, really messed with my ability to read, and the first book I was able to cope with while recovering was Marian Keyes's Grown Ups. Reading her novels is like eating hot buttered toast -- so comforting. But I recently read Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, and it's magnificent. Her writing is hypnotic. As I'm fascinated with the reinterpretation of legends and classics, I was so impressed by her take on the Iliad, and the power of the love story. I'm about to read her Circe.

Can you tell us one thing about yourself that your readers may not know?

I was going to say that I'm the doting parent of a three-legged rescue cat named Boychik, then I realised anyone who follows me on Twitter (@heckitty) will know this! So: I live off the water grid, using mostly spring, rain and well water, which makes me feel a bit like Granny Weatherwax in the Terry Pratchett novels (my kombucha scoby is named Esme); and I make terrific vegan stock paste. The recipe, along with lots of other things, including more about Charlotte, is on my website: https://www.helenmoffett.com/