Is her parents marriage the ideal relationship, the kind of old-fashioned marriage which today seems unattainable?
A. I don’t think it’s ideal. I think it probably worked in its time. One of the problems that Jane has is that, from the outside, the marriage looks really appealing in some ways. Her parents love each other and have been together a long time. But what worked for her mother would not work for her. Yes, they seem to have a good marriage but what lesson can Jane learn from that? She’s not going to be happy accommodating a man the way her mother accommodates her father. In the age in which Jane grew up, people said creative work was the most important thing, but at the same time they sort of said, ‘Every woman who’s a real woman knows that her job is to please her man.’ It’s all the harder because there isn’t really a role model in the form of a relationship. If she tried to follow her mother’s role model it would mean putting dinner on the table at 6 o’clock every night. Q. Is loss – of parents, childhood, innocence, health – an important theme in the book? A. Yes, it’s about surviving l
