Aunts have always had a place close to my heart. Long before I was one, they were some of my favourite characters in fiction; a diverse array of extraordinary women – some strict and forbidding, others supportive and comforting and others – always my favourites – riotously glamorous, with a healthy disrespect for rules, regulations and societal norms. Aunts came to prominence in Victorian fiction, opening it to unconventional and vibrant female characters who broke with the maternal norm. Often widowed – or determinedly unmarried – fictional aunts, from Austen and Greene to Wodehouse and JK Rowling, are determined to carve out a life that is uniquely theirs, and while often childless, tend to be deeply involved with nieces and nephews.
Each of my novels has had a strong aunt figure at the heart of the narrative, but the wartime setting of The Enemy of Love created an opportunity to create a true doyenne in Elena Capaldi. Famous cook, matriarch and local star, along with managing the family trattoria, and keeping her sons and grandsons in check, she also fulfils the “great-aunt” role for Sophia. She is both an inspiration for how to live outside the restrictions of Mussolini’s Italy and a supporter and guide through the darkness of war. Irascible and indomitable, she was an absolute joy to write, much as the aunts below are a delight to read.
1. Betsey Trotwood in David Copperfield
Great-aunt to David Copperfield, Betsey is a complex character whose hardness – often tempered with displays of surprising tenderness – is a striking portrayal of the difficulties faced by an independent woman in Victorian England. Embittered by a disastrous marriage, her opinion of men softens when she takes in the young Copperfield, putting him through school and lending advice and support into adulthood. A keen supporter of women’s rights, she is one of Dickens’s strongest female characters.
2. Aunts Dahlia and Agatha in the Jeeves and Wooster stories by PG Wodehouse
“Aged A” is the familial abbreviation for the less forgiving of Bertie Wooster’s two aunts, the fearsome Agatha, whose life work is to see him married off. Dahlia is the one to watch; proprietor of a woman’s newspaper, Milady’s Boudoir, praised for her “general good-eggishness”, and generally happy to be involved in Bertie’s schemes, particularly if they involve light burglary or blackmail. Both were inspired by Wodehouse’s own aunts, with whom he spent much of his childhood while his parents were in Hong Kong.
3. Aunt Augusta in Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
The aunt that all others should aspire to, Greene’s Aunt Augusta whisks away her uptight nephew, Henry Pulling, after his mother’s funeral, catapulting him into a world of glamorous destinations and a gloriously motley crew of characters. With a pleasing disregard for laws and a habit of getting into all manner of scrapes (which she always charms her way out of), she is one of Greene’s most memorable characters.
4. Aunt Al in the Sophie series by Dick King-Smith
Dick King-Smith’s much-loved books about a young girl who dreams of being a farmer are enlivened by the presence of her best friend, great-aunt Al, who shares her love of animals and no-nonsense attitude to life. Al dies in the final book, but her decision to bequeath her farm to Sophie herself, makes that long-held wish a reality.
5. Aunt March in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Never quite as hard-hearted as she likes to make out, Aunt March is a rich widow who disapproves of her daughter-in-law’s charitable work and the amiable poverty in which she and her four daughters live. But in spite of her disapproval she brings spectacular changes to two of the girls’ lives.
6. Auntie Mame in An Irreverent Escapade by Patrick Dennis
A runaway bestseller when it was published in the 1950s, this story of an orphaned boy, Patrick, sent to live with his glamorous, eccentric aunt in Manhattan is still enormous fun. Mame provides Patrick with a flamboyant upbringing, filled with parties and exotic friends, before he is sent to boarding school. Separated for years, Mame returns to Patrick’s life as an adult, rescuing him from a prospective unhappy marriage by revealing the antisemitism in his wife-to-be’s family.
7. Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Representing the less sympathetic side of the auntie canon, Lady Catherine – aunt to Mr Darcy – is a towering snob, concerned primarily with propriety and social class. Convinced Elizabeth Bennet is an unsuitable match, she does everything she can to keep them from marrying – although ironically, her efforts to keep them apart are part of what draws them together. The ultimate proof that aunts, of whatever kind, all work for good in the end.
8. Aunt Agatha in the Poldark series by Winston Graham
Aunts often tend to know where the bodies are buried, and this is particularly true of Aunt Agatha, grand dame of the Poldark clan. Supporter of Ross, a defiant opponent of George Warleggan and with a tendency to pretend deafness – thus enabling her to pick up all manner of secrets and double-dealing – at her funeral Ross calls her “a most beloved aunt”.
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9. Aunts Spiker and Sponge in James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
James is forced to live with his two ghastly aunts when his parents are eaten by a rhinoceros. Prime examples of aunts at their most cruel and unusual, the two meet a fitting end when – having tried to make a profit by selling tickets for tourists to come and see the giant peach – it eventually ends up crushing them both to death. A rare example of aunts with no redeeming features.
10. Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling
Almost as unsympathetic as Spiker and Sponge, Aunt Petunia embodies the joyless, conventional life of a muggle – in spite of her sister – Harry’s mother – being gifted with extraordinary magical powers. Petunia slots into the wicked stepmother category of aunts, whose unloving and uninterested behaviour only spurs our hero on to the greatness she thinks him so incapable of. Proving once again, then, that even an evil aunt is better than no aunt at all.
