Traveling To Infinity by Jane Hawking
Traveling To Infinity
by Jane Hawking
Alma Books LTD
ISBN: 978-1846883477
487 p.p.
Walking through the library, I stumbled upon Jane Hawking’s book Traveling To Infinity. I knew very little about her and Stephen Hawking’s personal life, though both being very famous figures. I knew I wanted to learn more.
Hawking's book begins with a brief encounter between her and Stephen as young adults, described sweetly and briefly. It was fascinating how quickly Jane began to tell her love story and claimed the story for herself. Even though she was writing about her life with the infamous Stephen Hawking, her personal life was the central focus of the book. This was surprising since I half-expected her book to be fully centered on her marriage and love life, but it was (applaudingly) so much more than that.
Many things struck me about the narrative, especially when describing life for women in the 1960s and 70s. In one of her chapters, Hawking described a time in college when her and Stephen were making plans to get married and she had to ask for permission to attend school. I found this so shocking that I read the passage several times. Essentially, Jane had to ask her professors and academic counselors for permission to receive an education, and the only reason she was granted permission was because of Stephen’s disability:
I took a deep breath and did my best to explain my relationship with Stephen, his illness, the prognosis and our plans to make the most of whatever time we had left to us. She never took her eyes off me and betrayed very little emotion. When she heard my tale through without interruption, she came straight to the point. “Well of course, if you marry, you will have to live out of College, you understand that don’t you?”. My heart lifted slightly…
I couldn’t help but wonder why would Jane not be able to live at school if she was married? What is so awful about a woman being married while continuing to attend school? I kept reading and found many similar passages, but cheered Jane on each time because she kept finding ways to continue her studies and juggle a personal life.
As for her life with Stephen Hawking... her descriptions of their life together is every bit sweet as it is heart-breaking. A Times review stated, “Stephen Hawking may think in 11 dimensions, but his first wife has learnt to love in several,” and the book is witness to how evident this is. As Stephen’s illness developed, Jane also struggled. They wanted a family and nothing more than to be together for as long as they could. They believed Stephen’s disease would kill him in two years and nobody thought he would continue to live a very full life. Still, Jane kept moving forward and didn’t believe she would lose her husband to “an inexorable Siren, luring devotees into deep pools of obsession. She was none other than Physics, cited by Einstein’s first wife as the correspondent in divorce proceedings.”
Jane describes how much of her husband’s focus was on his studies in science and how he would diminish her academic study in literature. Not everything was as it appeared in the popular film adaptation of the book The Theory of Everything. Jane and Stephen both had difficult tasks to deal with and both had good and bad ways to deal with all of their problems. Hawking more than excels in putting into words her personal world, the world at large, and the painful memories of her dissolving marriage, painting in such vivid details and sometimes painful honesty.
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Jane Hawking was married to Stephen Hawking for over twenty-five years. Her book At Home in France was published in 1994, followed by Music to Move the Stars in 1999. She teaches Modern Languages in Cambridge and is also a keen solo and choral singer.
