“But once the breakup happened, things absolutely exploded. She is proud of the way she and Stephen and Jonathan kept their lives on an even track for so long. In real life, as in the film, Jane says there is no doubt that Timothy is Stephen’s child, not Jonathan’s. So the formal split in the Hawkings’ marriage didn’t come until the early 1990s, by which time the oldest children were in their late teens and 20s and the youngest late addition, Timothy, was 10. We were both very lonely people, and then we found one another.” “What brought us together,” says Jane, “was loneliness. He had been widowed a couple of years before they met. In real life, as in the film, Jonathan became part of the family, sharing the workload of caring for Stephen with Jane, and helping bring up the children. I wanted him to carry on doing his amazing work, and I wanted the children to have a stable family behind them – so we just carried on.” I felt very committed to Stephen, and I didn’t think he could manage without me. “There was no alternative to just carrying on. Why did they carry on for so long, even after she had met Jonathan and become close to him? She says it never felt like a choice: she loved Jonathan and depended on him for support, but she absolutely loved Stephen as well. This is an episode of their lives Jane is reluctant to rake over, although it was this relationship that tipped the Hawkings into splitting up, rather than her relationship with Jonathan. One of those nurses, Elaine Mason, went on to become his second wife, though the two later divorced. “They whispered about us and they undermined me,” says Jane. But the stresses of MND were not solely or even mostly down to the physical difficulties of the condition what brought even greater disruption to their lives was the advent of the carers who shared their home, who disapproved of aspects of their lives, and whose presence meant they could never have the privacy that every family needs to thrive. And, though he tried to explain physics to her, she always felt shut out of the world that was so crucial to him. ”ĭuring their marriage, she says, Stephen would retreat into himself. Mrs Einstein, you know, cited physics as a difference for her divorce. If you took out motor neurone disease, you are still left with physics. “Stephen and me, motor neurone disease and physics. “The truth was, there were four partners in our marriage,” says Jane. “Stephen’s mother once said to me, ‘We don’t like you because you don’t fit into our family.’” On another occasion she learned by chance that the Hawkings were planning to move to Cambridge so they could be there when the marriage foundered, as they were sure it eventually would.īut it wasn’t just about a lack of support from the wider family. From the outset, Stephen’s “eccentric” family made no secret of the fact that they didn’t think the marriage would survive. How much were the demands on their marriage the product of Stephen’s disease – without it, might they still be married today? Jane isn’t sure: although his health was a huge strain, there were others. Jane, though, was isolated and overwrought. The Hawkings, then parents of two young children, were living in Cambridge, where he was garnering a reputation as one of the most glittering scientists of his generation. Jane met Jonathan when, to give her a break from the constant demands of caring for Stephen, a friend suggested she should take up singing in the local church choir, run by Jonathan. The only thing is that they’ve had to minimise the strains and struggles, because in our real life the difficulties of dealing with Stephen’s disease were much greater than they appear in the film.”Īnd, yes, the impression given in the film that she and Stephen managed to split up without too much acrimony – and that Jane’s new partner and now husband, musician Jonathan Hellyer Jones, became part of their immediate family – is indeed an accurate one (although for a long time after they met, their relationship was platonic). So from an emotional point of view, it’s spot on. “The important thing is that the feelings, where they are there, are very much true to our experiences. In the face of pressures that were almost too much to bear, and alongside her friendship with another man, they somehow kept their marriage together for a quarter of a century before ending it with a remarkable degree of equanimity.ĭoes the film present an accurate portrait of their marriage, which began at Trinity Hall in Cambridge in 1965? They ploughed into marriage in the face of his parents’ pessimism about its chances of success, and had three children. Her relationship with Stephen started when both refused to be daunted by the fact that Stephen had just been diagnosed with terminal motor neurone disease. Jane Hawking: ‘The difficulties of dealing with Stephen’s disease were much greater than they appear in the film.’
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