Season 55 - Miss Austen (2025)
If there's one thing Janeites can agree on since time immemorial, or since fans of Jane Austen agreed on a moniker, that one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of Jane's life is why her sister Cassandra burned practically all of Jane's letters. Of all the letters Jane wrote in her lifetime only 160 remain. What was in those letters that Cassandra deemed necessary to expunge? I mean, one of the surviving letters is Jane getting blind drunk and puking, so, why'd Cassandra do it!?! In fact, most Janeites, if given a chance to change one aspect of the history surrounding Jane, would probably choose for the phoenix-like return of the letters, while I personally would have liked Jane to have lived long enough to finish Sanditon so that she'd have written seven novels instead of six. At least she wrote more books than Jack the Ripper had victims. Why am I bringing up Jack the Ripper while discussing Jane Austen's letters? Because it is another of life's mysteries that will forever remain unsolved. Unless the premise to Anthony Horowitz's show Crime Traveller becomes a reality that is. Miss Austen is a bittersweet story of family connections and sisterly love that involves Cassandra Austen going to attend the deathbed of family friend Reverend Fowle, who, if fate had been kinder, would have been Cassandra's brother-in-law. Whilst helping the Reverend's daughter Isabella dismantle the household on the Reverend's death Cassandra hopes to find her sister Jane's letters to Isabella's mother Eliza who was Jane's dearest friend. But it is not an easy task with Eliza's sister Mary, who is also Cassandra's sister-in-law, on the hunt for the letters. What follows is a dreamlike rumination of the past and present and what you are willing to sacrifice for love and will that sacrifice be worth it in your dying days. Here we see Cassandra as a driving force. She was Jane's dearest friend and confidant but she also acted as a midwife to Jane's books. This posits that she turned away from a traditional life because she knew she had a greater purpose. The love of Cassandra's life wasn't Tom Fowle, it was Jane. Cassandra was the shepherd and the champion of Jane. In a scene where she starts to place Jane's books on their bookshelf, it isn't just Jane's legacy, it's their legacy. And when Jane dies it's up to Cassandra to protect that legacy. She was Jane's secret keeper and Jane wanted no one to see the darker side of her. The bleak thoughts and the moments of despair. She wanted to be remembered for her work. Work she published anonymously while alive, though don't read too much into that because it was the convention more than anything else. And historically it must be remembered that Frances Burney was viewed as an author equal to Jane but when her letters were published they overshadowed her works. Perhaps Cassandra didn't want this for her beloved sister. Let the work Jane wanted to share with the world be that by which she is known. And only that. And by the end of Miss Austen after crying your way through Jane's death you are so emotionally raw you will believe anything. Of course Cassandra had to do this. It's what Jane would have wanted. But then, later, once you've recovered, you realize that we're not talking about a few letters taken from a vicarage, we're talking about the destruction of approximately three thousand letters. The scale isn't taken into consideration here. So while emotionally I fully want to believe Gill Hornby's suppositions, the logical part of my brain says that this wholesale destruction must mean something more. Something we will never know.
The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
