Miss Austen

I kept having the feeling reading Gill Hornby's Miss Austen (#895) that I was reading one of Jane's delectable novels.  The eponymous Miss Austen here however, is not Jane, but her older sister and beloved companion Cassandra.

If you are a Jane Austen fan, you may be familiar with some of the elements of the Austens' lives; that Cassandra was engaged to a young clergyman who was lost at sea and never afterwards married, that Jane herself was once briefly engaged to a neighbor, and that the Austen women lost a permanent home after the Reverend Austen retired from his parish.  With his income and pension to sustain them, they lived a comfortable enough life, moving from lodgings to lodgings.  When he died, so did his income.  Just like the heroines of Jane's novels, the women were forced to rely mainly on the charity of their friends and neighbors for their bed and board.

Miss Austen imagines the task Cassandra takes upon herself many years later to recover and destroy a cache of letters written by herself and her sister Jane to Eliza Fowle, a dear friend who would have been Cassy's sister-in-law had Tom not died in the West Indies.  She wants above all else to preserve Jane's reputation by doing so.  Re-reading those letters from the vantage point of 1840, Cassandra is able to come to terms with the events and patterns of their lives, while still striving to influence the lives of the Fowles for the best.

It is easy to draw comparisons to Sense and Sensibility, to Persuasion and to Emma here, and to imagine what keen observations Jane drew from those around her maneuvering through society to the best of their abilities.  Jane Austen herself would be proud.