Miss Austen, Adapted by Andrea Gibb

What would it have been like to grow up with Jane Austen?

Starring Keeley Hawes, Alfred Enoch, and Patsy Ferran
Distributed by BBC Studios
Episodes: 4
Not yet rated in the United States; rated U in the United Kingdom

Author’s note: This review contains spoilers.

What would it have been like to grow up with Jane Austen? How might living with her have affected her siblings’ other relationships? And why did Jane’s older sister, Cassandra, burn many of Jane’s letters long after the novelist died? The new BBC miniseries Miss Austen (based on the novel by Gil Hornby) commemorates the 250th anniversary of this remarkable author’s birth by exploring these questions. It does so from Cassandra’s perspective, presenting her life with Jane and her memories after her sister’s passing in a nuanced and touching way. Many of the show’s plot points and characters are based on real-life events and people, but the story is dramatized enough to be quite suspenseful. It’s impressive that the show manages to maintain that suspense throughout—even though much of the ending will be obvious to viewers who are both familiar with the events of Jane’s life and attentive to the hints dropped about Cassandra’s life in the first episode.

The show depicts Cassandra in two time lines. The later time line shows her as an older woman (Keeley Hawes) who’s come to help her long-dead fiancé’s niece, Isabella (Rose Leslie), cope with the death of her father and move out of her family home. In so doing, the older Cassandra finds the many letters Jane had written to Isabella’s late mother. Through reading them, Cassandra remembers the scenes we see in the earlier time line, which follows her as a young woman (Synnove Karlsen) through Jane’s early death at forty-one (Patsy Ferran). Throughout, we see Cassandra’s devotion to Jane both as a person and as an author.

Cassandra and Jane’s relationship is arguably the sweetest part of the series; the two are unfailingly supportive of and affectionate toward one another. Jane comforts Cassandra when her fiancé goes to sea to make his fortune, and she consoles her when he later dies of yellow fever. Cassandra later turns down a second marriage proposal in favor of looking after Jane and their mother (Phyllis Logan), and she supports Jane through bouts of depression and the mysterious illness that finally claims her life. Cassandra benefits from her younger sister’s honesty. For instance, Jane is willing to tell an acquaintance that she disliked a sermon they’d attended, whereas the rest of the family lied in the name of politeness. Cassandra (and the audience along with her) also delights in Jane’s wit; at one point, she quips about their mother, a hypochondriac, that “like all the best invalids, she will outlive us all.” (Sadly, the real Mrs. Austen did outlive her younger daughter, as well as her oldest son). Cassandra, in turn, is Jane’s first reader as well as her biggest fan in life and in death. She is indignant at a negative review of Emma and in her later years always focuses on the positives in her recollections of Jane with friends and family. Cassandra is portrayed as loyally carrying out Jane’s wish that she be remembered as someone who spread joy both on a personal level and through her novels. This relationship forms the emotional core of the series.

However, Cassandra’s commitment to Jane sometimes gets in the way of her own happiness, contributing to much of the show’s conflict. Most notably, we see her reject the marriage proposal of Mr. Henry Hobday (Max Irons), an intelligent, kind, handsome man the family meet while on holiday. (Mr. Hobday’s identity seems to have been largely embellished by Hornby; although the family was said to have befriended a man while on holiday whose death deeply affected Cassandra, no other details about him are known.)¹ Jane is unhappy with Cassandra’s decision; she tells her in a heated debate that although she likes living with her, they are “two separate women” who, if offered a chance at stability, wealth, and happiness, should take it. Cassandra is unswayed and remains single, although she struggles emotionally with that decision for the rest of her life.

In the later time line, she tries to show young, unmarried Isabella that happiness is possible for her even if she doesn’t marry. Coming to accept the possibility, Isabella comments that “the single life devoted to the service of others brings a kind of contentment.” Cassandra agrees, adding, “What is duty but a kind of love?” This, unfortunately, conflates what Cassandra did—choosing to give up the great joy of a happy marriage for the even greater joy of life with her genius sister—with duty, an unchosen obligation divorced from any consideration of one’s own happiness. Isabella’s comment also mixes up the idea of altruism—self-sacrificial service to others—with Cassandra’s choice to remain with her sister for the sake of her own happiness. Though duty-based altruistic ethics were certainly common at the time, this conversation is largely isolated from the rest of the show in contrast to how it otherwise portrays relationships as properly promoting one’s own happiness. Further, it doesn’t integrate with Cassandra’s or Isabella’s behavior in most other situations; they both make difficult decisions with the deliberate intention of living a happy life.

The show’s focus on Cassandra’s love for Jane and her novels is not the only way that it pays tribute to the trailblazing author. The series also contains many echoes of Jane’s stories. In the first episode, Cassandra and Mrs. Austen play matchmaker for her son, and Jane warns them not to meddle in others’ lives. This scene parallels Emma, throughout which the title character learns that such meddling is disrespectful and arrogant and that it leads to heartbreak and catastrophe. At another point in the show, the Austen girls comment on the fact that their relationship mirrors that of the two eldest Bennet sisters in Pride and Prejudice. Cassandra, like Jane Bennet, is pretty, sweet, and determined to look for the best in everyone. Jane, like Lizzie Bennet, has a sharp wit ready to ridicule any absurdity or stupidity she observes, enjoys reading, and although pretty, is not the beauty her sister is. (We do not know what the real Jane looked like because there is only a single surviving sketch of her face, which was described by contemporaries as a poor likeness.)² The show does not depend on these echoes, however; they are more like fun Easter eggs for the devoted Janeite.

Quite naturally, Miss Austen also illustrates how much Jane’s works delighted people from different walks of life. Although today we often take for granted that a good novel offers tremendous value to our lives, in the early 19th century, female authors and the very concept of a novel both were looked down on as frivolous and even dangerous to a young person’s morals.³ The series does not focus on such negative elements but on Jane’s commitment to her work and the delight that her family and readers take in it, even after she’s gone. Particularly adorable is the way the young, illiterate servant, Dinah (Mirren Mack), surreptitiously listens at the door so that she can hear Cassandra read Persuasion aloud to Isabella.

The show also encourages independence through a subplot involving Isabella in which she, with Cassandra’s encouragement, learns to stand up for herself. She plans to move in with her sister, and they go look at prospective accommodations. Isabella, who had always let her sister’s stronger personality prevail, insists against her sister’s objections that the house have a garden and a room for her to teach in so that she can continue these beloved activities even in a much smaller living situation. Learning to stand up for oneself and one’s values is an important part of being independent and is essential to living a flourishing life. By the end of the series, we are confident that Isabella will have her happy ending.

Miss Austen honors Jane’s work and her relationship with her sister while depicting the challenges that this relationship may have presented. Many of the actors give admirably expressive performances, especially leads Keeley Hawes (older Cassandra), Rose Leslie (Isabella), Patsy Ferran (Jane), and Jessica Hynes (who portrays Jane and Cassandra’s unpleasant sister-in-law, Mary). But even the minor characters, such as the elder Austens; the servant, Dinah; and Isabella’s sisters and love interest are so well played as to be distinctive and memorable. The result is a genuinely touching yet nuanced show that celebrates both achievements and strong bonds between friends and family—two of the greatest sources of joy in a rational person’s life.

1. Henrietta Easton, “Is Miss Austen True? We Sift the Fact from the Fiction in the BBC’s New Jane Austen Period Drama,” Discover Britain, February 14, 2025, https://www.discoverbritain.com/history/icons/how-accurate-is-miss-austen.

2. David Baldock, “How Melissa Dring Created Her Forensic Austen Portrait,” Jane Austen Centre, August 4, 2016, https://janeausten.co.uk/blogs/from-the-jane-austen-centre/the-jane-austen-portrait.

3. For example, James Fordyce, an influential preacher in the late 18th century, wrote in his Sermons to Young Women (mentioned in Pride and Prejudice) that novels were “in their nature so shameful, in their tendency so pestiferous, and contain such rank treason against the royalty of Virtue . . . that she who can bear to peruse them must in her soul be a prostitute.” He had not read any novels, of course. See Vic Sanborn, “Regency Circulating Libraries, and Enterprise, Part 1,” Jane Austen’s World, October 4, 2020, https://janeaustensworld.com/2020/10/04/jane-austen-regency-circulating-libraries-and-enterprise-part-1-vic-sanborn.