Miss Austen - BBC1

[witchycat2]

All episodes are now up on iplayer. It airs weekly on Sunday at 9:05pm from tonight.

I love a period drama. I've watched the first episode on iplayer and liking it so far.

Synopsis below from BBC:

Miss Austen takes a literary mystery – Cassandra Austen notoriously burning her famous sister Jane’s letters – and reimagines it as a fascinating, witty and heart-breaking story of sisterly love.
The drama begins in 1830, many years after Jane has died. Cassandra (Keeley Hawes) rushes to visit Isabella (Rose Leslie), the niece of her long-dead fiancé, who is about to lose her home following her father’s death. Cassandra is ostensibly there to help Isabella, but her real motive is to find a hidden bundle of private letters which, in the wrong hands, she fears could destroy Jane’s reputation. On discovering them, Cassandra is overwhelmed as she is transported back to her youth. In flashbacks, we meet Young Cassy (Synnøve Karlsen) and Jane (Patsy Ferran) as they navigate the romantic infatuations, family feuds and dashed hopes which shaped their lives, and laid the foundations for Jane’s unforgettable stories. Cassandra’s re-evaluation of her past eventually leads her to find a way to guide Isabella towards the path of true happiness.

Years ago I had about an hour to nip into 'Jane Austen's house', on a package tour. I decided to go back last year, in my own time, and go to the house and to Winchester, where I'd also had an hour!
I hadn't realised the big house was there, i.e. Chawton House. I had two visits to 'Jane's' house, one to Chawton House and a day to Winchester. Between whiles I had bought a book of some of her letters - not the serious whole works, (minus the burnt ones!). When I went to the church I found the grave of the two Cassandras - mother and daughter. I sat on the kerb of it and read a few of the letters out loud to no-one. I did tell one of the staff members in Chawton House that I'd done that and she didn't think that I was off my head, after all!

No-one will ever know what was in the burnt letters. The experts can make loads of money giving lectures about them, but we don't know. It has been an interesting take on them, that it was more to do with Cassy's details than anything.

I think I'll watch this
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08sqxk1
What's the name of the big house the brother lived in?

Godmersham, I think?

I saw that last year, it was very good.

Thanks

Godmersham Park. There is a novel set there, also by Gill Hornby.

Those of you who read the novel, did Jane and Anna get Cassy a yellow outfit? Yellow? I had the audiobook and simply don't remember. I think I'd better borrow the BOOK from the library!

I watched the first episode this afternoon and loved it. I think Keeley Hawes is great in the role and the actress who played her younger version. Looking forward to the rest of the episodes

I’ve watched it this evening and enjoyed it. Felt a little teary in 2 parts.

Two questions about what happened though [POTENTIAL SPOILERS]

The rich brother wanted Cassie to live with him and care for his children after their mother’s death. Cassie must decline as her duty was to Jane and her Mother. Why wasn’t it considered that Jane, their mother and Cassie could all live in Godmersham? There would have been ample space.

And, when Mr Hobday visits Cassie in their Southampton apartment, what is he suggesting? He comes to tell Cassie he is engaged but then hints that he could help the family. Is he saying he’ll break his engagement to marry Cassie (scandalous at the time), or that Cassie could be his mistress, or something else?

As I thought I would, I've watched both programmes tonight and whilst I did cry, I still adore the greatest writer this world has ever seen. It filled my heart that Jane was loved and cherished during her brief but brilliant life. Cassy, her beloved sister, knew this.

I am happy to have read her books. Long live Jane Austen.

These are EXACTLY the questions I had!!

Godmersham is in Kent. Whilst the aunties Cassy and Jane visited often, they didn't want to live there, preferring Hampshire, a house they secured, on Edward's Chawton Estate.

The second question: in the storyline of the programme, it's probably fictitious and didn't really happen.

Yes, there are some rather cruel remarks in surviving letters, like an account of someone ‘being brought to bed of a dead baby’, with JA suggesting the reason was that ‘she had happened to catch sight of her husband unawares’.

But honestly, Cassandra destroyed the letters, not because of scandal, but because JA was almost certainly bitching indiscreetly about relatives (hardly surprising when she, Cassandra and their mother spent years on a wearying circuit of visits to family after Mr Austen’s death, before they were able to settle at Chawton, unable to leave one place for another until itv suited someone to collect them), or just writing according to the less prim norms of her era, which didn’t sit well with either the preferred family myth of ‘Sweet Aunt Jane’ or the Victorians dislike of what they saw as the coarseness of an earlier era. Eg Jane writes somewhere about a female relative who married young and had several pregnancies in quick succession ‘Poor animal. She will be worn out before she is 30.’

The first biographical note was by her brother Henry and the first full scale biography by her nephew, so there’s a real family investment in the dear Aunt Jane version of her, tweaked for Victorian tastes.

I prefer the Claire Tomalin biography, but the David Noakes one is good too. Lots of detail that would have horrified Cassandra, like their brother with intellectual abilities being sent away from home, their aunt Leigh-Perrot being tried for theft, and the possible parentage of their cousin Eliza, who married their brother Henry after her first husband had been guillotined during the French Revolution…

I agree with your view Seroentine, also I think that living in the home of a male relative as a widow and two "maiden aunts" is accepting a lifetime as a second class citizen with your time spent at the whim of the woman of the house. Her books describe how those women humiliate women of lower status with exquisite detail.

There is a sense that once they were in Chawton and in charge of their days - that Jane was protected from time wasting and could write.

I wonder if Cassy did meet anyone in all those years, where there was a mutual attraction. I liked the fictitious Mr. Hobday.

I am quite old and an actor called William Russell was well at the back of my brain cells. I looked up Alfred Enoch and find that he's WR's son. No wonder he looks the way he does, very like father, plus.

Yes, absolutely. It’s why she never presents Charlotte Lucas’s decision to attract the attention of and marry Mr Collins as anything other than an understandable act of self-assertion and -protection, even though she allows Lizzy to voice shock. The only difference between Charlotte Lucas and Lizzy Bennet is seven years — in seven years, if Lizzy hasn’t married, she will also be ‘on the shelf’ and in the worse position of having no brothers to inherit Longbourn. Charlotte at least would probably be able to stay living at Lucas Lodge. Any unmarried Bennet girls would be living in rooms over a shop in Meryton, like Mrs and Miss Bates in Emma, on their mother’s tiny income, after their father’s death .

I was interested in Miss Austen’s decision to be slightly hand-wavy about Jane agreeing to marry Harris Bigg-Wither by making her tipsy. It seems fairly clear she was agreeing to the match for Charlotte Lucas reasons (to have her own home, to get off the round of visits, to be able to offer Cassandra and her mother a home), and then realised she couldn’t go through with it.

I read on here that Mr Hobday was probably fictional.

Still irking me to not know what his suggestion was at that point. Cassie seemed to regret that he was now unavailable to her.

Also what happened to the dog.

I was interested in Miss Austen’s decision to be slightly hand-wavy about Jane agreeing to marry Harris Bigg-Wither by making her tipsy.
I read it as - "I (Cassie) don't want to marry so you shouldn't too", later changed to - "he is intellectually unsuitable to you"

I wonder whether it was the shock of how the world could turn on a moment - as we saw Jane accepting Cassandra's possible two marriages with real pain (and acceptance). This drama was maybe showing Cassandra as possibly more dependent on Jane than she thought, or maybe thinking that her unwedded state should guarantee Jane's, or that only as single women could they create the opportunity for Jane to write?
I agree I think the Jeremy Irons Nepoboy is fictional

Yes, there are some rather cruel remarks in surviving letters, like an account of someone ‘being brought to bed of a dead baby’, with JA suggesting the reason was that ‘she had happened to catch sight of her husband unawares’

I'm being really dense but what does that mean?

The husband is so horrible/scary to look at the fright caused the stillbirth is my understanding.

Oh God, that's what I thought but I thought surely I have the wrong end of the stick!! 😱

We live not too far from Shottesbrooke where much of it was filmed, so our viewing is spoiled by us pointing out local landmarks and errors, but I'm really enjoying it.

I have the book of Jane's letters - My Dear Cassandra. Here's what she actually said about the stillbirth -

"Mrs Hall, of Sherborne, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, owing to a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband"

Jane clearly had a cruel tongue, and if this was one of the letters that Cassandra actually spared, goodness knows what was said in the burned ones !

I will buy a copy of the book,thanks.

No wonder she wanted to burn them!! 😱