No novelist in the English language is more closely associated with the marriage plot than Jane Austen. That literary trope turned rom-com convention gives structure to all six of her masterworks—which goes to show that the romance genre, far from mere escapism, can be an ideal lens through which to observe a society’s values. But another truth universally acknowledged about Austen complicates the happy weddings that conclude each book: The author never married. She spared her heroines the social and financial precarity she suffered.
The realities of single womanhood in Regency England, and for the Austen family in particular, are at the center of Miss Austen, a four-part BBC adaptation of Gill Hornby’s 2020 novel that will premiere stateside May 4 on PBS’s Masterpiece. Set more than a decade after Jane’s untimely death, this bit of historical fiction follows her beloved older (and only) sister, Cassandra, sensitively portrayed by executive producer Keeley Hawes, and imagines the circumstances that led her to destroy thousands of the author’s personal letters. Its primary characters are unmarried women. If you can get past the mannered stiffness typical of Masterpiece fare, it loosens up as it evolves into a perceptive and affectionate portrait of the kind of life Austen lived but barely wrote about.
Solitary in middle age, Hawes’ Cassandra—also never married—is roused from a cozy routine of talking to goats and reading in bed when a letter arrives informing her of a family friend’s imminent death. Against the advice of her correspondent, she hastens to Fulwar Fowle’s (Felix Scott) bedside. Cassandra has a history with the Fowles; she was betrothed to Fulwar’s brother Tom (played in flashbacks by Calam Lynch) before he died on an expedition to the West Indies. But it isn’t sentimentality, for the most part, that motivates her to make the trip. “There are…
