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Branding exercise

Writer's picture: Deborah YaffeDeborah Yaffe

A few weeks ago, I ran across a 2011 article in which the wonderful Scottish novelist Ali Smith explained why she seldom grants interviews.

 

“Do you like Jane Austen? Do you like Shakespeare?” Smith asked her interviewer. “What do you know about them?. . . . It's better because we know less. The more we know, the more it gets in the way of the book. If a personality comes between you and the thing that you're reading, the personality will probably win out. And that's the least interesting thing about what we're doing if we're writing.”

 

From which we might conclude that we owe Cassandra Austen a debt of gratitude for burning many of her sister Jane’s letters.

 

Even suggesting such a thing comes close to Janeite heresy: Although Cassandra saved some 95 of Jane’s letters—well over half the 160 that come down to us—many Janeites cannot forgive Cassandra for destroying who-knows-how-many more, even as they give a pass to all those other correspondents who must have consigned Austen’s letters to the dustbin over the years.

 

But this heretical claim is what the novelist Gill Hornby argues for in her own recent conversation with the Guardian, part of a spate of publicity preceding the airing of Miss Austen. (See a twenty-five-second trailer here! Read an interview with the series’ stars here! Consider the ethics of letter-burning here!) The four-part BBC/PBS mini-series based on Hornby’s 2020 novel premiered in the UK yesterday and arrives on American TV screens on May 4.

 

Miss Austen is a re-imagining of the Austen sisters’ relationship, centered on Cassandra’s (fictional) quest for a hidden trove of Jane’s letters. Unsurprisingly, Hornby is pro-Cassandra—not just the fictional Cassandra, but the real one.

 

“What Cassandra did in burning the letters was protect her sister enormously and do so much to create the brand that we’ve got today,” Hornby told the Guardian, arguing that “because we know so little about Jane, she can be all things to all people.”


"That element of mysterious, quiet dignity is crucial to the success of the Jane Austen brand," Hornby added in an interview with the BBC.

 

I’m not sure that creating the Austen brand is something we should thank Cassandra for—arguably, the world of Janemania could use a bit less branding and a bit more close reading—but it’s interesting to speculate whether the extra biographical insights mined from a larger cache of letters would have undermined Austen’s critical or popular standing.


What if the lost letters had included waspish political comments? Critical remarks about small children? Caustic descriptions of well-meaning neighbors? Potshots at close relatives? Incomprehensible gossip about long-forgotten non-entities?

 

Oh, wait—the surviving letters do contain all of that, albeit in small doses. That "mysterious, quiet dignity" brand? Probably easier to believe in if you haven't been paying attention.

 

But never mind. I’ll still be watching Miss Austen the moment it’s available. Because even if the personality is the least interesting thing about a writer, I’m still hungry for every detail, even the fictionalized ones.

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