Sister act

If you spend any time online, you’ve probably encountered a version of that ubiquitous, tired clickbait, the “Which Jane Austen heroine are you?” quiz. (For example, here and here.) So it’s not surprising that PBS, eager to promote its latest offering, Miss Austen, has devised its own variation on the theme: a “Which Austen sister are you?” quiz.*

Miss Austen, whose fourth and final episode aired in the U.S. last night, is based on Gill Hornby’s 2020 novel, a fictionalized account of Cassandra Austen’s decision to burn her sister’s letters decades after Jane’s death. As the story moves along in two time periods—before Jane’s death, and thirteen years after it--Hornby’s Cassandra emerges as a noble, self-sacrificing rock of support for her prickly, depressive genius sister.

The quiz is composed of eight multiple-choice questions whose relevance to the Jane-vs.-Cassandra debate seems largely opaque to me. I suppose if your loved ones describe you as “witty” or “funny,” that’s a point to Jane, whereas if they see you as “kind” or “loyal,” that’s Cassandra-esque. But how does choosing to vacation in Paris rather than Amsterdam, Vienna, or Cape Cod correlate with one of the Austen sisters, neither of whom ever left Great Britain? Which woman is likeliest to have preferred Emma over Pride and Prejudice—let alone PBS’s The Marlow Murder Club over All Creatures Great and Small?

And best to avert our eyes from “Choose a Jane Austen book quote,” which offers among its options, “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” I guess that’s for people—Cassandras? Janes?--who find it annoying that those which-heroine-are-you features invariably omit Isabella Thorpe. (Come to think of it, it is a bit odd that those quizzes never find any Augusta Eltons or Lucy Steeles walking among us. Apparently, we’re all Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Elliot, or, at worst, Fanny Price.)

Despite playing the Austen-sister quiz repeatedly, I couldn’t figure out how to reliably ensure I always come out as Jane. I can’t quash a sneaking suspicion that the whole thing is random—or perhaps just a way of gauging relative interest in The Marlow Murder Club vs. All Creatures Great and Small. (In which case: All Creatures, obviously. Please. No contest.)

As for Miss Austen, I read the novel when it first came out and found it decorous, inoffensive, and terminally bland. If my five-year-old memories can be trusted, the series—all of which I watched earlier this month, thanks to my household PBS membership—is a pretty faithful adaptation of the book: well-acted, pretty to look at, and terminally bland.

The series takes liberties with some facts of Austen family history, but that poetic license would be forgivable if the result were more urgent and involving. Instead, for me, Miss Austen resembles nothing so much as the anti-Janeite caricature of Austen’s novels: a thinly plotted, low-stakes tale in which people sip tea in the drawing-room and talk about marriage, in between occasional eruptions of implausible melodrama.

Does that make me a Jane--or a Cassandra? No idea. I’m off to watch old episodes of All Creatures Great and Small.

* Thanks, as ever, to my indefatigable Janeite informant Tram Chamberlain for alerting me to the existence of this quiz.