When calamity strikes, I head directly for Darcy. There’s something reassuring about novels where standoffishness is softened by sideburns, the closest thing to cardio is taking a turn about the room, and my now-completed English degree renders me ‘accomplished’ as opposed to ‘unemployed.’ To put it another way, I wish the Regency had happened more recently. Obviously I quite like being able to vote and not dying of consumption. Alas, the heart wants what the heart wants and I want to live in a world in which a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Which deposits me, dearest readers, at my task. For one day, and one day only, I’ve stopped saying “Emma? I hardly know her!”

So how do I make myself worthy of a dichotomous novel title? Well, it’s not as easy as Anne Elliot makes it look. And she doesn’t make it look easy.

I started by abandoning my alarm clock – phones weren’t invented in Austen’s time, see (never let it be said that I don’t possess a keen historiographical mind). I decided to lie in like the best of Georgian ladies. Unfortunately, exams have left my poor mind in a constant state of terror; I woke in an eight o’clock frenzy, convinced I was late for lectures that I no longer attend. To soothe my poor nerves, I read Austen, ignoring the fact that this lends a somewhat paradoxical inauthenticity to my project and instead focusing on the fact that Mr Knightley gets more and more on my nerves the older I get (I’m glad he loves Emma, because dear God, I could not handle much more of his self-important posturing). Feeling revived, I began my day like the best of Bennets.

“I don’t have a maid, and in a shocking turn of events, none of my housemates could be convinced to bathe and clothe me”

I don’t have a maid, and in a shocking turn of events, none of my housemates could be convinced to bathe and clothe me. I had to make do. Usually I’d have a coffee, watch some sitcom I’ve seen too many times, and wait for my brain to warm up. Today, I nibbled wanly on oatcakes, telling myself something this bland must at least be period-accurate.

The real test began when it came to what Thomas Bertram would have called ‘ablutions’, but I call ‘stumbling to the bathroom and hearing Chappell Roan wafting out of your housemates’ rooms’. This really harshed my Regency vibe (exhibit A: I just said ‘harshed the vibe’). I couldn’t bring myself not to floss, so my bathroom routine was highly anachronistic.

My struggles didn’t end there. Wardrobe is tricky. Austen heroines might dabble in daring décolletage, but the result is still a hem a nun might raise. I own multiple corsets, but even if corsets had been in vogue in the early 1800s, these are the kind of corsets that would have redefined the words social pariah (RIP Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility, you were defo a boobs man). I could have gone the dandyish route but I was somewhat deterred by witnessing my housemate starch collars last term. Cambridge, amirite? As an English student, I naturally have a poofy Byronesque shirt, and access to a plant mister that could provide me with that just-out-the-Pemberley-pond look. Something told me strong and silent is not a look that I, in all my five-two-and-three-quarters loud-mouthed glory, can pull off. In the end, I settled on my most Austenian (translation: least whorish) fit: long skirt, floral prints, and the dawning suspicion that Catherine Morland would go crazy for bingeing schlock horror in sweatpants.

“As an English student, I naturally have a poofy Byronesque shirt, and access to a plant mister that could provide me with that just-out-the-Pemberley-pond look”

If my research convinced me of one thing, it’s that the Austen heroine loves a drawing room. I don’t have a drawing room. I do however have a flair for the dramatic. Candles are forbidden in halls, so I busted out some LED alternatives, pinched some wax seals from a housemate, and set about with whatever correspondence is.

Usually this would mean scrolling on reels for an hour while rotting in bed; for my Austensona, this meant scrunching up my face as I recollected what my friends and I had been talking about the day before. You’d think it would be as boring as Royal Mail is unreliable, but I’ve rarely had so much fun. Group chats are functional, but until you write an epigram on the social faux paus of that wanker in the pub last night, you haven’t lived. I missed certain amenities (GIFs), but I quickly found myself throwing semicolons onto the page like someone with far too much sensibility. Admittedly, I had to wait for my housemates to check their pidges – a week later in some cases – but I was finally feeling less Bridget Jones and more Elizabeth Bennet.

There is something gut-churningly introspective about the humble letter. I’d wager it’s the lack of a sarky Newnhamite on the other end of the internet, telling you to get a grip and download Hinge. I did inevitably come to the conclusion that Charlotte Lucas, self-proclaimed spinster rattling through (gasp!) her twenties, is the true Austenian for the modern age. No doubt I am similarly doomed to end up on the shelf at a haggard twenty-three… Or worse, chatted up by a Mr Collins-type at Rumboogie.

This clanging revelation led me to my final bid for heroine status: I trampled my way to Grantchester Meadows for my constitutional. Did I get caught in a rain shower? Of course. Was I caught up in the arms of someone who has ten thousand (pounds? acres? ducks?) a year? Nope. Did I spend the evening convalescing in my bed, convinced I had pleurisy or dropsy or maybe even moxie? Naturally.

That’s when it struck me. Going through the motions of the Austen heroine, or looking the part of a Lord or a Duke or BBC actor is perfectly agreeable. Yet at the end of the day (and thank god it was the end of the day; the distinctly-2024 echelons of Deliveroo were calling), the most important flourish in your free indirect discourse is attitude. Any day can be Austenian if you tackle your woes like you would Caroline Bingleys and Mr Collinses – with decorum, empire waistlines, and the ever-present certainty that the stuffy bloke with the sideburns might be in your corner after all.