Marian Brook

Marian Brook arrives in New York a young woman of good breeding and no money, her father having died leaving debts rather than an inheritance. Taken in by her formidable aunts, she's polite, curious, and quietly unwilling to simply accept the rigid social order she's been dropped into. She watches, and she questions.

Louisa Jacobson plays Marian as an ingenue with spine rather than the passive naïf period drama often settles for — her politeness never curdles into blandness because you can see her calculating, judging, deciding for herself which rules deserve her obedience. She's the audience's entry point into old money and new, and she earns that role by actually noticing what she sees.