Of all the great novelists I’ve worked on, Jane Austen is my favourite. Why?
Because, in an Austen novel, everything works. Her plots are as finely tuned
as Swiss clocks; she lets off her little explosions at precisely the right
moment, she never spawns unnecessary subplots, she never overeditorialises,
and all the details are accurate.
If the apple trees are in blossom, she will make sure we are in the right
month; she knows how long it takes to get from A to B, and exactly where you
would have to stop on the way; she knows exactly what everything costs, from
a country mansion to a pair of gloves, and exactly how grim is the situation
of a disinherited hero facing the prospect of living on the interest of a
mere £2,000. She gets things absolutely right in human and social terms,
too. Her novels may deliver the emotional rewards of a fairy tale or a
romance, but the obstacles that stand in the way of her heroines are real
and solid, and generally to do with money and social status. Austen never
offends our credulity or our sense of the way the world really works.
Best of all, Austen has dramatic gifts herself. She would have been an
excellent playwright. She builds surely and subtly towards the big scenes,
then writes them so well that all the adapter has to do is copy them out.
Why this book, and why now? There are two reasons for reading old books, or
adapting them. They can be timely or they can be timeless, or both.
Particular novels by Trollope, or Dickens, or Eliot (I’m thinking of Daniel
Deronda) can seem awfully timely and relevant to our current preoccupations.
With Austen, the themes tend to be timeless: love, sex, money; growing to
maturity; the struggle for independence and fulfilment.
In Sense and Sensibility, Austen splits her heroine into two. Marianne has all
the emotion, all the romantic readiness, and no common sense at all, while
her older sister, Elinor, seems to have more common sense than is good for
her, if that is possible. It’s a lovely idea, and would make a terrific
high-school movie or gritty urban drama. Which one do we most identify with,
and whose side are we on? I’ve read this novel a number of times, at
different times in my life, generally identifying more with Elinor; but I
remember one reading when I felt passionately protective towards the
recklessly emotional Marianne, and I have always had a weakness (is it a
weakness?) for girls who are reckless with themselves, girls who let it all
hang out.
Austen, we can be pretty sure, identifies more with Elinor. Her wry shrewdness
is very close to Austen’s authorial voice, and a million miles away from
Marianne’s rather soppy eulogies about falling leaves, which are not unlike
the utterings of Fotherington-Tomas. Moreover, Austen lets us see into
Elinor’s mind and heart, whereas Marianne is represented by what she does
and says in Elinor’s presence, and by what Elinor thinks about her. Whether
consciously or not, Austen forces us to identify with Elinor.
I think it’s conscious. I think Austen saw emotion – passion –
as dangerous, untrustworthy and likely to lead a girl into perilous places.
She feels enormous sympathy for the Mariannes of this world, but no way
would she go there. That isn’t to say that she presents Marianne as a fool.
She is given some silly things to say, but she is also brave about
expressing her true thoughts and opinions in company, which resonates well
with modern readers.
The problem lies with the men. Not Willoughby – he’s wonderfully
satisfying, a glamorous Byronic shit with all the trimmings. I mean the guys
who get the girls in the last reel: can we really convince ourselves that
Edward is worthy of Elinor, or that Marianne could come to love Brandon?
Sense and Sensibility began as Elinor and Marianne, written as far back as the
1790s. Austen revised it twice before publishing it in 1811 – her first
novel to be published. It’s cheeky of me, but I think she should have given
it one more rewrite, mainly aimed at the problems raised by Edward and
Brandon. (She could also have updated the poetry – Cowper is a rather
feeble example of the Romantic temperament, and by 1811 Marianne could have
been rhapsodising over Wordsworth and Byron, and would have seemed much less
silly as a consequence.)
Edward comes across as a very dull dog indeed. He is shy, he is reserved; he
doesn’t seem to know where he wants to be or what he wants to do with his
life. He has no talents (though he does admire Elinor’s drawings). He is
attracted to Elinor: why wouldn’t he be? She is beautiful, intelligent,
talented and tender-hearted. What Austen fails to do is give us anything
that would explain why Elinor, or indeed any woman, should be attracted to
him. Edward is a big problem for the adapter. Emma Thompson, in her
otherwise admirable screenplay, doesn’t manage it any better than Austen
did. Having him play nicely with Elinor’s little sister does not do the
business.
Then there’s Colonel Brandon. Austen shows us his instant and powerful
attraction towards Marianne. We learn that he had a tragic love affair when
young, and has not looked at another woman since. So, he has a passionate
nature. Excellent. This is all very promising, except that Marianne sees him
as an old man (that flannel waistcoat is a real downer); when Willoughby
comes onto the scene, Brandon becomes virtually invisible to her. It has
potential, but it’s difficult material, and Austen doesn’t handle it as well
as she would have done in her later novels. We need a few hints earlier on
that Brandon is more than a dry old stick, and, crucially, we need to see,
in the final movement, how Marianne comes to love him. There’s at least one
missing scene.
I love the darkness that lurks in the subplots and back stories of Austen’s
comedies. We are always aware of the fragility of existence: young women, in
particular, can plummet straight into the depths. Consider Brandon’s first
love. Because she brings a huge dowry, Brandon’s autocratic father decides
she must marry his elder son, whose “pleasures were not what they ought to
have been”. His conduct “provokes her into inconstancy”, they divorce and
she is shunned by society. She has nowhere to go but down. Brandon discovers
her dying, in abject poverty, with a little girl, Eliza, whom he adopts.
At about the time the main story begins, Willoughby is deflowering Eliza, now
aged 15. Tiring of her, he abandons her, pregnant, without leaving a
forwarding address, and forgets all about her. We may surmise that he
doesn’t give her another thought until his rich relative, Mrs Smith (whose
estate he expects to inherit), inconveniently finds out all about it.
These dark Austenian subplots are never fully dramatised; we always hear these
stories at second hand. We never meet Eliza or her mother, so we are not
likely to feel for them as we feel for Marianne, though their fate is so
much worse, and I for one feel quite haunted by them. One can’t help feeling
that Willoughby, that emotional psycho-path, gets off far more lightly than
he deserves. So, I begin my adaptation with little Eliza’s seduction and
abandonment, as a sort of “teaser”. It is the first Austen adaptation to
start with a sex scene; and about time too, in my opinion.
What would you do?
© Andrew Davies 2008. Sense and Sensibility, with an introduction by
Andrew Davies, is published by Max Press at £8.99 (hardback) as part of its
Max Literary Classics series; available from The Sunday Times BooksFirst for
£8.54 (inc p&p) on 0870 165 8585
