Sense and Adaptability

Was I overly harsh when I called screenwriter Andrew Davies’s 2008 miniseries adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility “so-so?”

I admit it. I gave into the allure of alliteration, and I was trying to contrast it with his 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries, which is one of the best adapted Jane Austen adaptations out there. It’s not a huge favorite of mine since Pride and Prejudice isn’t my favorite Austen book and even if it were, Austen isn’t really my favorite author. But the writing really does a great job of replicating her style while still feeling like a TV series. The writing for Davies’s Sense and Sensibility doesn’t capture its source material anywhere near as well. In fact, I wouldn’t even say it does as good a job on that score as his Emma adaptation.^[1]Though I should stress I feel Sense and Sensibility (2008) works much better as piece of entertainment. I doubt I’d ever have guessed they were written by the same person. But there’s a difference between not being as well written and faithful as the 1995 Pride and Prejudice and not being well written or faithful at all.

Sense and Sensibility is about the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne.^[2]There’s also a third sister, Margaret (played by Lucy Boynton in the 2008 miniseries), but she’s not important. While the story is unquestionably romance-driven, it focuses on the relationship between those two gentlewomen to an unusual extent for Austen.^[3]That’s not to say Jane Austen never wrote about relationships between women. Far from it. She just usually focused more on relationships between men and women. While the sisters are loyal and devoted to each other, they also frequently rag on each other’s different sensibilities. Swoony Marianne believes people should be ruled by emotion whereas practical Elinor believes emotions should be ruled by reason and morality. And the book champions Elinor’s philosophy over Marianne’s. That was not a universally accepted position back when it was first written^[4]Austen lived during the Romantic era and the emotionalism of Victorian culture was on the horizon. and it’s become even less popular nowadays. Marianne begins the story believing that “to aim at the restraint of sentiments” to be “not merely an unnecessary effort but a disgraceful subjection of reason to commonplace and mistaken notions.” Modern therapy culture, which has been on the rise in the 2020s, goes even further, considering the suppression of emotions to be downright unhealthy. The average Disney or Pixar movie (cf. Frozen, Inside Out, Encanto, Turning Red) all but states that telling children to hide their feelings for the sake of the family-the very thing for which Sense and Sensibility heroizes Elinor and condemns Marianne for failing to do-as the worst thing a parent can do.^[5]In fairness, most, if not all of those movies, also show unrestrained emotions, such as anger, having negative consequences. But few, if any of them, really seem to want viewers to notice that. It may sound strange, even silly, to cite children’s movies in this context. Wouldn’t it make more sense to contrast Sense and Sensibility with the latest romance novel? But I feel like citing children’s media shows just how early people these days are ingesting the suppressing-feelings-is-bad message. These are very earnest children’s movies. It’s not like telling kids to believe in Santa Claus.

Commentators are quick to assure us that Elinor and Marianne are really portrayed as having individual strengths and weaknesses and that what Austen is really advocating is a happy medium between sense and sensibility.^[6]In her culture “sensibility” meant something like sensitivity. It’s a good thing she wasn’t writing today because Sense and Sensitivity would be a horrible title. There’s some truth in this^[7]As the book nears its conclusion, we get more moments where Elinor visibly betrays her emotions, and they aren’t moments where we’re meant to dislike her. but it’s very different from the impression one gets from actually reading the book. The clear, overall message is “don’t be a Marianne; be an Elinor” and while it’s not always the main theme, this is also the overarching philosophy of Jane Austen’s oeuvre.^[8]Persuasion, her last completed novel and probably her “girliest,” is something of an exception. The heroine’s biggest regret at the beginning is that she didn’t take a … Continue reading Honestly, that’s why I think it’s important in this age of self-expression for us to read Sense and Sensibility. It’s telling us something we don’t want or expect to hear. Another recurring theme in Austen is that the people who tell us those things are the one who helps us grow the most.^[9]The book A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship and the Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz comes highly recommended in this context. It recently occurred to me that Neil Postman’s comments on George Orwell vs. Aldous Huxley apply to Charles Dickens vs. Jane Austen. To use his phrasing, Dickens feared that what we fear will ruin us whereas Austen feared that what we desire will ruin us. I’m a much more enthusiastic fan of Dickens than I am of Austen, but I feel like her message is more what the modern world needs right now.

Of course, I’m one to talk! While I might admire Elinor in theory, in practice, I’m a Marianne. Anyway, let’s get going.

Ironically, just as the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie had to compete with Davies’s acclaimed miniseries adaptation for the minds and hearts of fans, his Sense and Sensibility had to compete with the acclaimed 1995 movie adaptation. I actually read Emma Thompson’s academy award winning screenplay online before I either saw the film or read the book. I adored it, only to be rather disappointed by my first viewing of the movie itself. I don’t know if it was a problem with the sound mixing or the actors’ performances, but I found I had to constantly strain my ears to hear the dialogue and when you have to strain to hear jokes, they aren’t very funny-which is a real shame because they’re great on paper. Take this exchange between Marianne, her mother and Elinor over the dashing young man they’ve just met.

Marianne: He expressed himself well, did he not?
Mrs. Dashwood: With great decorum and honor.
Marianne: And spirit and wit and feeling.
Elinor: And economy-ten words at most.

But you’d never know from watching it that the movie is supposed to be a comedy. The quiet line deliveries of the main actors combined with the lack of music for much of the movie’s first half make it a struggle for me to follow or get invested in the story.^[10]Of course, you could argue that keeping music to a minimum fits the message of “be less emotional.” I probably sound like Marianne with these criticisms. I know Ang Lee is a highly acclaimed director, and the movie is beloved. I wish I loved it too and I’ve tried to do so more than once. But I always find it a tastefully shot boor.

While the writing for the 2008 miniseries isn’t nearly as quotable, at least I don’t have to turn the volume up to the maximum level to understand it. And while film snobs doubtless find John Alexander’s directing inferior to Ang Lee’s, I find it much more engaging to watch. And while there are few actresses whom I consider more charismatic than Emma Thompson, who besides writing the 1995 screenplay also played Elinor, Hattie Morahan looks far closer to the heroine’s age, making her emotional maturity more impressive. Charity Wakefield is likewise a good Marianne.

Dan Stevens and David Morrisey are appealing as the heroines’ respective love interests

and Mark Gatiss, Claire Skinner and Anna Madeley shine as the hissable villains. Sense and Sensibility boasts some of the best of those character types that Austen ever created.^[11]The most interesting of them is the Dashwood sisters’ greedy half-brother, John, since he’s the only one who regularly shows glimmers of a conscience.

There’s only one actor here who’s really miscast but I’ll get to him later since he’s the biggest problem with this miniseries.

As I mentioned, this adaptation doesn’t do the best job of making its original dialogue blend with Austen’s. In the first episode, Elinor’s love interest, Edward Ferrars, describes himself as “a ship without an anchor” after his father’s death, which sounds too poetic for an Austen character. (I also suspect the literary Marianne would condemn it for being “a commonplace phrase.”) Weirder is a line in the third episode comparing Marianne to a wild horse who needs to be tamed by her true love, Col. Brandon. Not only does that not sound like something Jane Austen would have written, isn’t it rather offensive to modern sensibilities? To its credit, the series takes plenty of its dialogue from the book though it doesn’t choose the funniest lines. This is probably the least funny of Andrew Davies’s Jane Austen adaptations.^[12]His Emma just manages to be funnier in my opinion. That’s disappointing considering how hilarious the book’s biting sarcasm was. In particular, the various annoying social butterflies that plague the Dashwoods with their friendliness, such as Sir John Middleton (Mark Williams), Mrs. Jennings (Linda Bassett) and Mrs. Palmer (Tabitha Wady), aren’t nearly as entertaining as they are in the book or the 1995 movie. This is especially disappointing to me since as an introvert, I appreciate Austen’s skewering of annoyingly friendly people.

Lest that sound too contemptuous, one of the heartwarming things about the literary Sense and Sensibility was how the annoyingly friendly characters genuinely cared about the Dashwoods and rallied around them during the crises of the climax.^[13]As did the bitterly caustic Mr. Palmer (Tim McMullan in the miniseries.) Except for Mrs. Jennings, we sadly don’t see any of that in this adaptation and even with her, we don’t see it much. I wish the miniseries had spent less of its time on montages of the main characters’ daily lives and more time developing the supporting cast. As it is, I’m ready for the series to be done well before the last episode is over. To be fair though, I also feel that the original book could have stood to be shorter, so I guess that’s just accurate adaptation. Still, I’d say the series could have made better use of its runtime than it does.

On the plus side, this adaptation includes the memorable characters of Edward Ferrars’s tyrannical mother (Jean Marsh) and the ditzy Anne Steele (entertaining Daisy Haggard), both of whom were cut from the 1995 film.^[14]Technically, Mrs. Ferrars still existed but we never saw her onscreen.

There’s some beautiful scenery in this miniseries once the Dashwoods move to the seaside.

It also does a good job of making Marianne’s eyebrow raising actions, which don’t seem all that scandalous to us nowadays, like letting her suitor have a lock of her hair or being alone with him in his house, come across as sexy.^[15]Well, the hair thing might still seem sexy to us if anyone ever did it anymore.

This brings us to that big casting blunder to which I darkly alluded earlier. Dominic Cooper is simply not appealing as Marianne’s romantic false lead, Mr. Willoughby. He doesn’t come across as a charming hero who turns out to be a villain. He comes across as, well, a villain. Mind you, it’s not super hard to guess his role in the original book which is why I’m not apologizing for spoiling it here. Nearly every Jane Austen book has a male character who seems like the perfect match for the heroine but who ends up being an antagonist to some extent.^[16]A few of her books also have female characters like this. By contrast, another man, like Col. Brandon, will initially seem like a bad match for her but prove to be the real love interest in the end. Even ignoring that, Willoughby seems just too good to be true at the beginning of the story. He seems so perfect for the high maintenance Marianne and is introduced so early that the very structure of the story leads us to wait for the other shoe to drop. Still, even if we can easily guess he’ll be a villain, we should still be able to understand the other characters-even Elinor to an extent-being charmed by him.

This isn’t just a problem with the actor. The writing also spends too much time telegraphing that Willoughby is no good. The very first scene of the miniseries, before the opening credits, shows him seducing a vulnerable young woman (Caroline Hayes) as ominous music plays.^[17]A snarky fan on the internet once described the opening thus. “SEX!!! And now a Jane Austen novel.” Since we never see his face in the scene, it’s likely we’re not supposed to guess his identity but it’s also likely that we do anyway. (We do hear his voice.) Ominous music also plays when Col. Brandon, whom we’ve already established as a sympathetic character, meets Willoughby at the end of the first episode. The colonel abruptly leaves. “How extraordinary,” says the girls’ mother (Janet McTeer.) “He’s an extraordinary man,” says Willoughby, a little too casually. This is the episode’s cliffhanger, so the series clearly expects us to find it dramatic. It’s also clear from the music that we’re not just supposed to pity Brandon, who now has a rival for Marianne and didn’t have much hope even before that, but to be suspicious of Willoughby. Towards the beginning of the next episode, Brandon takes him aside and asks him about his intentions towards Marianne. Willoughby responds by taunting him. It’s true that Willoughby mocked Brandon in the book, as did Marianne under his influence, and this was a bad sign. But there they mocked him behind his back and their mockery was witty, not just petty or childish. While the scene that is Willoughby’s final bid for sympathy in the last episode takes much of its dialogue from the book, Elinor is never tempted, as she is there and as Austen herself may have been tempted, to pity him despite her better judgement. It’s true that he probably doesn’t deserve pity but if nobody is even tempted to give it to him, what’s the point of including the scene?

Notwithstanding that major problem, this retelling of Sense and Sensibility works albeit not brilliantly. I was probably wrong to call it so-so. It’s more like…OK-ish. While this is hardly the best written of Andrew Davies’s adaptations of classic literature, it’s hardly the worst either.^[18]Or if it is, that reflects well on him. I like Marianne’s insight in the final episode that Willoughby deceived not only her and her family but even himself. And while her summary of the story’s seemingly antiromantic message may have undertones of being embarrassed by it and wanting to explain it away, it’s also an accurate summary and I like it too.

It is not what we say or feel that makes us what we are. It is what we do. Or fail to do.