Secrecy and sickness

You may recall my irritation with the BBC’s Emma, a reaction that seems widely shared to judge by television critics in the paper.  I felt the need to cleanse my palate, and indeed have picked up Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility with both relief and joy.  Yes, there are lingering elements of the gothick in Marianne’s passionate ideas, her love and despair; and the confusion over Edward Ferrars’ engagement is perhaps too drawn out for credibility.  Yet the overall is charming, witty and engaging, and the quietly barbed comments about the boorishness, selfishness, or mere stupidity of people have lost nothing in two hundred years.

In his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, Toby Tanner remarks that “Sense and Sensibility is, of course, about sense and sensibility, but it is also about secrecy and sickness”.  I find that an illuminating comment, and an immediate balance to the modern tendency to portray Jane Austen as a kind of up-market rom-com, a mere comedy of manners and young love – though her novels are all of that, as well.  And “balance” itself is an interesting word, because Tanner draws attention to Jane Austen’s belief that balance is a prime virtue in her characters’ behaviour, or should be at least an aspiration, or a development of age and experience; he also draws attention to the way her prose directly achieves that balance in metrical and syntactical form: “The prose, like the plot, tends towards, and even acts out, those steady symmetries which Jane Austen regarded as indispensable for a truly civilised existence”.

This is an engaging book, and the characters of the two main female characters – Eleanor and Marianne – are contrasted without being stereotypes, and the three men providing the emotional interest are also all interesting – Edward, shy but upright, perhaps a more impressive figure in truth than Hugh Grant made him out to be, but certainly not full of address and élan; Willoughby, a weak scoundrel whose romanticism is offset by his mercenary flaws, although he comes to harbour at last, not happy, but at least knowing why he has missed happiness; and Colonel Brandon, whose virtues are sub-fusc but extremely well laid.  Each of them is flawed, each has redeeming characteristics, and each, probably, gets his just deserts,  Nor are minor characters any less interesting, Mrs Jennings with her inconsequential chatter and her gossip is a particular favourite of mine, from the same stable that produced Mrs Bates, but there are many others, demonstrating narrowness, boredom, goodwill, cupidity and selfishness, generosity and every other vice or virtue Jane’s readers could conceive.

I enjoyed Sense and Sensibility all the more because I was comparing it to the BBC’s insensitive Emma, and revelling in the language, the observational acuity, and the wit.  But honesty compels me to say that even this, refreshing and cleansing as it was, is not the very best Miss Austen has offered us – it must play second fiddle to Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion.  But what a fantastic novel to have written when not at the top of your form!

Comments

[Sylvia]

I'm sorry to hear the new Emma is no good—I was so looking forward to Romola Garai as Emma. Why is it so hard for people to get Austen right these days? The movies seem to be more about their creator's ideas about Austen than about Austen's ideas.

I agree about Hugh Grant. He turned Edward into a bumbling buffoon, not the gentle young man constrained by duty as Austen wrote him. Great movie otherwise, though. Can't get enough of Alan Rickman.

[Pamela]

I often imagine her writing in the corner of the crowded parlor. How did she know so much??

I usually keep movies and books quite separate in my head....but Alan Rickman will always be Colonel Brandon to me!