Sense and Sensibility

A new film of “Sense & Sensibility” has been made, the first published novel of Jane Austen. The frontispiece of the original 1811 publication records it was written “By A Lady” and such was the suspicion of lady authors that Jane Austen paid to have the book published, giving the publisher a commission on sales. It was, in fact, the first of her books to be republished in England after her death, and, in 1833 became the first illustrated Austen book produced in Britain- it has never been out of print since.

Sense and Sensibility began life, possibly in 1795, structured as letters. The working title was Elinor and Marianne, acknowledging the focus on the contrasting personalities of the two heroines, the so named eldest Dashwood sisters. By 1811 it had been reworked into a novel.

Jane Austen’s own life was turned upside down by the death of her father, not just in terms of the emotional loss but also in the loss of her home and security in life. 
The first two chapters of Sense and Sensibility deal extensively with the subject of wills and the discourse of inheritance. Just like the central characters Jane, her sister and their mother eventually managed to find a cottage in which to live - and happily from 1809 until her death. The novel and latest film from her book which has just been released, begins setting out this reversal of fortune just as the sisters’ circumstances change and not for the better.

Seemingly without effort, Jane Austen brings together story, character and sense of place. The latest film immerses us in the contrasting scenes from the novel. The Dashwood family is ejected from a large comfortable classical house into a spartan and rather wild cottage in Devon. Jane Austen and her family travelled through Devon to spend some time at Dawlish on the south Devon coast, so would have observed and felt the romance of the rugged moors as she passed through, staying at posting houses en route.

This is in total contrast to the formal street layout and buildings of the streets of Marylebone and Mayfair in London. Taken up to London by a wealthy widow, Mrs Jennings, the two sisters, Elinor and Marianne, go for walks or go shopping and attend parties all of which are clearly set out with the street names, the squares and the intersections which make up this urban village in which part of the book is set. Again, Jane would have been writing from her own recollections as she had visited Marylebone when she was twelve.

Mrs Jennings was perhaps not quite at the top of the social echelons, but she was incredibly kind and very generous. Thanks to her money, she had a house near Portland Square near where Elizabeth Montague, the Queen of the Blue Stockings, had begun building her house in 1771, again an address which Jane knew. Readers in the 19th century would have understood that it was a more edgy location and carefully positioned by Jane Austen as the story builds to a denouement of Marianne’s time in London.

Throughout 'Sense and Sensibility' you can feel how hard it is to meet new people, framed by the short conversations or the long silences. The hardness of London streets and buildings is echoed in the central scene of book and film: both sisters go to a party, expecting it to be insipid and tedious. Marianna, who is very fragile at this point, sees the man she thought she loved and, who she thought loved her across the room. But there is an ensuing very public emotional collapse. Returning to Devon, both sisters begin to find solace there, much as Austen did herself, going for walks, and just being outside rather than being inside in a stuffy drawing room.

This latest film conveys the huge ancient landscapes of Dartmoor, the seasonal life and how tough it was.  It feels very earthy, rooted in the wilderness and without doubt NOT filmed in an artificial studio. You can almost smell the crunch of leaves underfoot and you see the trails, hear the birds and almost notice how you might move and breathe. It is romantic in every sense, and our lives are built on the hopes and dreams of romance and love with perhaps a yearning for the idyll of a rural life.

I love Jane Austen’s stories, her characters and her sense of place. I feel very proud that I now live in her county where she spent the happiest years of her life and the ones in which she wrote these novels we all love, sitting at her desk in the corner of her sitting room. Chawton House is near here and always a treat to visit nestled in  the Hampshire hedgerows and green fields of Austen’s own Hampshire.