Charlotte (Rose Williams) as she comes out into the sunshine and her first full look at
the sea …. followed by
downright frolicking ….
You and I, you and I, oh how happy we’ll be
When we go a-rolling in
We will duck and swim ….
Over and over, and under again
Pa is rich, Ma is rich, oh I do love to be beside the sea
I love to be beside your side, by the sea,
by the beautiful sea …
Friends and readers,
This experimental or innovative Jane Austen is not an appropriation: this is heritage all right. All the people in costume. If you attend carefully to the twelve chapter untitled fragment, the last piece of writing Austen got down (1817), known in her family as Sanditon, and then equally carefully into the continuation added by her niece Anna Austen Lefroy (probably after 1830), you will find that a remarkable number of the details and slightest hints have been transferred and elaborated from both texts (plus possibly a third, Marie Dobbs’s continuation) into this eight part series. Davies and his team (there are several writers, and several directors, though Davies is credited throughout as the creator, and has written a good deal of what we hear), the team have also availed themselves of Davies’ previous film adaptations from Austen: so the angry hardly-contained violence of Mark Strong’s Mr Knightley (1996 BBC Emma) has become the angry hard-contained violence of Theo James’s Sidney Parker:
This strident Sidney is one on whom apologies have no effect: he returns sarcasm and rejection: “I have no interest in your approval or disapproval”
The rude intrusive domineering insults of all Lady Catherine de Boughs and Davies’s Mrs Ferrars have become part of Anne Reid’s Lady Denham; the clown buffoonery of minor-major characters in Davies 2009 Sense and Sensibility just poured into Turlough Covery’s Arthur Parker &c.
And they have scoured all Austen’s texts (letters too) for precedents: female friendships and frenemys everywhere, game-playing (including cricket), piano playing where fit in, wild and heavy beat dancing, balls, show-off luncheons, water therapy — though they have nonetheless switched from the single feminocentric perspective of Charlotte of Austen’s present Sanditon (all is seen through her eyes, with the emphasis throughout on the women) to a double story where Sidney and Tom’s (Kris Marshall) two stories run in tandem with, and shape, Charlotte’s
Here Sidney and Tom are standing over Charlotte coming out from underneath the desk, discussing what they are to do next, the men call the shots, stride by seemingly purposefully — though except for Stringer they seem to have nothing much to do …
Charlotte’s story in this movie itself is continually interwoven with, shot through by, the on-going separate highly transgressive sexualized stories of 1) the incestuous Edward and Esther Denham (Jack Fox and Charlotte Spencer), 2) sexual abuse from childhood by men and now Edward and social abuse from her aunt seen literally in Clara Brereton’s (Lily Saroksky) doings (which seem from afar to include forced fellatio or jerking Edward off), and 3) young Stringer (Leo Sluter)’s aspirations in conflict with his loyalty to his entrenched-in-the-past father.
Charlotte glimpsing, shocked, Clara and Edward (in the book she sees them from afar compromised on a bench), a few minutes later the upset Clara is given no pity by her aunt
If you add in Charlotte’s pro-activity on behalf of getting Miss Georgiana Lambe (Crystal Clarke as “half-mulatto” — Austen’s phrase) out of trouble, out of her room, and unexpectedly into flirting with an appropriate African-born suitor, now freed and working for the abolition of slavery (Jyuddah Jaymes as Otis Molyneux), you have a helluva lot of lot going on.
This is the busiest and most the most frolick-filled Austen adaptation I’ve seen (perhaps with the exception of the violent-action-packed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) with an upbeat lyrical music that turns into a sharp beat rhythm now and again. Episode 1 after frolicking on the beach and in the water (twice) ends in a long gay dance-sequence. Episode 2 after more bathing (Charlotte rising from the sea), a super-luxurious dressed-up luncheon, with some excoriating wit and a rotten pineapple (talked about as an erotic object, seemingly phallic), and attempts to flee to London inside a mocking crowd, ends in several walks into the cliffs, with a apparently near suicide by Miss Lambe (rescued, just, by Charlotte), and a sexualized water clash (Sidney has tried to escape by diving in, only to discover in front of him as he emerges naked, Charlotte). Episode 3, a wild water therapy machine sequence by the latest of mountebanks or doctor-quacks, Dr Fuchs (Adrian Scarborough), followed by a serious accident inflicted on Stringer’s father, mostly the fault of Tom Parker for not paying them enough so they can have more workmen, but one which brings together Sidney and Charlotte for their first understanding (like other recent film heroines she is a born nurse) and walk on the wet beach.
Again amid the first love romance, Otis jumps off the boat to show his despair and they frolick over the splashing
And Episode 4, back again to scenes on the beach with varying couples (e.g., the genuinely amusing pair of Diana [Alexandra Roach] and Arthur, this time on donkeys), an escape to a woodland and canoeing up river (Charlotte with the uncontrollable Georgiana and compliant Otis), ending in a return to ferocious quarreling between Sidney and Charlotte after he witnesses Rose Williams’s funny parody of his own (Theo James’s) physical quirks in performance.
Rose Williams has caught the way he holds his elegant cigarette holder, his voce tones and the emphatic aristocratic (?) rocking of his body
The series does what it sets out to do: provide the pleasures of the place. The beach, the sea, the sands, the waters and landscape form another character, an alive setting. The series is fun to watch — from the bathing to (for next blog) the cricket playing. But is this series any good? you’ll ask. Yes, I think it is. Charlotte does not own the story, it’s not so centrally hers (as it feels in the book), no, but Davies has created through her a character who is a cross between the joy of life and longing for experience we see in his and Austen’s Catherine Morland (Felicity Jones), with the keen intelligence and wit of Elinor Dashwood (Hattie Morahan) and querying of Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle) combined. Charlotte is (to me) so appealing, given wonderful perception lines and before our eyes is growing up. I feel I have a new heroine out of Austen.
And our heroine has a new friend, Georgiana, whose mother was enslaved: they go for walks together
The series also weaves the centrality of money in our lives: to be used as part of our obligations to others, our responsibilities and how they tie us to one another. While the overt sexuality will leap at most viewers, including a sadomasochistic courting of Esther by the gallant Babbington (Mark Stanley is as effective as Charlotte Spencer — she is remarkable throughout), the drum-beat theme is money, finance, as it is in Austen’s Sanditon — and also the other film adaptation to come from Austen’s book with Lefroy’s as part of the frame (Chris Brindle’s).
Tom Parker is attempting to make a fortune by developing a property he owns, but has no capital for and he is doing it off money originally earned by Sidney (it seems, ominously, in Antigua, when he may have known Miss Lambe’s late father who would be the person who left her under Sidney’s guardianship) and now secured by loans. He has built a second house, he hires men he doesn’t pay, takes advantage of securing on credit tools and materials he has not bought; at the same time he goes out and buys an expensive necklace for his wife, the “gentle, amiable” (as in Austen’s book), Mrs Mary Parker (Kate Ashfield), who complacently accepts his lies. Critics and scholars have suggested the background for this is Henry Austen’s bankruptcy and what Austen saw of finances through that (see EJClery, the Banker’s Sister).
At the close of Brindle’s play, Sidney comes forward to maneuver humane deals out of the corrupt practices of Mr Tracy (a character found in Lefroy) with Miss Lambe’s money; in contrast, at the close of Davies’s eighth episode, we see Sidney agree to marry a very wealthy woman whom he dislikes very much but has a hold on him from his past (unexplained). Lady Denham is the boss of this place because she has a fortune; her nephew and niece are at her beck and call because they hope for an inheritance. Clara is similarly subjected to her; the hatred of Esther for Clara and Clara’s fear and detestation of Esther comes from money fears. Mr Stringer dies of his accident: exhausted, he sets the room on fire when his son has gone out for some minimal enjoyment. Not land, not rank, not estates but fluid money.
What Davies shows us is Tom continually pressuring Sidney to borrow more, Sidney resisting, then giving in and coming back with money, and then Tom wanting more. As the first season ends, Sidney has had to say to Tom the banks will give him no more and he does not think he can borrow more and ever get out of the hole they are in.
Mary asking Tom if Sidney has given him hope (and money to come)
and Tom lies, handing her a necklace he has just bought which he cannot begin to afford …
I am not sure that Austen’s fragment meant to center on the power of banks. Her book’s central theme is or seems to be illness, and this is either marginalized, or erased in the film, at most (in the assertion of feebleness in Arthur and Diana) immeasurably lightened: Austen wrote the fragment while dying and probably in great pain, and she is, as she does throughout her life, exorcizing her demons through self-mockery by inventing characters with imaginary illnesses. She certain does in the fragment write about breezes, and light, and sun and the sea with longing, but it’s not the longing of joyful youth, but the ache of the older woman remembering what she has been told about the sea and air as
healing, softening, relaxing — fortifying, bracing, — seemingly just as was wanted — sometimes one, sometimes the other, If he sea breeze failed , the sea bath was certainly the corrective; — and where bathing disagreed, the sea breeze alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure (Ch 2. p 163)
Austen’s fragment also gets caught up with literary satire as she characterizes Edward as a weak-minded reader of erotic romantic poetry and novels. Perhaps as with the long travelogue-like passage of Anne Elliot staring out into the hills in Persuasion, Austen intended to cut some of this kind of detail. But with Lefroy’s continuation and (I suggest) Brindle’s extrapolations (see Mary Gaither Marshall’s paper summarized), we can see that Davies is moving towards the same resolution. Austen’s fragment is waiting for Sidney to come to Sanditon to fix things — each reference to him while suggesting his cleverness, irony, sense of humor (and of the ridiculous too) also presents him as intensely friendly, caring for his family, responsible, and as yet in good economic shape (see Drabble’s Penguin edition of Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon, pp Ch 5, pp 171, 174, 176; Ch 9, p 197; Ch 12, p 210)
Young Mr Stringer and Charlotte confiding in one another
The series suggests that outside this world of genteel people is another very hard one. The various people that Diana Parker and Tom want Mrs Mary Parker to apply to Lady Denham to relieve are made real in Austen’s Sanditon; in the workmen we see, the people on the streets doing tasks, our characters on the edge of homelessness we feel the world outside — as we rarely do in most of these costume dramas. Chris Brindle’s play makes much of the specifics of these vulnerable victims of finance and industrial and agricultural capitalism in the dialogue of the second half of his play — how when banks go under everyone can go under and the banker (Mr Tracy) hope to walk away much much richer.
So the latest Jane Austen adaptation is a mix of strong adherence to Austen and radical contemporary deviation and development.
Not that there are not flaws. Sidney is made too angry; it’s one thing to clash, misunderstand, and slowly grow to appreciate, but as played by Theo James he has so much to come down from, it’s not quite believable that our bright and self-confident Charlotte still wants him. He is an unlikeable hot-tempered bully. The only explanation for her attraction to him is he is the hero and Stringer not a high enough rank, for the scenes between Stringer and Charlotte in Stringer’s house, & walking on the beach together, on the working site, are much more congenial, compatible. The writers have made too melodramatic Esther and Edward Denham’s and Clara’s story too.
On the transgressive sex (a linked issue): I see nothing gained by having Theo James expose himself to Charlotte, except that the audience is shocked. This is worse than superfluous to their relationship; it is using the penis as a fetish. The incest motif functions to blacken Edward much in a modern way similar for the 18th century reader to his admiration for the cold mean pernicious rapist Lovelace (in the book he wants to emulate the villain of Clarissa). I grant Charlotte Spencer’s lingering glances of anguish and alienation, puzzled hurt, at what she is being driven to do (accept Babbington) are memorable.
In general, the series moves into too much caricature, exaggeration – the burlesque scene of the shower is possible not probable, as when it includes Clara in her bitter distress reaching for a mode of self-harm — burning her arm against the red-hot pipes bringing in the lovely warm shower water. But it feels jagged. Too much is piled in in too short a time. Space we have, but there needed to be more money spent on continuity and development of dialogues within scenes, in both the briefer plots and the central moments between Sidney and Charlotte. I felt the quiet friendship seen between Mary Parker and Charlotte, and again Stringer and Charlotte on the beach (at the close of Episode 4) in companionable silence were some of the best moments of the series — as well as the wonderful dancing.
We are half-way through the PBS airing. I look forward to the second half. I have seen this ending and do know how it ends, and to anticipate a bit, I do like the non-ending ending. When we get there ….
An unconventional hero and heroine would have an unconventional ending … walking quietly by the sea
Ellen
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 
Just a thought — a frank one: on the actress chosen for Miss Geogiana Lambe: Crystal Clarke. As you know Miss Lambe in Austen’s fragment is called a “mulatto,” a word which suggests lighter skin, a person who show that one of her parents was white. Let me suggest that casting chose deliberately a dark-skinned actress to make emphatic the shock that Regency people would feel to see Miss Lambe and to shock (yes) the modern audience, viscerally keep them aware, wake them up. Here is someone who will not pass. In the US (and UK) darker skin matters. It was courageous departure (in effect) of casting to do this and so prevent the modern audience from trying to ignore the issues.
This Jane Austen adaptation uses shock several times as if were to jump=start the usual viewership out of its complacencies.
A friend: “Good point. I think a period audience, not used to darker tones of any kind, would have seen her as darker than we do today (if they makes any sense–the old “one drop” rule).”
My reply: I’d say they were used to this: in enslaved people coming directly from Africa. Not just the US but around the coast of the UK and Europe, Africa, the Americas the kidnapping, snatching, buying of people was going on full throttle still. That’s why Austen says “mulatto:” the text means us to understand a light-skinned part European, part African person. But the movie is made in 2019 and the question is, How do you affect this audience. Let’s not forget Meghan Markle while she cannot pass is a light-skinned African-American. Obama has European features in his face and his body structure
Mary Marshall’s “Sanditon: Inspiring Continuations, Adaptations, and Spin-offs for 200 Years” (Session D) drew me because I’ve gotten to know Chris Brindle’s filmed play, Sanditon and have the edition of Sandition by Prof Marshall which includes Anna Lefroy’s continuation, which Marshall was respectful of. She began with the larger picture: Sanditon is the least adapted of the novels, Pride & Prejudice the most adapted, with Emma at this point coming in second (though S&S is still a strong contender for second place). Sanditon was first known to the public in 1871 when James Edward Austen-Leigh described it, summarizing it in the 2nd edition of the Memoir. It was first published in 1925; 1954 Chapman made a much more accessible edition; it is the largest surviving manuscript we have (longer than The Watsons, though The Watsons is far more polished and finished, with implications much fuller as to how it was to proceed): 24,000 words in 12 chapters. Austen was giving us a much wider world than she had before, her language is more relaxed and at times so fresh the descriptions; the plot is unfolding slowly, with its direction not yet clear.
Basically Marshall then described several of the continuations. Anna Lefroy’s, written between 1845-60, was first published in 1983 by Marshall; she had been working as a rare book cataloguer, and came across this working draft. It was Anna who had the cancelled drafts of Persuasion (she reminded us). She carefully developed the Parker family in a direction consonant with what Austen wrote. There is a real aptness and similarity of tone. The POV is Charlotte, Charlotte and Sidney are to marry; Sidney is clearly going to help his brother-in-law; Marshall was reminded by one of the new names of Hasting’s man of business, Woodman; the ambiguous character of Tracy is developed – a business world is being put before us.
A brief list: 1932 Alicia Cobbet (?), whose text is not faithful to the original personalities at all, with its melodramatic plot about kidnapping, smuggling and the like. A best known continuation: by Austen and “another lady (Marie Dobbs): Dobbs extended the story in a direction Dobbs thought Austen’s novel might have moved; Charlotte, for example, thwarts Edward’s seduction of Clara; Sidney proposes to Charlotte. 1981 Rebecca Baldwin who hopes the reader may take what she has written as homage to Austen; Julia Barret 2002 whose book Ms Marshall said is said to be terrible; Regina Hall 2008, where a mere description showed ludicrousness; Helen Marshall 2012 wrote a bizarre short story. Carrie Brebis, The Suspicion at Sanditon; or, The Disappearance of Lady Denham 2015, a “Mr and Mrs Darcy mystery,” was characterized by Marshall as “a well-written mystery.” Then there are several self-published texts: Juliet Shapiro 2003; Helen Barker The Brother 2002; David Williams’s Set in a Silver Sea 2016 with Miss Lamb as the main character. This is not the complete list she went over; I am missing titles; it was clear that Ms Marshall enjoyed some of these.
She then told us about Chris Brindle’s play, the film, the documentary; he owns the Lefroy ms, recruited Amanda Jacobs who sang his music very well (especially the beautiful duet, “Blue Briny Sea;” you can listen here to his most recent music for Jane Austen). Her last text was the coming (she hoped) new Sanditon commercial film (2018-19), with Charlotte Rampling as Lady Denham, Holliday Grainger as Charlotte, Toby Jones as Tim Parker, John O’Hanlon ,the diretor, Simone Read scripting (this seems to have fallen through). After she finished, I asked if she agreed with me that Chris Brindle’s was a fine continuation and Chris was right to take the two texts (Austen’s and Lefoy’s) in a direction exposing corrupt financial dealings, and she said yes. I regretted more than ever not having gone to listen to Sara Dustin on Friday on “Sanditon at 200: Intimations of a Consumer Society. I had chosen the paper on Jane Austen’s letters, wrongly as it turned out, for it was just a basic description and introduction to the problematic nature of the letters, which I’ve known about since blogging about this letters here for over 3 years. Peter Sabor said he had had the privilege of reading the script for the coming film, and it seemed a work of reminiscence. Many questions were asked about the textual sequels. This was perhaps the best session overall that I attended.
From the 2017 JASNA, the last one from which Izzy and I have not been excluded.
To two off-blog comments: I am delighted to hear that the UK TV makers have not quite shut the door on another season. The way it was announced, I felt that was it, and I’ve recently that Theo James has taken on another possible project. The 8 episodes have several untied threads: what is the association of Sidney and Miss Lambe’s father? why does he not confide at all in anyone about his rigorous treatment of Miss Lambe? later what is the story referred to when Mary says Sidney has been hurt in love (or disillusioned) and how does that relate to the female character who turns up in Episode 8 complete with a fortune and seems to demand that Sidney marry her — none of this are we told. They are plants.
I take it the film-makers saw in this fragment the possibilities of longer narrative (and longer novel if all the characters and backstories had been kept), and then added characters. I do hope the US reaction has been more positive: in the UK they made fun of the series and their local Janeites were horrified.
In my blog I suggest one of the major flaws (I tried to keep it short and so didn’t go on about more minor problems) is Sidney is often infuriated, on top of rage he is dislikable – yet we are being asked to believe Charlotte is falling in love with him, is attracted to him, Charlotte, presented as so sober, insightful, intelligent, with Mr Stringer right in front of her. She is as close as we can get to an egalitarian in any Austen film adaptation — or book.
Ellen
Hi Ellen,
I greatly enjoyed your balanced piece about the first four episodes of ITV’s where you highlight details of the plot, give due credit for the cinematography, the challenge of writing a derivative Austen work that will appeal to the mass market, whilst also pointing out the simplification and major deviations from Austen’s characterisation and plot.
My greatest disappointment occurs when adaptors, continuers, and script writers base their Sanditon characters and situations on past Austen. works. This misses the point. Here Austen was writing new characters and breaking new ground. In my writing and film work I have gone a very different route. Back in 2013 I tried writing a script based on Anna Lefroy’s story and her lifelong desire to honour and emulate her aunt. To do this I tried taking the very extensive dialogue from ‘Sanditon’ and then imagined Anna Lefroy’s journey as she tried to ‘get into’ Austen’s characters and the clues that she left, to try and write her own completion. She makes a valiant attempt, but is thwarted by her lack of knowledge of why and how a bank fails. This to my mind would have set off the intended denouement: Old Money replaced by New Money. Colin Blumenau, the Director of the touring production of ‘Mansfield Park’ back in 2013 arranged a rehearsed reading for me with the professional actors from that show. It was a revelation because hearing Austen’s own words voiced by brilliant actors, I could understand what Austen intended for each of her characters.
My Lady Denham should not be a pantomime objectionable Lady de Bourgh character, but someone looking for love and respect like the rest of us, but hampered by her underlying lack of education, and driven by her own awareness of her own lack of breeding. Tom Parker is not the fool in the TV series he is a visionary who has created the resort of New Sanditon up on the cliff, away from the fishing village. But he has got carried away by his own vision. Miss Lambe should be a deliberately ambiguous character, who could be seen as ‘white’ when it suited folks or ‘black’ when it didn’t. For my Play and my Musical I deliberately cast actresses who identify themselves as ‘mixed race’ so I’m very very aware of the present day connotations of what I was doing. For my 2014 short film I was fascinated by the contrast betwen the three main female characters, Charlotte – The Country Girl, Clara –Poor girl from the West Indies, and Miss Lambe, heiress of slave heritage from the West Indies. I sat them down together on a garden bench in the garden of a stately home comparing their back stories. When it came to my Musical I gave them each a song. Charlotte sings “Opportunity” about leaving Willingden to see what Sanditon has to offer, for Clara and Miss Lambe I wrote “The Life We’re Born Into”. For Tom Parker I wrote “Speculation”.
In the ITV ‘Sanditon’ the worst used used characters are Arthur, Susan and Diana Parker. The essence of ‘Sanditon’ should be that people are coming to it for a cure and Austen gives us the fine examples of Arthur, Susan and Diana Parker. It was only when I came to write ‘How really Sick We Are’ for those three siblings that I realised what Austen had done. She had identified three specific compulsive behaviours; Arthur is the compulsive over-eater, Susan is the compulsive hypochondriac (who doesn’t appear at all in the ITV production) and Diana is the compulsive helper. If ‘Sanditon’ and sea-bathing is any good as a cure, then we should see in the course of the plot, the behaviours of these characters improving.
But you are right when you say that ‘Sanditon’ should really be about money and finance and get the details right. Thus I don’t think that Sir Edward should be receiving a ‘hand job’ from Clara, rather they should be talking about something much more subversive:- how to get their hands on Lady Denham’s money. Anna Lefroy’s long winded description is there to set up the fact that if Lady Denham dies intestate then she would inherit one quarter of Lady Denham’s Estate. Lady Denham is the Dowager of the Denham Estate, so on her death Sir Edward would be free to choose to deal with the Denham Place Estate as he sees fit and would not be beholden to Lady Denham for permission. In the TV production Sir Edward and Clara find Lady Denham’s will giving money to a donkey sanctuary and put it on the fire. But surely lady Denham’s Solicitor would have a copy ?
So it is the financial understandings of the scriptwriters in ITV’s ‘Sanditon’ that don’t ring true. Colin Davies makes Miss Lambe the Ward of Sidney Parker. If this is the case then why doesn’t Sidney invest some of her money in ‘Sanditon’?
Why doesn’t Arthur invest in the resort as he received an equal inheritance to Tom and Sidney in the will of their parents ? What are the financial arrangements between Lady Denham and Tom ? What support is Tom afraid that Lady Denham will withdraw ? Why doesn’t Tom make any specific financial requests to Lord Babbington and Mr Crowe ? When Tom sends Sidney to London to try and borrow money from a bank, why would any bank want to lend without having the Principal in front of them, and without a clear account of what the money is for, and how the loan will be repaid ?
My 2014 Play, 2014 Documentary and 2019 Musical are all on YouTube with links from my website Sanditon.info and receiving thousands of ‘hits’ . They make an interesting contrast to the route taken by ITV and Andrew Davies. My belief remains that when Austen realised she could never complete Sanditon, she deliberately left an unfinished novel with all the clues necessary for its completion for others to finish. She was thinking particularly of Anna Lefroy, if she could prove she was capable of having one of her own works published.
Against that backdrop that forms the lyrics to my “Song For Jane Austen” how successful has Colin Davies been?
Chris Brindle
Thank you very much for this full and explanatory reply and commentary, Chris. The only point on which we are in disagreement is I see Tom Parker as irresponsible and my real urge to see in a second season (if we could have one) is for him to get his comeuppance. We are told that Sidney is about to marry a wealthy woman but if he does not, and the money owed is not forthcoming (and we can’t know what are the exact arrangements of the Lambe estate albeit I agree with you generally whatever was written down a guardian could over-ride), the whole empty scheme collapses. Not enough visitors are coming. Bath was a city already thriving, so too Cheltenham and other European spas. Tom is not a knave but his behavior is as reprehensible as John Dashwood in S&S. I don’t see why Arthur or Diana should give up any money to him: Tom Parker is a bottomless pit — who builds another house and deserts the one he has? the way he treats his men is disgraceful. He looks indignant that they don’t want to work for no money. I find it enormously generous of them to play in that cricket match in the 5th episode. My hunch is you are right and Austen did not know enough about bank finance, but where she can she shows other males who we are to judge adversely mismanaging their properly.
Romantically, from character presentation I would have much preferred to see Charlotte marry a thriving and upcoming Mr Stringer. I find the depiction of Sidney Parker a troubling indication of what a supposed hero is supposed to be like; Babbington is quietly sadistic. Feminism has certainly gotten nowhere in popular culture. Quite the reverse despite the confidence and behavior of Charlotte.
To me it’s abundantly clear why Susan was eliminated, Diana and Arthur made semi-clowns of, and all serious illness erased — the makers of this series wanted a young girl’s fortunate entrance in the world. Andrew Davies has never shown interest in Mansfield Park; he does not want a truly dark story from Austen; maybe he can’t believe she would write one. The movie-makers want something that will sell widely; oddly Austen is now identified with “chick lit” and romance so how can you have a story of aging and dying people. Older people themselves are not favorites in modern discourse or politics. Forget the disabled — though they are all in Austen.
I did very much like that scene on the bench between Clara Brereton, Felicity Lambe and our Charlotte — and all the references to those suffering economic hardship in the last scene. Int the book this is piled onto Mary — absurdly for she has no influence whatsoever on Lady Denham. In the book Lady Denham while not a Dickens-type monster, is a hard woman.
Maybe Austen did hope that both The Watsons and Sanditon would be finished. Thank you for this comment. I re-watched the film of the play and listened to the songs where I had podcasts available.
I never tire of Austen though I may have had it with JASNA and online Janeite communities. So I want to keep up this blog and along with series portraits (which take time if I am to do them right — correct and up to an essay level), blogs on Austen’s work and its presence in our culture. There are new plays and an opera (if I am not mistaken). The loss of Chawton house as a scholarly center is unfortunate even in the extreme.
Ellen
Carol Campbell: “I am loving this story
Me: I find them interesting — and as worked out in both film adaptations, distinctly different from all Austen’s others. I doubt the decision not to have a second season after the “poor” audience reaction to the first season in Britain registered will be rescinded, but one can wish … At any rate, we have this vivid bringing to life of the text visually, aurally, viscerally ….
It’s arguable that for a fragment, Sanditon is one of Austen’s most interesting — and unexplored — works. Nowhere near publication and its author about to die, she was not subjected to what I surmise was an expected usual form of censorship, though no need to make explicit what was understood you could not say or say only subtextually. Lady Susan exists in a beautiful fair copy, set out for all the world as it was published. Austen knew her family would not hear of this one in public. The Watsons certainly made the next generation of Austens uncomfortable. The trouble is one does need some help in trying to think about what is there — the whole money-banking-finance theme is as yet muted in the fragment, but brought out explicitly in Anna Lefroy’s continuation.
I saw all this first when I watched and read Chris Brindle’s filmed play of the two books with his ending — There have been conferences of JASNA where the unfinished books are the central topic with corresponding issues of Persuasion having good essays on these unfinished books by Austen but not lately —
Who was Marie Dobbs? Marie Catton Dobbs — the first to “continue” Sanditon commercially and successfully was originally Australian. Very daring and willing to make up identities (she couldn’t do it now), she succeeded by emigrating in living a varied life (in Russia too), wrote continuations or sequels to make money — and probably out of a vocation for it. She used pseudonyms too. Here is an obituary
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11790472/Marie-Dobbs-author-obituary.html
E.M.
And — just as good — a blog about the continuation, which goes beyond praising it (it seems here have a likeable Sidney, a sort of renewed Henry Tilney) to a genuine assessment:. https://alexaadams.blogspot.com/2010/03/sanditon-by-jane-austen-and-another.html
I shall have to find my old copy and attempt to read into it more.
Vic Sanborn in her Austen blog has made a thorough analysis too:
https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2020/02/03/sidney-parker-and-young-stringer-and-a-poll/
Here is my comment on hers:
This is a good analysis. I wrote one on my blog, and as a result of comments I was led to talk about an element in Stringer’s fate that you are not dwelling on here but is important and is in Austen: Tom Parker’s irresponsibility, which is developed by Davies rightly — and even more by Anna LeFroy in her continuation. Austen has Sidney say he is expecting friends and in Lefroy’s continuation one of these is a shady banker. We are seeing Davies try to show Sidney Parker’s change-over in the way he did Darcy in his 1995 P&P only he has made Sidney so angry and not likable and has also made Charlotte so appealing — so intelligent and able and responsible. In my blog I suggested a lot of this Sanditon comes from the tiniest and larger twigs of Austen’s fragment – I did read the fragment and came up with the same passages about Sidney and Stringer — and Lefroy; the departures also remember what Davies did in previous film adaptations and he noticed in other film adaptations (Barrington and Esther walking by the waterfall and having that witty contest can be found in a 1986 Northanger Abbey).
E.M.
[…] of Sanditon was he brought out this paradigm in three of the heroines (see my exegesis of Episodes 1-4, By the Sea …; and Episodes 5-8, Zigzagging). It is central to why Jane Austen has meant so much to me. This is […]
[…] follow on from my first blog review of this […]
[…] Sanditon (alas he wrote the last episode only) returned. It resembles the first (see Episodes 1-4: by the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea; and 5-8: zigzagging into a conclusion in which nothing is concluded) by its use of a too many […]