I recently finished listening to this book on Librivox (the Karen Savage reading), and decided to start blogging again about adapting Jane Austen. For an introductory essay on the subject, go here. For subsequent essay, click on the Jane Austen category in this blog. As usual, we start with the characters:

Age-shifting: Look, we live in a culture where no one wants to see young women who are high school aged (or barely college-aged) hanging around men in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Accordingly, I’m aging the Dashwood sisters up and another character downwards, but more on that in a minute.

-Mrs. Dashwood: a good-looking woman in her early/mid-forties, in dress and looks more similar to Marianne than to Elinor. She should come off as very sweet and gracious, especially to her middle daughter and to her servants (she’s the reason any of them are willing to come to Devonshire), very sincere, maybe a little flustered. Charming, good-hearted butterfly type.

-Elinor Dashwood: twenty-one years old. According to the book: fair-skinned, short to average height, nice-looking but not gorgeous face, attractive figure, probably slender. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a version that captures both Elinor’s bright and dark sides: she’s either a neurotic spinster played by neurotic divorcee/brilliant scriptwriter Emma Thompson, or a sweet, long-suffering idealist played by someone else.

–In this imaginary adaptation Elinor is very kind to people that she cares about, and at least tries to be civil to people that she doesn’t. She narrates the story, most of the interesting narrator bits being changed from third to first person. There she is often entertainingly snarky, but also judgmental, snobbish, and self-pitying in a way that is played for rather dark, dry humor, especially in the later stages where she’s saying to herself a lot of the things Marianne says out loud. Her position as the responsible adult in the family requires her to be the “bad guy” relatively speaking in dealing with the servants (refusing raises or calling out stuff they messed up), although she is still polite when she does it. Jennifer Ehle’s smirking, eye-rolling Lizzie Bennet in 1995 P&P doesn’t quite work for me as a Lizzie Bennet. But it would make a great reference point for this Elinor though.

–This puts her on not-great terms with the manservant Thomas in particular, and in the book, the mixup about who Lucy married looks to me like it’s as much or more about Thomas’s malice than it is about Lucy’s, no matter what Elinor thinks. Thomas has never seen Robert before, but has seen Edward during the latter’s visit to Devonshire, and he’s very emphatic on who he saw in the carriage with Lucy, to a degree that no amount of handwaving about “oh, he was leaning back in the carriage” can account for, especially since the two brothers don’t dress alike and aren’t particularly said to look alike. More on this when we start dealing with the plot.

-Marianne Dashwood: Celebrates her twentieth birthday in a small family party just after they move to Devonshire. Marianne is a *really* good-looking, rather tan and outdoorsy brunette in the book, probably a lollipop build, taller than her sister. People tend to play up the “spoiled teenager” vibe both in adaptations (even if they’re using an actress older than that) and in excusing the character online. Her fortysomething mom’s enough like her to where I don’t think “spoiled teenager” completely covers it. She needs to be very charismatic, heart-wrenchingly sincere and enthusiastic, and not really very rude to people to their faces, at least before Willoughby comes into her life. I think she also follows her mother’s lead in terms of trying to be nice to the help, and maybe quotes some contemporary essays that are more sympathetic-ish to working people than her sister is. Aishwarya Rai in Kandukondein/Kondukondain/I Have Found It/possibly other titles I’ve forgotten should be our role model, not any of the English language portrayers. The contrast between her complaining out loud behind people’s backs and her sister complaining to the audience should be funny in a Not So Different kind of way.

-Margaret Dashwood: It’s become conventional to replace the gawky, tactless thirteen-year-old of the book with an adorable little moppet either interested in adventure (1995 movie), math (Kandukondein, 1999), or writing (2008). Or just cut her out altogether, which IIRC is how the older miniseries handle it. But honestly, in a proper miniseries, there should be room for a mouthy, sentimental girl in her late teens, not yet “out,” saying her sister’s beau has a name which begins with the Letter F. Kind of a prototype for Kitty and Lydia. She may have been on the verge of coming out when her father died, and finances prevented it after his death; if so, the miniseries will end with the married older sisters at a ball being held in Margaret’s honor.

-Henry Dashwood: I think we start with the death of the bachelor uncle and Henry Dashwood being bummed about not being able to provide for his second wife and her children out of the estate, but being upbeat about his ability to save some money for them, and John Dashwood promising to be helpful to his stepmother and half-sisters. Henry should be rather older than his wife, but a hale, hearty guy whose hopes of living many years and putting aside some money for his family seems plausible (until we cut to his death). In his brief scenes, we really need to feel that this is a great guy who loves his family and is a huge loss when he passes away.

-John’s little son Harry Dashwood: The uncle found him charming, so he should be a fairly likable little kid. He should only be about four or five during the main body of the plot, and we don’t hear as much about him misbehaving as the Middleton children. I think, for all her pride in him, Fanny is pretty hard on her son. We should feel bad about Harry having the parents that he does, and perhaps feel that Elinor’s snarky narration about the uncle’s soft spot for his little grand-nephew is a little spiteful.

-Edward Ferrars: People tend to retool him into a more conventional romantic lead (Hugh Grant, Downton Abbey Guy, 1970s Poldark guy…), which kind of misses the point. He’s a sensitive, rather timid personality with a tendency to go with the flow, unless he really needs to make a moral stand. He should have enough scenes to make it clear that his friendship with the Dashwoods, his unacknowledged love for Elinor, him taking a stand over the engagement with Lucy, and him rushing off to propose to Elinor once Lucy releases him, are part of a larger character arc. Henry Miles (the cuckolded husband from End of the Affair) strikes me as an Edward type married to a Marianne type, but the two film adaptations offer no help on the casting front: Stephen Rea is far too old for Edward now, and Peter Cushing has been dead these thirty years. Mostly, you need a guy for Edward who’s not classically handsome but also attractive in a non-threatening way, and has a physique for Regency Clothes (slim, wiry build, longish neck). He also needs to project a kind of charismatic mousiness, and angst like the dickens, in an appealing way.

-Lucy Steele: Full confession: Lucy Steele and Mrs. Clay are my favorite Austen bad girls, and my interpretation of the younger Miss Steele here reflects that. She needs to be fairly good-looking and charismatic, and apparently nice to the help (Thomas at least thinks well of her), but mostly ruthlessly focused on money and the main chance. She has something of the charming sociopath vibe I associate with some of the Cardassian characters on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dukat and Garak in particular. Like Garak, I think she genuinely values courtesy as a tool she can use and something that makes her life easier, in a way that the Ferrars women (see below) do not. I don’t think she cares enough about Elinor to troll her about her wedding the way Elinor thinks she does. I think the trolling in that scene is Thomas at work, getting a bit of his own back for all the hassle Elinor has given him. I think Lucy constantly pestering Elinor about the secret engagement is more about control than about sadism, and Elinor complaining about being persecuted by her should come off as slightly delusional. In a funny way.

-John Dashwood: He should come off as a dark mirror to Edward Ferrars. His moments of trying to be nice to his half-sisters should come off as weaselly but sincere, his debates with his wife about what to do for them should present him as weak as well as selfish.

-Fanny Dashwood: needs to come off as a more posh and hypocritical but less intelligent version of Lucy Steele. The greed and concern for the main chance are more naked than in Lucy’s case, and unlike Lucy she’s not nice to the help. The 2008 version, where Fanny seems to use her femininity to manipulate her husband, is probably on the mark. Fanny should be fairly good-looking, in a “beautiful on the outside, ugly on the inside” way. She’s politely nasty to the Dashwoods, in a way that suggests the politeness is kind of a strain on her. She’s not polite for the fun of it, or the challenge of it, which I think is partly how Lucy approaches courtesy.

-Mrs. Ferrars: I think the 2008 miniseries had the right idea by casting Queen Bavmorda(1) as this character, but I feel like we need to show her much earlier, just to give a better understanding of why Fanny and Edward are the way they are, and as something of a red herring to distract from the actual reason (secret engagement) that Edward seems to hold himself aloof from Elinor. Maybe Fanny invites her mother to Norland when she feels like Elinor and Edward are getting too close.

-Robert Ferrars: He’s a very bland-looking airhead in very fashionable clothes that don’t really suit him (this is a good role for the kind of bull-necked guy who looks like a turtle in Regency collars). I think, as with Mr. Collins in P&P, he should come off as a self-centered buffoon more than a sleazoid. His patronizing concern about Edward’s social awkwardness should have a note of envy to it: either he resents his brother for making so little of his firstborn status, or like Wickham towards Darcy, at some level he recognizes and resents the better man.

-Norland Park: this estate in Sussex is only seen in the first one or two episodes of any miniseries, but it has to be an exquisitely appealing place, almost a paradise. The 1995 movie presents us with a blandly handsome, well-photographed property, and the 2008 miniseries with an attractive Stately Home overshadowed by mourning. The older miniseries (from 1971 and 1981) are at a disadvantage due to budgetary reasons. It’s worth noting that the Dashwoods arrive in Devonshire in early September, after perhaps four weeks of planning and packing; and this is “several months” after Henry’s death. We might imagine Mr. Henry Dashwood as having passed away in a gray March, and Elinor and Edward bonding while the bluebells bloom in April. Possibly the uncle passed away in April of the previous year, so we see Norland first at the uncle’s death, looking great in springtime, and then in dreary weather for Henry’s death “almost a twelvemonth” later.

-Barton Cottage in Devonshire: We know more details about the appearance of this place than almost any other heroine’s residence in Jane Austen. It is a fairly new build (meaning Georgian/Regency era) with a roof that is tiled, not thatched, no honeysuckles (and probably no other vines growing on the walls). The Diamond Cottage in Blaise Hamlet was built the year after S&S was published, but to me has kind of the right vibe, as far as the exterior goes, except for the fact that it’s part of a small town and has close neighbors, while the Dashwoods’ cottage is in the countryside, in Barton Valley. In the novel, the cottage has two front parlors with low ceilings, each about sixteen foot square, with a passageway leading back to the “offices” (kitchen, etc) and the crooked staircase leading up to the second floor, with four bedrooms, and to a third floor consisting of two garrets. I *suspect* the Dashwood women are supposed to have a bedroom apiece, with the two female servants taking one of the garrets and Thomas the other. We’re unlikely to see the servants’ quarters unless we have some kind of gag with Thomas pranking the older of the two female servants in an obnoxious but unsleazy way(2), in the interest of having Elinor get into his bad books by scolding him. But it’s worth noting that a private bedroom conversation between, say, Elinor and Marianne at Barton Cottage should start with one of them knocking on the other’s door.

Next: The rest of the Steele/Pratt family, and Sir John Middleton, His Friends and Family.

(1)Sense and Sensibility has always been a fascinating nexus of nerd-friendly casting, from 1971’s casting of Richard Owen (later of Vampire Circus) as Brandon and Ciaran Madden (later of The Beast Must Die) as Marianne; to the 1995 cast that largely went into Harry Potter; to 2008 which includes Mr. Weasley from Harry Potter, the Beast/Prince from Disney’s live action Beauty and the Beast, Young Howard Stark from Captain America: The First Avenger, the Governor from The Walking Dead, Queen Bavmorda from Willow, horror fan/writer Mark Gatiss, and, in a tiny role where you hear him more than you see him, Damien Thomas from Twins of Evil.

(2)because you KNOW Elinor would never have permitted her mom to bring a bonafide creep along to Devonshire, even if there was one in the Norland staff.