Watched Sense and Sensibility again last night. Please explain ....

[PuddleglumtheMarshWiggle]

..why would anyone prefer Willoughby over Colonel Brandon?
And yes, I've read the book a dozen times and understand Marianne's romantic heart. But this is Alan Rickman!
The look in his eyes when he sees her would melt butter! And his voice is as smooth as honey.
The only thing that beats this is seeing Darcy five into the lake.
Pity Jane Austen never knew the great pleasure she brought to do many.

Does Georgiana live at the seaside for her health? Isn't she sickly?

The sickly one in P and P is poor whiny Lady Anne de Bourgh (though wouldn't you take to your bed, too, if you had Lady Catherine as your mother?) but maybe you're right and we're intended to think that Georgiana is having a few months in the sea air for her health after leaving school and before making her home with her brother.

My lapse of memory means I clearly need to read the book and/ or watch the film again! Hurrah! (I might do it later tonight)

Lady Anne de B probably just had a touch of asthma. I hope that once dear Mama passed on and she inherited Rosings (she wouldn't be usurped by some dreary male relative) she tore down all the dusty tapestries and went for a more dust unfriendly Scandi interior style. And got up to all sort of scandalous activities with all sorts of men she had no intention of marrying.

She had made a right cake of herself in front of everyone and they would want to hide her away.

'a right cake'

Even though in the awful Death Comes To Pemberley Col. Fitzwilliam throws himself at Georgiana and it's all hugely

I thought it was an obvious shout for him to paper marriage Anne De Bourgh, await her death and then marry for love

me too Quintella!

Marianne was a huge embarrassment though

Her conduct would still have been gossip when Margaret "came out"

"The sister of the one who threw herself down a hill in the rain over a man she was never engaged to, Brandon's delicate wife"

I hope Margaret Dashwood married a naval man and travelled the high seas with him, like Mrs Croft in Persuasion.

I thought it was an obvious shout for him to paper marriage Anne De Bourgh, await her death and then marry for love

I like your matrimonial scheming, Barton. I've always felt Colonel Fitzwilliam telling Lizzie that earls' younger sons very often can't marry where they please i.e. 'Don't be expecting a proposal from me, pretty-but-impecunious lady!' was more than a bit pointed.

Possibly Anne would have held on for decades out of sheer cussedness, though, giving an occasional death rattle to get his hopes up.

Georgiana went to pemberley later didn't she? She was staying there when Lizzie turns up there.

Surely in the film Brandon wins Marianne's heart when he reads poetry to her with a depth of feeling that she berated the Ferrers chap (Hugh Grant)for lacking?

Yes but Georgiana was visiting because Darcy was hosting what the housekeeper called "a large party of friends"

Aka

Bingley
Miss Bingley
Mr and Mrs Hurst

Does anyone else mix and match?

I’d like Marianne to have met a remorseful, mature Wickham and have married him.

Let’s put poor Kitty Bennett with Willoughby. Imagine the dinner party (if Lydia stays with Wickham).

I want Charlotte Lucas with Colonel Brandon! What a lovely couple!

Is it just me?

I can see Brandon and Lucas

I can see Kitty and Fitzwilliam actually

What about Poor old Mary

Eminently suitable for Collins poor girl

Georgiana was 'taking the air' at Ramsgate which was the fashionable way to spend your summer in Georgian times.

The Ang Lee interpretation of Col. Brandon bears little resemblance to the Austen character. Austen's Brandon was 20 years older than Marianne, already complaining about rheumatism and always wore a flannel vest to keep out the cold. Hardly the stuff of a young girl's dreams. But Marianne had so compromised her reputation that it was a clear case of beggars can't be choosers and she was lucky and grateful to get Brandon.

Particularly like Charlotte Lucas if Marianne was really fortunate she'd provide him with a male heir, be widowed after a short while, perhaps by her late twenties, then be independently wealthy and free to decide who or if she would remarry.