To think Marianne shouldn't have married Colonel Brandon?

[squoosh]

Okay Willoughby was a cad and a bounder and took himself out of the running, but I do think that Brandon swooped in to take advantage of her rain induced fever which had left her a bit dazed and compliant.

It's a bit creepy that he falls in love with her because she reminds him of his long lost, 'fallen', dead love. Plus he's a bit intense, the laughs wouldn't be forthcoming and I'll warrant he expected her to do all kinds of dark shit in the bedroom.

Ideally she'd have had another couple of seasons in London and met lots of nice suitors or maybe even nipped across to Pride and Prejudice and married that nice Colonel Fitzwilliam.

[Figgygal]

I'm with others in the Alan rickman front he was so dashing

[kickassangel]

If you think about it, Austen was quite anti the love's young dream thing.

None of her heroines meet and marry in that frame of mind, they all go through some kind of transformation which brings them some maturity, so that they enter marriage with a much better understanding and not just expecting some great romantic whoosh to sweep them along.

Makes you wonder if that was what she was looking for when she had her overnight engagement, someone that gave her a whoosh, followed by waking up and knowing that the two of them would get on.

I like to think she was as vulnerable to romance as the rest of us, but she also really argues for self knowledge and relationships founded on respect.

[cardamomginger]

Changed my mind. Just googled him and I've gone off him . How did that happen ?

[RooRooTaToot]

There is a warning for Elinor as well. She nearly loses Edward by being too sensible and cautious.

[sheridand]

You're all leaving out Mansfield Park, for the jolly good reason that Fanny Price is a weedy madam who makes Katy out of What Katy Did look like an asbo kid. She is the only one of Austen's heroines that deserves a kick in the pants and is lucky to marry anyone!

[Alibabaandthe40nappies]

Marianne is not a narcissist, she is a teenager!

[TheCraicDealer]

Anyone see Clueless on E4 last night? Paul Rudd as modern-Mr-Knightly. Babe.

Feel sorry for Charlotte Lucas. At the end of P&P there's a bit where they say she's prego (but not in such crass terms). That means either she had had sex with Mr Collins [shudder] or had had a torrid affair with one of Lady De Bourgh's footmen.

[Grumpla]

Please god let it have been the footman.

And surely Mr Collins died of gout in the head almost immediately after the book ends. SURELY!

[sheridand]

PD James wrote a crime Pemberley novel, "Death comes to Pemberley", and one of the worst things about it was that Mr Collins is still alive and well throughout it, and blahing on as normal. Poor Charlotte.

[curlew]

Absolutely about Marianne being a teenager, not a narcissist! I think that comes out beautifully in the film, with Mrs D and Elinor and the others laughing at her a little and teasing her and her stropping off.

[curlew]

"PD James wrote a crime Pemberley novel, "Death comes to Pemberley", and one of the worst things about it was that Mr Collins is still alive and well throughout it, and blahing on as normal. Poor Charlotte."

I don't think that's actually the worst thing about that book...........!

[sheridand]

I know, I stuck with it but I really hated it. What on earth posessed her to try to write it! It was like an Austen car crash by the end, I read on to see how bad it would get.

[TheCraicDealer]

My Mum got me this for Christmas one year when I was about 17. I think she says "Jane Austen" on the cover and went for it, rather than thinking it would offer some useful life lessons.

Anyway, chapter two is entitled "Don't Put Your Feelings On Public Display Unless They're Fully Reciprocated". Then she tells you what a div Marianne is.

[Alibabaandthe40nappies]

Mr Knightley is lovely.

'Marry me, my darling friend'

Paul Rudd was good, as was Jeremy Northam. Johnny Lee Miller could have been good but seemed to close in age to Romala Gari for that to work in quite the same way.

[squoosh]

I love Charlotte Lucas, ok so she had to give Mr Collins his conjugals but she gets her own home to run and her own sitting room, and she hardly sees him from one end of the day to the other.

Love the idea of Mr Collins meeting an early grave and Charlotte being an independent woman even if it's of modest means.

[squoosh]

Fanny Price is a fanny.

[Grumpla]

I stopped after the first couple of paragraphs pages.

I love PD James usually, it was just so WRONG.

[thebody]

I didn't leave out Fanby price.. she was a prat to marry boring Edmund and not sexy Henry!!

and re Marianne a teenager and a narcissist are as one.

I could do the dirty sexuals with Alan Rickman any day.

[squoosh]

I tried to read Death Comes to Pemberley, I failed.

[squoosh]

Although I read that the BBC are adapting Death Comes to Pemberley as part of their Christmas scheduling and I'm pretty sure I'll watch it.

[sheridand]

Squoosh, when we did Mansfield Park at school, "Fanny" became a term of abuse. She's so wrong for a heroine.
Grumpla: me too. I love her crime stuff, I really wanted Pemberley to be good, but it really really was not. Even reintroducing Wickham, bad boy sexiness on legs, was a faliure. Although I would pay good money to see a mini-series based around Lydia and Wickham post Pride and Prejudice. It would be bad/good, like the Tudors was bad/ good. In fact, I will spend the next ten minutes casting Wickham and Lydia in my head......

[motherinferior]

Thing is, if Colonel B is indeed the divine Rickman then she is clearly going to have a whale of a time in the bedroom if nowhere else...

That would be nice, for Charlotte.

Fanny Price makes me want to slap her. Anne Elliott is fabulous, though I am now not the teenager I was who first marvelled at how someone that incredibly old could still be fancied...

[thebody]

I did enjoy 'lost in Austen' daft but funny.

I also preferred the more recent portrayal of Mrs Bennett in the film rather than the TV series.

. I loved her character as she was doing the best she could for her girls, at the time, marrying them off. Austen was very unforgiving about her.

[MummytoMog]

If I had been Marianne, I would have made Willoughby marry me. MADE HIM. Alan Rickman is only hunky as the Sheriff of Nottingham, he's frankly creepy in S&S. Emma is the Austen heroine I identify with most, and Mr Knightley is swoonsome. But Greg's cheekbones cannot be denied...

Paul Rudd is scrummy too. OH is away tonight. I may have to have an Austen-fest.

[hamdangle]

Sense and sensibility has always been one of my favourite novels and for some weird reason I think it's because there isnt really a happy ending in this one Marianne bangs on about everything and nothing giving her opinion on love, art, nature etc every five minutes throughout the whole novel but has the enthusiasm beaten out of her by the end.

When it describes her final match with Brandon, Austen gives a long list of reasons why it's such a perfect match and then says something like 'and how could Marianne think otherwise?' But you never actually hear her voice again. She never tells the reader how she feels.

It always made me feel sad but for some reason I've always loved that book the most.

And also because Fanny Price does need a giant kick up the arse.