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.

But Wickham isn't "bad boy sexiness on legs". He's a nasty little mean minded money grubbing oik with a taste for very young girls.That's the point!.

Now I am 42 I love Anne Elliot, when I first read the book at 17 I couldn't believe anyone would fancy such an old trout. Time changes everything...... I understand Charlotte much more now, too.

Out of all them, Fanny is first in line for a punch, and then Emma: she's a frenemy if ever there was one.

Nope, I know he's mean and nasty, but in my head, Wickham is still quite fanciable. He'd have to be killer looking for Elizabeth to even consider it, given that she's quite bright.

See, now you've got me thinking of just how sexy Wickham would have to be to make ELizabeth fancy him. Ben Chaplin in fancy trousers.

Alan Rickman is even sexy as Snape. his voice!!

but agree MummyToMog Emma is my favourite too as much more real than the others. Fanny Price is a daft bat.

Charlotte Lucas defiantly triumphs as Mr Collins dies trying to save the carriage if Lady Lucas and her daughter who all die in the same accident.

thus she is complete mistress of her home and no annoying neighbours.

Emma as a frennemy.. yes excellent. Harriet Smith probably should have punched her.

Does anyone remember Sylvestra Le Touzel's Fanny in the 80s Mansfield Park?

There was a great outtake on It'll Be Alright On The Night 756 where Fanny is visiting her family in Portsmouth. She is standing wistfully on the sea wall when the old Sealink Isle of Wight ferry appears in the background.

I'm going to have to google that blooper!

In my head, because I am old, all my Austen heros are basically Cary Grant, Clause Raines, and the like, although I must admit Mark Strong was jolly nice. But I agree that Kate and Emma have rather overawed all the other ladies. I really wish there had been earlier adaptations with people like Helen Mirren as Elizabeth. Elizabeth Taylor as Elizabeth, can you imagine! I can't really think of other modern middle aged actresses who would have the power to play Anne Elliot well.

Harriet Smith, that poor girl. We all knew someone like that at school, friends with a frenemy who walked all over them, for years. She should have decked her one, you're right.

Captain Wentworth for me please!

Ooooooooooooof.

Oh dear god, yes. I'd have a go on his schooner any day.

I LIKE Fanny Price. She is naturally timid but has principles. She has been in love with Edmund for a long time, whilst I agree that Henry is superficially sexier and personally Edmund doesn't really do it for me, Fanny was right to stick with her original choice.

Mansfield Park is my favourite JA. It took me a few years to come to that conclusion as I liked P and P best in my teens.

I do think Captain Wentworth is the the most appealing hero though. "I am half agony, half hope...."

So no one would recommend James's Death Comes to Pemberley then? I had fantasised that Charlotte was gradually putting drops of arsenic in Collins' tea till he dies 'of natural causes' leaving a widow who's so upset her hair turns golden .

YABU BTW Marianne is lucky to get Col Brandon IMO she's such a dope!

I gave up on Death Comes to Pemberly. It just was not interesting.

I always had a soft spot for Tom Bertram, something very sexy about his wild ways. He was tamed by illness too.

"...Marianne ... 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."

I don't think that everything JA says in on the surface. Although she is writing in her time, I think she's subtly pointing out how sad it is that a woman has to be flattened into conforming. Or maybe I'm reading it in my modern time! But I think JA is much more cynical than face value.

Greg Wise - yuck! Take those cheekbones away. Perfect casting as a slimeball. Alan Rickman - gorgeous but miscast. Makes Brandon sinister and somehow vaguely pervy. Wd have made a lovely Darcy. ( I love Darcy - the character, not the actors who play him.)

Have never read Death Comes to Pemberley so can't comment on how 'bad' it is, but if anyone is interested they are making a TV series. Anna Maxwell Martin and Matthew Rhys are in it...

Anna Maxwell Martin is a great actor, loved her in Bleak House and The Bletchley Circle, she'll make a good Lizzie.

Not read the whole thread yet but had to jump in and tell you that yabvvvvvvvvvvvvvu. I'd be v happy to get up to 'dark shit in the bedroom' with him, personally. :)

I am marking my place as I don't have time to read the whole thread at the moment.

BUT - I will just say that, having had any number of doomed teenage romances with latter day Willoughbys, I am going to sit DD down with book and/or film of S&S at the appropriate age and hope that she might just pick up that handsome shits are Just Not Worth It.

Agree Ja is cynical, the Victorians hated her didn't they because they found her cold. Although I do think she now suffers a bit from the Austenites who are obsessed with her, she's revered rather than respected. Or maybe it's because the books are so perfect (and every chicklit trashy novel is cesperately trying to be Austen-like) that her skill is underestimated. Or maybe it's because she is a woman.

And I think it is precisely because Marianne is such a romantic that Brandon is able to ultimately 'catch' her. He has loved her pretty much since first setting eyes on her, he has a romantic and v sad past and he brings her mother to her when she is sick which to one of M's feelings would have been akin to rescuing her from savages.

She learns to love him, precisely because he is faithful and romantic and because she is a romantic, imho - "Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby."