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.

TheWickedBitchoftheBest.
Summed it up perfectly!

'I love the fact that she genuinely believes that 'all is lost' and that she'll just fade away into middle age and spinsterhood and then at the 11th hour all her dreams finally come true.'

That's the magic of the book for me. I've just recently started re-reading it for the first time in about ten years. I love Anne so much, love her father and sister too, but for very different reasons!

I think all JAs heroines are alter egos. In an age when women of her class were mostly decorative , I suspect she would have liked to have being as vivacious as Lizzy, outspoken as Emma, pious as Fanny, emotional as Marianne. In her real life she was probably was in a similar position to Anne Elliot when her engagement to Tom Lefroy came to an end but JA didn't have Anne's happy ending

The only adaptation worth watching was BBC1s Pride and Predjudice. I have just read "Death comes to Pemberley"! I've read worse, but it isn't in the same league as the original book. I also read another sequel ages ago, but have no idea who it was by or what it was called , obviously worth re-reading! I think Bingley had a love child and Elizabeth turned into a neurotic, jealous wife who thought that Darcy was cheating on her, when in fact he was just covering for Bingley!!
My DH also thought, for some unknown reason, that I would like to read the zombie version! Has anyone else tried it? I think I got as far "it os a universally accepted that any rich man must be in search of more brains" and gave up!

Love the zombie one. HATE the BBC P&P.

Mumzy - I've often wondered too whether Persuasion is her attempt to write a happy ending to her own sad story. I love that book. I also have fond memories of the adaptation that had Amanda Root playing Anne Elliott - so many of these adaptations are absolutely dreadful.

I was at the same lectures as Shrugged and WickedBitch too I think . Agree the "Alan Rickman effect" was intentional, supposed to make Brandon into more traditional romantic hero.

As far as I can recall, my lecturer posited that Marianne's sickness is actually pregnancy and miscarriage which makes her even more closely aligned to Brandon's old girlfriend and, as previous posters have said, marrying him is her punishment for her execssive sensibility which had terrible consequences. Or something like that anyway.

(Meant to say they utilised to Alan Rickman effect similarly in Harry Potter making us all love Snape)

justforlaughs,

yes read that book too. wasn't Denny a cross dresser and Elizabeth was infertile for a while. think it was just called 'pemberley' but not sure who wrote it. not very good.

Urgh at Marianne's illness being pregnancy - can't stand 'modern' readings of JA which are mostly designed to make the lecturer/writer sound cutting edge - does anybody remember that appalling Mansfield Park film with hints of Mary Crawford having the 'hots' for Fanny? Or the whole 'Jane and Cassandra were lovers' crap?

Pemberley is by Emma Tennant and the worse book I have ever had the misfortune to read.

Reader, I burned it.

Hackmum great minds think alike . I too thought Amanda Root made a great Anne and gave a very nuanced performance.

Now isn't Emma Thompson ( Elinor) married to Greg Wise (Willoughby) in real life and come to think of it I reckon Marianne would also have followed Kate Winslet's footsteps and had a few more DHs after Brandon [bitch emoticon]

ha Remus was just thinking about that Mansfield Park - the one where they made out Fanny was Jane Austen?? Awful stuff.

I don't mind a modern reading as long as it all makes sense and there's textual evidence - don't think I ever bought that one though.

Remus thanks it was bloody awful agree.

still prefer Charlotte Lucas to any of the heroines though.

Must admit that Charlotte Lucas makes a brilliant zombie.

Oh I tried to read pemberley too as a teenager. Terrible.
I found this horror a couple of years ago in a cheap bookshop and bought it. It was hillarible. I was sorely disappointed by a lack of vampire lust fuelled darcy Elizabeth shagging though, missed a trick there.

totally agree with everything Thursdaylast says about Persuasion. I feel like Austen's writing improves as she goes and it saddens me greatly that Persuasion is the last of her novels. I would love to have read more of her mature writing. sigh.

I have a guilty fondness for two 'sequel' novels called Elizabeth & Darcy and Days and Nights at Pemberly. They're terrible but with lots of sex and I adore them mainly because of the hilarious consequences of being written by a poorly educated American whose main association with Austen was throb the Beeb's 1990s adaptation of P&P. The absolute highlight for me is when Elizabeth and Darcy are skinny dipping in a Lake at Pemberly and observe a turtle wallowing in the shallows

fun bodice rippers though.

Me Darcy's Diary wasn't a bad sequel. Death comes to Penberley was absolutely diabolical!
In general, I think the biggest bit of miscasting has got to be Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett.

Pemberley was soooo crap and silly: I think Lizzy ended up having suppressed lesbian yearnings, which, when fulfilled, "sorted her out" and returned her to Darcy.

P&P&Zombies was CRAP - only any good as a series of sketches (Lady Catherine de Ninja - wtf?!), but mutually exclusive. How can Lizzy & the other girls be renowned zombie killers AND be struggling to find husbands? Pshaw!

Death Comes to Pemberley was pants.

Mr Darcy's Daughters was quite good, all constraint and frustration, quote sensitive to the period.

I think I am the only Janeite on MN who loves both the zombies and the KK film. :)

I'm quite fond of the KK film, just not KK's presence in it. It was beautifully shot.

The best fiction book in the world of Jane Austen I have read is this one which treats her death a bit like a murder mystery.

Interesting regression analysis, RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie....

Sorry, Nomad but I don't understand that.