Comments on: Villainous behavior

By: Marcy

Marcy — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:32:57 +0000

Mags, I totally agree. Willoughby has to first appear ‘almost perfect’ to Marianne, her family AND the audience. We all have to first fall in love with this handsome and charming young man and THEN find out later in the story (either through flashbacks as Col. Brandon unfolds the story to Elinor) that he is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Showing all this to the audience as the story opens is very anti-climactic.

Just like Wickham, we all first have to like Willoughby and then find out he is a rogue a little later on.

By: Ina

Ina — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:46:48 +0000

Yes, and he deserved to suffer pining for her for the rest of his life. The rat.

By: Kira

Kira — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 17:24:12 +0000

Comment 3: “You have to read the scene in the book where he hopes Marianne dies instead of marrying someone else, then you’ll know better.”

Which scene is that? I reread the Willoughby explanation scene in Vol. III, Chapter VIII and found the exact opposite; he ponders something happening (perhaps death) to his own wife, not Marianne: “Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again–”

The conversation with Elinor about Marianne marrying:
“I shall now go away and live in dread of one event.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your sister’s marriage.”
“You are very wrong. She can never be more lost to you than she is now.”
“But she will be gained by some one else. And if that some one should be the very he whom, of all others, I could least bear–But I will not stay to rob myself of all your compassionate good-will, by showing that where I have most injured I can least forgive.”

Elinor certainly did not interpret this to mean that Willoughby hoped Marianne would die. She thinks better of him for his explanation as far as Marianne is concerned (though not about his treatment of Eliza). At the beginning of the next chapter, Elinor reflects on “that still ardent love for Marianne” which he revealed in that conversation. I could not find anything later in the book either to suggest that Willoughby ever wished anything ill for Marianne. Even in the last chapter of the book, “he always retained that decided regard which interested him in everything that befell her, and made her his secret standard of perfection in woman”.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:29:25 +0000

I think that’s a huge mistake to have Willoughby revealed right off the bat. Besides, i despised willoughby enough in the Sense & Sensibility 1994 after he deserted Marianne. I agree that the audience should like him at first. Plus, it would be too easy to get frustrated that Marianne isn’t figuring it out if you know from the beginning that he’s a villain.

By: Julie P.

Julie P. — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 20:33:19 +0000

It’s not just Americans. Your average Brit doesn’t know his posterior from his elbow either. Don’t let the plummy accents fool you.

By: Ina

Ina — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 16:32:50 +0000

I mean no. Sorry, I got mixed up there. Based on Jay Walking, American audiences need it dumbed down. It really is scary. Not only are these people allowed to vote, they’re roaming the streets too!

By: Ina

Ina — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 16:31:15 +0000

Well T. Chan, that depends on the audience. If you’ve ever seen Jay Walking (a frightening Jay Leno feature) you would swear the answer is yes.

By: T. Chan

T. Chan — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:02:49 +0000

Would a modern audience get the point about the correlation between character and the success of relationships? Can the lessons of Austen be made intelligible to an audience without dumbing them down?

By: ButterflyMind

ButterflyMind — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:58:25 +0000

I think Ina in comment 2 has a very good suggestion – include the scene upfront as a “hook” for the modern audience, but leave who it is (or why it is villainous) ambiguous.

By: Lisa Claire

Lisa Claire — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 17:25:54 +0000

Depending on how the scene is shot and included in the film, I think it’s a great idea. For example: if the scene serves as a prologue while the titles are playing, and is shot in such a way as to not completely make clear who the involved parties are, but is referenced later on when the whole affair between Eliza and W. is revealed to Elinor later on it would work rather well, I think, and suit the tastes of a more “average” audience without being gratuitous. We would be shocked and appalled and the truth of W. character would be better conveyed to a modern audience. I imagine that revelations regarding his character would have deeply shocked the contemporary reader, much more than it would have any 20th Century reader…

Alas, if only they made film adaptations of Ms. Austen’s books tailored exactly to the tastes of her most devout fans, we would all be well pleased. While the “dumbed down” films may have dissappointed me in the past, they’ve served me well in luring friends into reading her books… North American audiences are sadly not as familiar with her work as they could be.