Superglue and Sensibility

This will be my last post for the week, since I’m headed off to Harper’s Ferry for the Washington Romance Writer’s yearly retreat with Amanda Brice. I’ve been hearing about this event for quite some time, so I’m so excited to have the opportunity to go at last.

I found out that Under the Rose was reviewed in the most recent issue of Publisher’s Weekly. My favorite line: “Peterfreund’s second novel is impossible to put down.”

Pause for squealing. Guess those printers listened to the instructions about the Superglue coating after all, huh?

So now I’m trying to track down a hard copy, or, you know, half a dozen of them.

The other week, after my Pride & Prejudice marathon, SB mentioned that he’d never seen Sense & Sensibility. (In passing, these books sound like secret socieites, don’t they?) Anyway, I was shocked. How ever did I let this relationship go on so long without rectifying this grave error? I mean, Austen AND Alan Rickman? Please. Top of the Netflix queue.

After Sailor Boy appreciated it as much as he should, I watched it again with the commentary from Emma Thompson (writer and actress) and Lindsay Doran (producer). Possibly one of the best film commentaries evah. Emma Thompson is witty and insightful and not afraid of dishing the dirt, whether it’s about fainting sheep, farting horses, or the process she went through to craft the screenplay (which garnered her a Golden Globe and an Oscar). I was fascinated by everything she had to say about writing and adapting and picking which parts to keep and which to jettison (Lucy’s sister, Willoughby’s visit). She and Doran are also clearly quite good friends (Judging from Doran’s C.V. on imdb, they’ve worked together ever since). I don’t know much about screenwriting, but any writer discussing her process is amazing as far as I’m concerned, and this one is especially good.

I was inspired to pick up S&S. I hadn’t read it in years, since it was never one of my favorite of Austen’s books, and in reading it again, I remember the parts that had always frustrated me so. Namely, the fact that Elinor spends a good chunk of time at the end of the book feeling sorry for Willoughby. Oh, how I wish that Col. Brandon had been there to shove Willoughby’s drunk ass out of the Palmer house. How DARE he show up there while Marianne is dying. How DARE he…IMPOSE himself on Elinor in that way. What a jerk. His “reveal” is appalling, his behavior in the book even more appalling than in the film (where they focus on the fact that he had been planning to propose and not ont eh fact that from the start, he’d been toying with her). Ugh… and to think that Elinor actually spends time wishing that he were free, that his wife would die?!?!?! Elinor and Edward are less charitable towards Lucy, but not much.

I was left wondering why, and the only answer I could come up with feels unsatisfactory. I feel that they can more easily forgive Willoughby because his personality and “understanding” are more in line with their own — he’s genteel and well-read and thinks as they do on so many things, whereas Lucy is vulgar and “illiterate” (which I think means that she is unlearned, since she can clearly read and write). Certainly his behavior was every bit as manipulative, cold-hearted, and selfish as hers. So it must be the other qualities.

What do you think?