Sense and Sensibility (film) - Themes and Analysis

Themes and Analysis

Thompson's screenplay has been noted for featuring significant alterations to the characters of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. In the novel, the former embodies "sense" and the latter, "sensibility", but Lee's film turns these two characteristics around. Audience members are meant to view self-restrained Elinor as the person in need of reform, rather than her impassioned sister. To better contrast them, Marianne and Willoughby's relationship includes an "erotic" invented scene in which the latter requests a lock of her hair – a direct contrast with Elinor's "reserved relationship" with Edward. Another character altered for modern viewers is Margaret Dashwood, who conveys "the frustrations that a girl of our times might feel at the limitations facing her as a woman in the early nineteenth century." Thompson uses Margaret for exposition in order to detail contemporary attitudes and customs. For instance, Elinor explains to a curious Margaret – and by extension, the audience – why their half-brother inherits the Dashwood estate. Margaret's altered storyline, now containing interest in fencing and geography, also allows audience members to see the "feminine" side of Edward and Brandon, as they become father or brother figures to her.

"The changes that Emma Thompson’s screenplay makes to the male characters, if anything, allow them to be less culpable, more likeable, and certainly less sexist or patriarchal."

When adapting the characters for film Thompson found that in the novel, "Edward and Brandon are quite shadowy and absent for long periods," and that "making the male characters effective was one of the biggest problems. Willoughby is really the only male who springs out in three dimensions." Several major male characters in Sense and Sensibility were consequently altered significantly from the novel in an effort to appeal to contemporary audiences. Grant's Edward and Rickman's Brandon are "ideal" modern males who display an obvious love of children as well as "pleasing manners", especially when contrasted with Laurie's Palmer. Thompson's script both expanded and omitted scenes from Edward's storyline, including the deletion of an early scene in which Elinor assumes that a lock of hair found in Edward's possession is hers, when in actuality it belongs to Lucy. These alterations have been viewed as an effort to make him more realised and honourable than in the novel and increase his appeal to viewers. The character of Brandon also sustains alterations; Thompson's screenplay has his storyline directly mirroring Willoughby's – they are both similar in appearance, share a love of music and poetry and rescue Marianne in the rain while on horseback.

Writing for The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen, Linda Troost discussed the "fusion adaptation" – a mixture of Hollywood style with the British heritage film genre, designed to appeal to a wide range of viewers. Tracing its origin to the BBC's unsuccessful 1986 Austen adaptation Northanger Abbey, Troost noted that Lee's production "exaggerat social differences for the benefit of viewers not familiar with the book" and prominently featured "radical feminist and economic issues" while "paradoxically endors the conservative concept of marriage as a woman's goal in life." However, Troost believed that regardless of its American producers, Sense and Sensibility is faithful to the heritage genre through its use of locations, costumes, and attention to details. Andrew Higson noted that while Sense and Sensibility includes commentary on sex and gender, it fails to pursue issues of class. Thompson's script, he wrote, displays a "sense of impoverishment is confined to the still privileged lifestyle of the disinherited Dashwoods. The broader class system is pretty much taken for granted."