#because apparently men can’t show emotions and a comedy show can’t have a darker tone for a minute

[kafka-esques]

i’ve been reading the persuaders book (volume 2) and i find it interesting as a character study that brett gets so defensive when someone asks if he’s okay or questions his wellbeing. like in ‘someone like me’ there’s the doctor in harley street and danny both who ask if he’s alright and multiple times he tenses up or gets feisty. he seems to find it hard to let his guard down and trust in others, plus this is the same guy that crashed a racing car at 130 miles an hour and didn’t feel a thing. it’s clear he’s more than slightly out of tune with his feelings, but it’s a lot more obvious when he’s with danny because he’s supposed to be joking with him. fob him off and not take anything to heart so when daniel gets serious it’s almost like brett doesn’t know what to do with himself and immediately shuts down and retreates inward not letting anyone see through his rich playboy facade.

[fortunatelylori]

Sandtion: The Sense and sensibility connection - a meta collab with @and-holly-goes-lightly

As some of you may have gathered, @and-holly-goes-lightly​ and I are salt mates (this is a tumblr term I have learned only recently and am planning to run into the ground. You have been forwarned. I don’t want any complaints down the line!)

It all started about a year ago, with this:

And progressed steadily until we ended up here:

Occasionally, between ogling pictures of naked men, we discuss serious issues as well. Those end up as metas for your consumption, most of the time.

It’s a colaboration that works well. I write long metas, she writes really good ones. We enjoy. We have fun.

Given that we both obssesively analyze tv content and that we tend to reach about the same conclusions, we have been planning on doing some project together for a while now.

I think if 2 months ago someone had told us that Sanditon would be the tv show that would see us join writing forces, we would have been more than a little shocked.

But here we are … hoplessly obssessed with Austen’s unfinished novel and ITV’s unfinished tv show (get the hint, ITV?!?! I hope you do. Chop, chop! You can’t live on Downton Abbey reruns for the rest of time, you know)

So on this most special of days, @and-holly-goes-lightly​ and I bring you the motherload of Sandtion metas. Two crazy writers, one tv show, one simple title:

Sandtion: The Sense and Sensibility connection

It’s no surprise to anyone, at this point, that Andrew Davies wears his Austen influences on his sleeve in Sanditon. You can find easter eggs for most of Austen’s work, from the famous Pride and Prejudice to the obscure Lady Susan.

However, Sense and Sensibility seems to be one work that hasn’t insipired much comparison from the fandom. And it’s perhaps for that reason that Sandion’s last two episodes were so hard to digest and why so many question marks were raised in regards to Charlotte’s characterization.

In this project we aim to dispel some of that confusion and attempt to put into prespective the character arcs of both Sidney and Charlotte in:

Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility by @fortunatelylori​

As well as delve deeper into Charlotte’s POV through out the season finale in:

Charlotte Heywood - From Sensibility to Sense by @and-holly-goes-lightly​

We hope you enjoy our take. Please don’t forget to leave us your comments in the reply section. This is a new format for us and we’d love to hear from you on how you like this kind of collaborative work.

        Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility

As I was reading the now infamous Theo James interview, I was reminded of the “unusual” visual representation of Sanditon. It really does look quite different to most Austen adaptations which are defined by the sunny, sanitized domesticity of the English garden.

Sanditon doesn’t look like that. It’s rough and a little wild. It presents a world in the throes of change, with gales, nudity and darkness lurking around the corners. I think it’s those visual cues that made Theo link it to Wuthering Heights with its Yorkshire gloomy moors and harsh winds.

But that just goes to show you Mr. James has not done his proper Andrew Davies research (Tsk, tsk, me thinks he will need to do a few more nude scenes to atone for it) because the wind swept beaches, the wilderness of the English countryside, the cowboy motif? They all go back to this:

I imagine the visual style of Sense and Sensibility 2008 was in part generated by an attempt to separate it from the very famous 1995 version (the quintessential sunny English countryside film) and in part as a response to the earthier approach Joe Wright took for his now very influential version of Pride and Prejudice (2005).

But I do think Sanditon owes more to S&S 2008 than just its visuals. I’ve talked about this in the past but Sanditon, to me, is really Davies’ homage to Austen’s entire body of work so the more you dig and analyze, the more similarities and parallels you are going to find between Sanditon, its characters and the rest of the Austenverse (I really hope this is just a thing I say in a sarcastic way on tumblr. Not everything needs to be a –verse, people!).

Episode 8 really brought this theory into focus for me. In my review I said that the finale marked the tonal shift of the story from the naïve, hopeful and mostly comedic territory of Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice towards the darker, more reflective tone of Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility.

Of course, comedy and witticisms are a core trait of all of Austen’s work. Her voice is so powerful that she is always an extra character in her own stories. However, Persuasion and S&S are also permeated with a sense of loss and angst that her other works don’t really have.

They’re more mature I suppose one could say. And it’s that maturity that plays a role in the shift that occurred in the season finale of Sanditon. Because Sanditon is really all about Charlotte Heywood. We enter this world with her and we follow her coming of age story throughout the season. And that story is marked by a pretty steep transition from the romantic, hopeful heroine represented by Marianne Dashwood to her restrained, sensible sister, Eleanor.

One of the things I liked the most about S&S 2008 was how much more balanced its view on Marianne and Eleanor was. In the 1995 film, it always felt as if Marianne was presented as a cautionary tale while Eleanor was the heroic nurturing woman who endures everything stoically and is rewarded for her restraint in the end.

But that’s not really, to my mind, the message Jane Austen would like us to get out of S&S. Just like with Pride and Prejudice, Austen is shining a light on the folly of both extreme sense and as well as extreme sensibility. It is not wise to jump head first into situations having only Lord Byron’s poems as your guide but it’s also equally unwise to constrain yourself to the point where you are unable to confide in anyone, to the point where you deny your feelings and end up a passive participant to your own life.

With Charlotte Heywood, we get to explore both those behavioral patterns.

The change from Marianne to Eleanor doesn’t occur in episode 8, by the way. It occurs at the end of episode 6 and carries through to the finale. That’s why people, including myself, were taken aback by Charlotte’s apparent change in demeanor in episode 7, from the girl who always spoke her mind (even when she shouldn’t) and wore her heart on her sleeve to the outwardly detached, apprehensive young woman who was waiting for the other shoe to drop even as the man she loved was about to propose to her.  

It would be easy to blame this transition on poor execution and I do believe the shift was too sudden and it was a mistake to have it start off screen (in between episode 6 and episode 7). However, the arc itself is not a mistake and it’s actually very clever.

For one because it allows us to explore this story both from the naïve, romantic perspective as well as the angst filled one.

Secondly, and most importantly, because it works in tandem with Sidney’s arc, who is going through the exact opposite journey from the emotionally repressed outlier to the open hearted tormented hero, representative of the Byronic romantic ideal.

What was supposed to happen is that by the end of episode 8, Sidney and Charlotte would meet in the middle, she as a more controlled romantic, he as a warmhearted stoic. What Davies gave us instead is two ships that passed each other in the night and have, by their last scene in episode 8, completely exchanged places.

So I think it’s important to go back to the beginning and analyze how the meeting between the naïve romantic Charlotte and the world weary Sidney ended up altering them forever and how, while deeply painful for both of them at the moment, their separation and behavior shift will end up benefiting them when their eventual reunion occurs (whether or not ITV decides to renew this series, Charlotte and Sidney WILL get married and have 2 to 3 adorable children because this is an Austen story and I will accept nothing less, damn it!)

One of the most important scenes in the whole season for me was the carriage scene in episode 6. I wrote a whole meta on it that you can find here and I have to go back to it in order to reference this extremely important exchange that sits as the lynchpin of this meta:

Sidney: And what do you know of love? Apart from what you’ve read?

Charlotte: I would sooner be naïve than insensible of feeling.

We’ve spent a great deal of time analyzing this scene and how pivotal it is in the story of Sidney as the motivator behind his lowering of his emotional guard. But I don’t think we’ve spent nearly enough time asking ourselves what this exchange tells us about Charlotte.

Because this doesn’t just announce a change in Sidney, it also foreshadows one for her. Sidney is correct in implying she doesn’t really understand love because she’s never experienced it. She is, however, about to realize that she’s in love with him and thus her assertion that she’d rather be naïve than insensible of feeling is just about to be tested.

And the surprising result is … Charlotte fails at her own paradigm. For the rest of the season, she will never be as emotionally open as she is in episode 6.

Charlotte is unable to remain the open book, expansive girl in the face of first supposed unrequited love and then as she experiences loss. She, instead, withdraws inward and begins building up her walls just as Sidney did after Eliza left him.

I think Davies understands Austen’s ultimate message that you fall into the extreme of sense or sensibility at your own peril, which is why he chooses to have his main two characters traverse opposite journeys so they can be brought closer by the end of the story (in season 2 of course).

That’s because at the core of all of the fights and misunderstandings between Charlotte and Sidney sit two problems:

Sidney Parker does not believe in the good intentions of other people. He is operating from a place of hurt and feeling under attack. He is essentially under the impression that the people he comes into contact with have ulterior motives, and none of them are good. And you can’t really blame him for that distorted image of reality when you consider what the two most meaningful relationships in his life have been up until this point.

On the one hand you have Tom who weaponizes even the most benign of compliments:

Tom: At least I have your prowess on the cricket field to be thankful for.

Sidney: Well in truth you have Lord Babington to thank for that. I am here at his behest to give him support in his time of romantic need. God knows he shall need it.

Tom: You’re a good friend, Sidney …  I don’t suppose you could try just one last time… [to go ask for money]

On the other hand, you have Eliza Campion who says stuff like this with a straight face:

Sidney: You didn’t have to wait for me, you know.

Eliza: I’ve waited for 10 years. What’s another quarter of an hour?

While researching this meta and also trying to figure out my Christmas fic, I’ve come to realize that both Tom and Eliza are using a victim narrative to get what they want from the people around them. What Sidney has learned from these relationships is that nothing in life comes for free. Any compliment, any sign of affection comes with a price tag or an eventual let down.

For her part, Charlotte Heywood is suspicious of Sidney because he doesn’t make himself easy to understand.

Charlotte thrives on communication and she tends to empathize and like people who share, or overshare, information with her. Her opinion on Tom shifts the moment he starts including her in his Sanditon projects. She is apprehensive of Otis for quite a bit of episode 4 but ends up completely on his side the moment he talks about his past as a slave and making innuendos about Sidney, despite neither one of those things really resolving her initial reasons for being apprehensive.

This behavior is really down to Charlotte’s upbringing in a very large but very happy family. Or as Eleanor Tilney in Northanger Abbey would put it:

Eleanor: I think you have had a quite dangerous upbringing. You’ve been brought up to believe that everyone is as pure in heart as you are.

Incidentally another Andrew Davies adaptation …

In Charlotte’s mind, people who are open emotionally and speak their mind must be good people. After all, she is this way and she certainly always has the best of intentions. When someone doesn’t do that, or worse they evade and try to manipulate, she distances herself from them, as is the case with Edward and Clara.

And since Charlotte views meaningful communication as the ultimate sign of trust, it’s this withholding of information, this emotional barrier she can sense in Sidney, that makes her mistrustful of him. She can’t understand his emotional withdrawal for what it is – a response to trauma - because she’s never experienced it. And as such she will always fundamentally misunderstand him.

We see these two character hang ups rearing their ugly heads again and again in their conflicts:

Episode 1

Sidney: And what have you observed about me upon our small acquaintance?

Charlotte: I think you must be the sensible brother of the three. I may be mistaken but it seems to me that your younger brother, Arthur, is a very … contrary nature. Alternately over lethargic and over energetic. While your elder brother, Tom, could be called over enthusiastic. I’m afraid that despite his good nature, he neglects his own happiness and his family’s in his passionate devotion to Sanditon. Don’t you agree?

Sidney: Upon my word, Miss Heywood, you are very free with your opinions. And upon what experience of the world do you form your judgments? Where have you been? Nowhere. What have you learnt? Nothing it would seem. And yet you take it upon yourself to criticize. Let me put it to you, Miss Heywood: which is the better way to live? To sit in your father’s home, with your piano and your embroidery, waiting for someone to come and take you off your parents’ hands? Or to expend your energy in trying to make a difference? To leave your mark. To leave the world in a better place than you found it. That is what my brother, Tom, is trying to do. At the expense of a great deal of effort and anxiety, in a good cause in which I do my best to help and support him. And you see fit to … to criticize him … to amuse yourself at his expense.

Fortunatelylori: … I have a theory that the reason why Sidney’s been forced into prostitution by the end of season 1 is because he used the argument of the fucking patriarchy to defend Tom The Worst Parker. Gee, Sidney, us women would love to go out there and change the world but your male friends are forcing us to stay home with our pianos and embroideries to make sure they take full advantage of our ovaries. Please take several seats!

Fortunatelylori: Also … fyi … Tom isn’t protecting England from the French or helping Warren de La Rue develop the freaking light bulb. He is trying to run a dime a dozen seaside resort and failing miserably at it so spare us the change the world one naked ass at a time speeches.

Charlotte is baited by Sidney, the emotional recluse, into oversharing which she can’t help herself from doing because even at this early stage she has a crush on him and wants to impress him with her insight. He takes that rather kind take on his brother Tom and spins it into a narrative of inexperienced superficiality and mockery because that’s what he’s conditioned himself to think about people.

Episode 2  

Charlotte: Our conversation at the party … I expressed myself badly and I fear you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean to disparage your brother or to offend you. Indeed I have the greatest admiration for what you and he are doing here in Sanditon. You were right to rebuke me and indeed I am sorry. I hope you won’t think too badly of me.

Sidney: Think too badly of you? I don’t think of you at all, Miss Heywood. I have no interest in your approval or disapproval. Quite simply, I don’t care what you think or how you feel. I’m sorry if that disappoints you but there it is. Have I made myself clear?

Fortunatelylori: Badly done, Sidney! Badly done indeed!

Not much to say about Charlotte in this one as this argument is ALL on Sidney and his trust issues. In his world, this kind of earnest apology and brave taking of responsibility is always a precursor to a guilt trip or a victimization episode. So he has become very adept at shooting down any such attempt forcefully.

It’s only in episode 3, when he sees Charlotte helping Mr. Stringer without any expectations of reward and her accepting his apology without any hint of emotional blackmail that Sidney is able to lower his guard and begin to see Charlotte for the honest, kind and generous human being that she is:

Fortunatelylori: Awwww! This is Sidney essentially seeing his unborn children in Charlotte’s eyes. (that is the most romantic lyric in the English language and no one will convince me otherwise)

However, what ends up happening? Sidney lowers his guard just in time for Charlotte to reactivate her suspicions which leads to their most explosive fight to date:

Episode 4

Sidney: Did we not agree that you would look out for Georgiana? Keep her out of trouble? I should have known you weren’t to be trusted.

Charlotte: And I should have known, despite your professed concern, you care nothing for her happiness.

Sidney: I would ask you to refrain from making judgments about a situation you don’t understand.

Charlotte: I understand perfectly well!

Sidney: Of course you do! Even though you’ve known Georgiana but a handful of weeks and him but a matter of hours.

Charlotte: That was time enough to learn that Mr. Molyneux is as respectable a gentleman as I have ever had cause to meet.

Sidney: You seem to find it impossible to distinguish between the truth and your own opinion!

Charlotte: The truth? You wish to speak of the truth, Mr. Parker? The truth is you are so blinded by prejudice that you would judge a man by the color of his skin alone.

Sidney: You speak out of turn.

Charlotte: Why should I expect any better from a man whose fortune is so tainted with the stain of slavery!

Sidney: That is enough! … I do not need to justify myself to you.

They essentially spiral out of control in this scene. Sidney’s trust issues come back and his lack of feed-back to Charlotte’s accusations make her provide increasingly horrible explanations to fill in the blanks.

Because their fights tend to be very intense (they are both people with very strong personalities), it’s easy to think of the two of them as simply not being compatible.

But their issues aren’t a matter of compatibility but rather an inability to find the right channels on which to communicate with each other, despite both wanting to.

Which brings us to episode 5

I love these little acting choices Theo James makes. This sigh is so evocative because it’s pretty clear it’s not frustration or boredom, but rather Sidney still reeling from her accusations in episode 4.

On the other side, Charlotte looks at him and thinks he is distant and non-affected and because, despite being angry, she still wants to connect with him, she tries so hard to use Sidney’s acerbic wit against him and keeps attempting to poke the big grizzly bear:

Charlotte: I assume you are here for the cricket.

Sidney: Never short of assumptions, Miss Heywood.

Unable to find a chink in his cold shoulder, Charlotte tries again at the cricket match:

Charlotte: Good luck to you too, Mr. Parker. Although I imagine you don’t think you’ll need it.

Sidney: Yes more assumptions, Miss Heywood?

Sidney is so pissed at her in this episode, not even her low key flirting with James Stringer galvanizes him.

But then something quite unexpected happens … Without actually realizing it, Charlotte manages to find the right channel to communicate on:

Stringer: You haven’t got another player to replace him. We win.

Charlotte: I’ll play.

With the wide eyed enthusiasm of a true romantic, Charlotte taps into the core of what Sidney desperately needs in his life. She doesn’t just help and support him when he needs her to but crucially she doesn’t put a price tag on it.

Charlotte: Is that a smile I detected?

Sidney: Oh, I doubt it …

Charlotte doesn’t enter the cricket match because she wants to use that gesture to ask Sidney for money for her pyramid scheme or gaslight him into thinking her betrayal was actually her “waiting” for him. Charlotte does it because she wants to see him smile. And just look at him …

Unfortunately that momentary progress is derailed again when Georgiana is kidnapped which will eventually lead to the carriage scene in episode 6 where Charlotte’s need for feed-back clashes with Sidney’s trust issues in their most revealing conversation.

It’s tempting to look at this argument and think Sidney is the only one who is in the wrong and who needs to change. But that would be missing a few important aspects of the story.

Charlotte: Otis never meant to place Georgiana in harm’s way. Any more than I did.  

Sidney: And yet you both did.

I think a lot of people, Charlotte included, fall into the trap of believing that if someone didn’t intend to harm someone else that means they haven’t actually done something wrong. Which is why there are still people in the Sanditon tag that are resisting the idea that Tom Parker is a villain. Surely he never meant to hurt his brother and he didn’t force him to propose to Eliza, so why is everyone so hard on him?

But like Charlotte had to learn with Otis, just because Tom didn’t intend to cause Sidney harm doesn’t change the fact that he very much did.

In this case, Charlotte’s major mistake was not that she helped Georgiana stay in touch with Otis. Charlotte’s mistake was in assuming she had the whole 1000 piece puzzle completed when she only had about 200 pieces in place.

Charlotte: All I ever cared about was Georgiana’s happiness.

Sidney: What did you think I cared about?

Charlotte: That is anyone’s guess!

Sidney: I’ve done the best I can by Georgiana.

Charlotte: No! At every turn you have abdicated responsibility. If you truly cared for her welfare, you would have watched over her yourself.

Sidney: It is a role I neither sought or asked for.

Charlotte: Of course not! Because you are determined to remain an outlier. God forbid you give something of yourself!

Sidney: Please do not presume to know my mind, Miss Heywood.

Charlotte: How could anyone know your mind? You take pains to be unknowable. All I know is that you cannot bear the idea of two people being in love.

Despite admitting she doesn’t know his mind, Charlotte can’t help herself from filling in the blanks with what she assumes is a conscious desire to be uncaring. Because she doesn’t have the life experience to come up with another answer.

For his part, Sidney is hurt by her lack of trust in him but unwilling to trust her enough in return to tell her the whole story. Still her words do affect him enough to make him begin to lower his barrier and give Theo James one of his best acting moments:

Sidney: And what do you know of love? Apart from what you’ve read?

Charlotte: I would sooner be naïve than insensible of feeling.

Sidney: Is that really what you think of me? I’m sorry that you think that. How much easier my life would have been if I were …

Fortunatelylori: I just … he’s very good … that is all

It would be very tempting to assume that since Charlotte admits to being naïve once the whole Otis and Georgiana’s situation is revealed:

Charlotte: It’s all so overwhelming! I hardly know what to think anymore. (beat) About anything! I’ve always felt so certain of my judgment. But now I see that I have been blinded by sentiment and naivety. How could I have gotten it all so wrong? No wonder your brother has such a poor opinion of me …

and Sidney begins to show more outward concern for the people around him and validate Charlotte in ever increasingly romantic ways:

Charlotte: I know … I’m too headstrong. I’m too opinionated. I’m too …

Sidney: No. You are not too anything. Don’t doubt yourself. You’re more than equal to any woman here.

That their clashing world views are now aligned. But the truth is, Sidney isn’t the one to explain to Charlotte how it was that he became “insensible of feeling”. It’s Tom that tells her that story (and then promptly bungles whatever help he might have provided his brother). Sidney’s trust issues remain which is evident even as late as episode 8:

Babbington: I believe she’s tamed me.

Sidney: Yes … I just imagine how that might feel.

And

Sidney: I have never wanted to put myself in someone else’s power before.

Don’t get me wrong, I melt every time I hear that second line but it is indicative of the fact that love still feels like an inherently risky and dangerous thing for Sidney where he is obliged to hand over his power to someone else and pray that person doesn’t abuse it the way Eliza did.

For Charlotte’s part, Sidney beginning to reveal more of himself and show her the true man underneath the armor, makes her fall more and more in love with him. And the more she loves him, the more afraid she is of outwardly showing it. His confusion over his feelings for her and Eliza’s reappearance in his life, cause her to attempt to fill in the blanks again in episode 7. First by proxy, while talking to James Stringer:

Charlotte: You are far too sensible to form such a misguided and futile attachment.

Stringer: Why should it be futile, Miss Heywood? For all you know your feelings are repaid 5 times over.

Charlotte: I allowed myself to believe so for the briefest of moments. But I cannot deny the evidence of my own eyes.

And then directly:

Sidney: I hope you weren’t too offended by Mrs. Campion. It was only meant in jest.

Charlotte: Is that all I am to you? A source of amusement?

Sidney: No. Of course not! You’re ��� Forgive me.

Charlotte: On the contrary, you’ve done me a great service. I am no longer in any doubt as to how you regard me.

So what happens in episode 8? Well, they essentially trade places, going from this:

Charlotte: I hope you won’t think too badly of me.

Sidney: Think too badly of you? I don’t think of you at all, Miss Heywood.

To this:

Sidney: Tell me you don’t think too badly of me.

Charlotte: I don’t think badly of you.

In one of my metas I made the point that Sidney Parker IS Charlotte Heywood’s coming of age story: he is her first love, the first man she is sexually attracted to, her first kiss and well … unfortunately also her first (and hopefully only) heartbreak.

By being forced to deal with her own sense of loss and the pain of being separated from the person she loves, Charlotte will finally be able to understand the true nature of Sidney’s insensitivity of feeling. Instead of causing her suspicion or apprehension, she will be able to connect with it because she’s lived through it herself.

As for Sidney … I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the end he is forced to do to Charlotte what Eliza did to him all those years ago. He chooses to marry a wealthy woman he does not love and disappoint a poor woman whom he does love.

I think given that his motives are obviously altruistic while Eliza’s were not (both per Tom’s story as well as her general character as revealed in the show so far), the point of the similarity is not to bring him closer to Eliza. Certainly not when he’s looking at Charlotte like this:

Which means that him being forced to contend with what happened 10 years ago by reliving the incident, this time in the role of the aggressor, is there to increase his level of vulnerability and put him in the place of the earnest person trying to reach out for emotional connection and having to fight to pull down the walls he himself helped put up in Charlotte.

You know what they say … If you really want to know someone, walk a mile in their shoes. No one ever said those shoes would be comfortable.