On Sense and Sensibility

Last week I was gripped by the need for Jane Austen. The nice thing about having a reading urge is that it’s pretty easy to satisfy, and the nice thing about a Jane Austen urge is that you are sure of what you are getting. Some books surprise when you return to them, but Austen only seems to become more and more herself. The essence of Austen, for me, is her ability to regard utterly dreadful characters with a delicious, amusing warmth. Her humour never comes at anyone’s expense, even if the reader might privately think the vainglorious neighbours and the intrusive relations might deserve it. Instead she aims straight for the funny side of their behaviour, leaving you with the impression that all is right in the world, really. It is most endearing.

Elinor, Marianne and that other sister

I wanted to reread Sense and Sensibility, which I read first so long ago that I can’t even remember the event. But in the meantime, I had seen the film adaptation starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet on a number of occasions. I love that film and it has become so much the basis of my memory of Sense and Sensibility that I read the first half of the book quite unable to shake the storyline free from the images in my mind. It’s a faithful adaptation, too, right up until the part in the film that always makes me cry, when Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon carries a sodden Marianne home through a storm and collapses to his knees when he finally makes it over the threshold. And no one pays him any attention because they are fussing over Marianne. In the book it’s so much less dramatic; Marianne happens to get damp feet from walking after rain and catches a little cold that gradually gets worse. Here’s the part where I ought to say that I actually prefer the way the film unfolds the events, only that would be so heretical I can’t bring myself to do it.

What I felt in the end was that the film works better dramatically, but that the novel is more intriguing in the slightly

Kate Winslet as Marianne, Greg Wise as Mr Willoughby

cock-eyed message it wants to deliver. Austen contrasts sister Elinor, determinedly stoic, emotionally repressed and proud of it, with her sister Marianne, whose full-blown emotions hover perilously close to hysteria. Marianne is encouraged in this by their mother, who is also self-indulgent when it comes to her feelings, which is a sore trial for Eleanor who has become the only grown-up by proxy and is left with all the tough decisions and the unpleasant responsibilities because of it. Now, these three women have been cheated out of their rightful inheritance by the actions of their half-brother and his greedy wife, and been obliged to leave their comfortable home to live in much-reduced circumstances in Devon. For Elinor the remove is made more taxing by the fact that she has had to leave behind her budding romance with Edward, buttoned-up brother to her evil sister-in-law. But being Elinor she grits her teeth and pastes on her happy face, in the approved Austen-esque manner. No sooner have they settled in Devon, than Marianne gains two suitors; the middle-aged and not terribly dashing Colonel Brandon, who desires her in a Vertigo sort of way because she reminds him of a lost love in his youth, and the handsome, charming, delightful rogue, Willoughby, who is just too good to be true.

Ostensibly, the novel is about the two sisters, but when I looked at it from the conclusion backwards, it struck me that the two heroes of the story, for Austen at least, are Elinor and Colonel Brandon. Their patience and loyalty are ultimately rewarded, and the book makes a fair fuss over Marianne being ‘given’ to Brandon because he deserves her so. Marianne and her mother must be chastened for their earlier, recklessly emotional behaviour, and must learn better ways (which they say they will). And so the novel appears to be all about the enormous value of being able to suppress one’s feelings, suffer one’s troubles and generally master emotion with dignity. Across the course of the story, Elinor has to spend vast tracts of time being pleasant and polite to people she can barely tolerate, but Austen neatly sidesteps the possible charge of hypocrisy here by having her ‘learn’ to love them over time. You see, Austen seems to be saying, a little time and effort and you too can adopt my delightfully witty and generous attitude. Well, yeah right, it’s a nice thought.

Remember grumpy Mr Palmer? Jane wrote him as impolite as Hugh Laurie played him

But by the end I really wondered what we were to make of the moral of the story, when its two villains, Willoughby, and that prototype of the Austen favourite, the false friend Lucy Ferrars, extricate themselves so well from the chaos they cause. Willoughby provides the obstacle to Colonel Brandon’s courtship of Marianne, and Lucy Ferrers is the fly in the ointment for Elinor, and both behave pretty despicably. Yet in the end, they are married well and not so very unhappy in their situations. Both Willoughby and Lucy Ferrars are able to suppress their feelings in favour of their long-term goals, and both can manipulate not only their own emotions, but also those of others. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the Austen rule of head over heart, when followed through consistently, couldn’t help but benefit the bad characters in the novel as well as the good ones? Or is it because Jane Austen cannot bear to be mean to any of her characters that she lets them off the hook so? For a novel with quite a strident moral tone, it is quite surprising that very little of consequence occurs in the way of punishment – unless of course it is self-inflicted à la Marianne. Maybe the ultimate message of the novel is pragmatic, rather than moral. Whatever enemies you encounter in life, Austen is perhaps suggesting, nothing will affect you so badly as being your own worst enemy, and we can probably all say amen to that.

 

 

But Why The Postman?

In the months before writing The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain felt he was all washed up. It was 1932, the middle of the Depression, he was out of work, forty years old, crippled financially by alimony payments and ill with stomach disorders. A newspaper man, he had been forced to leave the East coast when the paper he worked for was sold (and a stint on the New Yorker had been disastrous). He came to California as so many writers did to work for the movies, but it was not considered admirable work; instead it came with a certain humiliation, as the place where failed writers ended up. Cain did not settle here, either, claiming after several months and a couple of botched scripts that the one thing above all he could not write was a screenplay. What he wanted to produce was a novel, but he knew it was impossible for him to write fiction in his own voice. He had to become someone else altogether, someone from a different class and walk of life. He also knew he had to write from a real event, and these limitations undermined his confidence in himself.

Leaving his job at the studios and turning freelance was to prove the best decision he ever made, although his future looked bleak at the time. But he began to feel seduced by California, and by the civilisation it had produced, full of colourful, bold, reckless people. The basis for his novel was suggested to him by an item in the local news about the woman who ran the local filling station. Cain knew her by sight as an ‘appetizing but utterly commonplace woman’ and was astonished to learn that she had killed her husband. The novel was slow in its gestation and torturous. Cain revised it thoroughly before offering it to his publishers, who, only after all sorts of hesitations, eventually accepted it. And then it became an enormous overnight success.

It was the first major American bestseller in both paperback and hardback, spawning a play and a movie. Never before had such a thing happened, as the book garnered rave reviews across the country and went on to be a huge commercial success. From being a relatively unknown journalist, James Cain was suddenly a star. What made the book so good for its reviewers was the economy with which he had told his story, and the gripping nature of the narrative. I can certainly vouch for the economy. When Mister Litlove asked me to recount the story to him, there were so many twists and turns, so much plot, that by the time I’d finished, he could probably have read the mere 115 pages of the book itself.

The story is told from the point of view of Frank Chambers, a drifter and a con man, who turns up at a filling station with a lunchroom attached with the sole purpose of conning himself a meal. By the time that meal has ended, his life has changed. He has accepted a job from the Greek who runs the place, and fallen irrevocably in lust with the Greek’s wife, Cora. Their affair is swift and tempestuous, but a significant obstacle presents itself. Cora refuses to take to the road and risk her chances with Frank. She has no taste for vagabondage and wants to live a settled and respectable life. And so the pair turn to the problem represented by the Greek, whose good nature is not enough to overcome their xenophobic distaste for him, and they come up with a plan to bump him off. Cain wanted this to be a love story, and despite the brutality, it is. It’s the tale of two people who cannot let each other go, even though they exacerbate each other’s worst amoral qualities, and the uncertainty as to whether Frank and Cora will make it together, or perhaps the fascination as to how they will finally sabotage themselves (which seems altogether more likely) keeps the reader spellbound.

I can see why this novel has lasted the test of time. It’s an ugly, sordid little story in many ways, but its vividness and its cunning, and the pure strength of attachment between Frank and Cora are oddly bewitching. Frank is an especially well-imagined character, a hot head with a dreadfully sensitive, soft side and absolutely no self-awareness, he follows wherever his instincts lead him, which is along the route to self-gratification in the shortest of short terms. He’s a monster, but in his pitiful love for Cora he is, if not redeemed, then humanised. I was thinking, as well, about how this book ties into the Depression era in which it was written. There’s such a bleak, lawless feel to it, an urgency that is all to do with the powerful drive towards survival in hopeless times. And yet, there’s one point in the story where Frank and Cora end up with a lot of money, and it doesn’t help them at all. By then, it isn’t about the money any more, it’s about the integrity of their love for one another, something that has also been dirtied and ripped apart a bit by the events they have put themselves through. Somewhere, hidden out of sight in this narrative but lurking in the shadows of the story, there’s a fear of what happens to people when they don’t have work and respectability to steady them, and a belief that the things we yearn for, like love and self-respect and ordinary joy always transcend the criminal impulse, even if sometimes the desire for them is what causes the criminality in the first place. We tend to think that money matters far too much, but when life is stripped back to its barest bones, what we find is that money can do nothing for our deepest desires.

The only thing I really didn’t understand about this book was the postman reference. When Mister Litlove asked me what the title meant, I had to confess I had no idea. ‘I waited right the way through for the postman to ring twice, and he never did,’ I said. It’s a great title, but how on earth is it related to the story?