{"id":112513,"date":"2026-11-04T16:38:14","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T21:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=112513"},"modified":"2026-11-04T16:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T21:38:14","slug":"opinion-barbara-seeber-discusses-the-latest-adaptation-of-sense-and-sensibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2026\/11\/opinion-barbara-seeber-discusses-the-latest-adaptation-of-sense-and-sensibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Barbara Seeber discusses the latest adaptation of Sense and Sensibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece written by Barbara Seeber, Professor of English Language and Literature at Brock University<\/em>, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Director Georgia Oakley\u2019s new, unfettered Sense and Sensibility delivers a contemporary take on Jane Austen\u2019s first published novel.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the book, Henry Dashwood\u2019s death leaves his grieving wife and three daughters ousted from their home. Norland Park is inherited by the son of a prior marriage, John, while the Dashwood women relocate to a small cottage in another county.<\/p>\n

The novel focuses on the two eldest daughters, Elinor and Marianne (in Oakley\u2019s adaptation, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esm\u00e9 Creed-Miles) and their contrasting philosophies of sense and sensibility.<\/p>\n

Oakley has said she was inspired by Austen\u2019s emphasis on sisterhood, and some reviews have noted the film\u2019s strong depiction of this.<\/p>\n

The director has spoken to her interpretation of Austen as a writer who \u201cwas taking what she knew to be a commercial form \u2026 the romance framework,\u201d while including \u201csubversive\u201d content.<\/p>\n

The film seeks to translate Austen\u2019s 1811 feminism to a modern audience, but, for me as an Austen scholar, some important things are lost.<\/p>\n

Bold women who revel in nature<\/strong><\/p>\n

We expect Austen heroines to take long walks in the English countryside, but this adaptation, more than any before, firmly plants its women in nature.<\/p>\n

The film is beautiful to watch: In the opening sequence, Marianne reclines on the ground amid tall reeds and contemplates a caterpillar balancing on her fingertip. Later, we see her bathing her feet in a cold brook; Elinor skips stones with her love interest. This is Jane Austen, unbuttoned.<\/p>\n

Both heroines wave aside social decorum when needed. Oakley\u2019s Elinor even makes the first move. Once Edward Ferrars is a free man, she boldly kisses him on the lips with a windswept landscape as background.<\/p>\n

In conversation with other adaptations<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oakley\u2019s adaptation stands in conversation with previous versions. As literary critic Linda Hutcheon argues, earlier adaptations may \u201cbe just as important as contexts \u2026 as any \u2018original.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Oakley draws on Ang Lee\u2019s 1995 adaptation in some ways, including in the depiction of leading men.<\/p>\n

Austen\u2019s Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon may be underwhelming romantic interests. But their failure to capture the readers\u2019 imagination is part of the point.<\/p>\n

While Oakley does highlight the women\u2019s relationships anchoring Austen\u2019s novel, she presents the male suitors more favourably \u2014 and this undermines Austen\u2019s subversion of the romance plot.<\/p>\n

Literary scholar Deborah Kaplan has argued that the 1995 Sense and Sensibility and the 1996 Emma \u201charlequinize\u201d Austen\u2019s novels. We might say the same is true, to some extent, of Oakley\u2019s version.<\/p>\n

Fulfilment in romance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s 1995 Sense and Sensibility cast Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman, setting up their respective characters, Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon, as romantic leads.<\/p>\n

Oakley\u2019s men in these roles, George MacKay and Herbert Nordrum, don\u2019t (yet) have the same Hollywood star power. But they follow in Grant and Rickman\u2019s footsteps in romantic appeal.<\/p>\n

The film suggests both heroines find fulfilment in the courtship plot that Austen interrogates. For example, Oakley\u2019s Edward, like Lee\u2019s, endears himself to the audience by playfully entertaining the 13-year-old Margaret. Such scenes don\u2019t exist in the novel.<\/p>\n

Oakley further ramps up Edward\u2019s merit. In Austen, it\u2019s not a mark in his favour that he fell in love with Lucy Steele and formed a secret engagement. In Oakley\u2019s film, the alliance was arranged. Once the Steeles lose their fortune, he is expected to dissolve the engagement, but Edward is a man of honour.<\/p>\n

Treatment of Brandon, Willoughby<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oakley\u2019s Colonel Brandon, like Lee\u2019s, is set up as a romantic hero. I initially mistook Oakley\u2019s Brandon for Willoughby because his first appearance \u2014 tall, handsome, moody \u2014 matches the novel\u2019s description of Willoughby\u2019s horseback arrival.<\/p>\n

In the new Sense and Sensibility, tension between Brandon and Marianne seems to be there from the beginning. As in Lee\u2019s film, scenes are added to ensure that we trust Marianne has a happy ending.<\/p>\n

Austen leaves us with less certainty. Near the novel\u2019s end, Willoughby, having heard of Marianne\u2019s illness, intrudes upon Elinor to inquire after her sister and offer an account of himself. It\u2019s an explosive scene, and in the 1995 Sense and Sensibility, it was cut.<\/p>\n

Oakley keeps it \u2014 but makes significant changes.<\/p>\n

In the novel, Elinor is outraged by Willoughby, but she also pities him. As the narrator notes: \u201cShe felt that his influence over her mind was heightened by circumstances which ought not in reason to have weight; by that person of uncommon attraction, that open, affectionate, and lively manner \u2026 and by that still ardent love for Marianne.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elinor can\u2019t help but feel \u201ca pang\u201d for him.<\/p>\n

However, the film depicts Elinor as angry; he is a player, and she tells him as much, which drains the scene of its complexity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s curious that the film, at the same time, revises Willoughby\u2019s villainy. In the novel, Willoughby impregnates a 16-year-old girl. In the film, his dalliance is with a widow of mature age.<\/p>\n

Loss of context around Norland Park<\/strong><\/p>\n

The film, like the 1995 adaptation, circumvents an important backstory to the Dashwood women\u2019s economic disenfranchisement.<\/p>\n

The novel\u2019s opening paragraphs establish a complicated family history. Henry Dashwood, Elinor and Marianne\u2019s father, inherited Norland Park from his uncle but on terms that didn\u2019t let him leave it to them.<\/p>\n

Instead, the uncle\u2019s will designated that Henry Dashwood, upon his own death, must pass the house to his son from a first marriage: John Dashwood, and, in turn John\u2019s son, Harry.<\/p>\n

The narrator depicts this as unjust. The son already has an ample fortune. Rather than the proprietor uncle rewarding the Dashwood women for their care of him, he is swayed by the young Harry\u2019s \u201cattractions:\u201d \u201can imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oakley\u2019s Sense and Sensibility, by contrast, doesn\u2019t give this context and rather portrays the events as a matter of law.<\/p>\n

In this way, the film alleviates male family members from direct responsibility for the poverty of women.<\/p>\n

While there is much to enjoy in Oakley\u2019s film, with its stunning cinematography and strong performances, it dilutes some aspects of Austen\u2019s critique.<\/p>\n

\n