This play contains three perfect marriages.
I shan’t spoil two of the three for those who have yet to peruse Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, but will eagerly herald the third: the ideal match of Jane Austen’s poignant and piquant story and playwright Claire F. Martin’s worldly-wise but not world-weary interpretation thereof.
Anyone aggrieved by a contemporary literary adaptation on stage or screen may lay aside all fears, for Miss Martin’s Sense and Sensibility is decidedly not a “darker and edgier” nor slackly, slickly modernized Austen derivative vainly tilting at provocation without ever striking heart or home. Rather, it is an act of perfect, precise balance: an adaptation faithful to the spirit, cognizant of the letter, and thoughtful about the context of both the original novel and the time and place of this premiere production.
In adapting Sense and Sensibility from Jane Austen’s earliest completed novel into her latest produced play, Miss Martin has, by necessity, translated the descriptive, narration-driven text of the book into dynamic action and neatly-paced dialogue. Having begun its life as an epistolary novel told through a series of letters, Austen’s source material favors hearsay: some of the most striking events of the plot and the richest details of character relationships are reported, either by the narrator directly to the reader or by the characters to one another. Primary protagonist Elinor does not even speak until the book’s third chapter, and the blossoming of affection betwixt her and her love interest Edward is unfolded for us through the observation of others. Indeed, the young couple’s care for one another is apparently so palpable that her mother and sisters speculate that they will at any moment become engaged—before the audience is even treated to an exchange between the two! Miss Martin expertly preserves the importance of us seeing the world through the Dashwood ladies’ eyes, while also enhancing the other characters as truly worthy of the family’s attention by giving them ample interaction and individual characterization.
Miss Martin’s most crucial amendment to Austen is expanding the role of youngest sister Margaret Dashwood, called Margot, from a delightful little tagalong to an impetuous, precociously perceptive force of nature. While this play clearly centers on the plight of the eldest daughter Elinor, who must serve as mother as well as sister to her younger siblings when their remaining living parent is unable to provide emotional and practical support, Margot’s expanded point of view literally triangulates the story of her two more plot-centric sisters, allowing us the compassionate but clear-eyed insight to Marianne and Elinor which they cannot—initially—provide to themselves or to one another. And like Margot, Miss Martin herself sees new possibilities for the too-oft stereotyped sisters: prudent Elinor’s immaculate self-denial is enriched by the toll it takes on her honesty with herself and others, while impulsive, impassioned Marianne is also a staunch advocate for her family’s honor and dignity, even when she cannot advocate for her own.
In revealing these new, strikingly germane layers of Austen’s lovingly rendered characters, it is just as important to cast with intention and consideration as it is to write. We cannot limit our understanding of either Jane Austen’s world or our own to simple demographic columns; we must appraise our work as artists, and her work as an artist, through the lens of intersectionality. Through Jane Austen’s perspective, gender was by and large the metonym for all oppression, because that was the means by which she experienced it. The society in which Jane Austen lived was relatively homogenous in terms of sexuality, race, religion, and gender roles and expression, and thus her characters were, too. However, throughout her career and her life, Jane’s cognizance of the world around her, both literary and literal, began to expand.
The Woman of Color: A Tale, published in 1808, is—like early drafts of Sense and Sensibility—an epistolary novel. Penned by an anonymous author, whom many speculate may well have been a Woman of Color herself, this tale details the life of Olivia Fairfield, a mixed-race young lady from Jamaica who travels to England to wed her father’s troubled heir. Meanwhile, in Jane Austen’s real-life social orbit, Dido Elizabeth Belle, the “natural daughter” of a British naval officer and an enslaved girl, lived a comfortable, genteel, but no doubt complicated life amongst wealthy white relatives, and whose presence in the household of her politically puissant guardian, Lord Mansfield, may have influenced his ruling in a crucial court case preceding the abolition of slavery in Britain. While we have no evidence that Jane and Dido themselves ever interacted, in part because like Jane, Dido passed away at a young age, Jane was certainly aware of her existence, having documented an apparently unimpressive visit to Dido’s white cousin, Lady Elizabeth Finch-Hatton (née Murray), who lived alongside Dido in the Mansfield home.
The “Mansfield” connection alone might catch the eye of Austen fans and scholars, but yet better, in her final work, the unfinished Sanditon, Jane Austen featured a young biracial black woman, an heiress from the West Indies, as a supporting character. Though never fully realized, Miss Lambe is even in her first-draft form a delightful addition to Austen’s canon of idiosyncratic gentlefolk. She is about seventeen, wealthy beyond measure, and constantly, frantically fussed-over by her patroness, who encourages her young charge’s “chilly and tender” hypochondria, though another character encourages the dainty Miss Lambe to face her fears and take a dip in the seaside!
Just as Austen’s characters represented and honored the communities in which she existed; to faithfully adapt her work, casting adaptations of her work must accomplish the same thing. In portraying the Dashwood sisters and their mother as Black women, the story of Sense and Sensibility not only reflects the reality of 19th century England, but also 21st century Atlanta. We must take such steps to ensure that we recognize and honor that People of the Global Majority, though historically and continually marginalized by white society and white artistic institutions, are the ones who have shaped, elevated, and refined history, art, literature, and culture as we know it. This is not only appropriate, but absolutely necessary, for us as artists and as human beings, and Jane Austen is the perfect vehicle through which to begin to redress the wrongs of so many classical literature adaptations and other historical plays.
It is our responsibility to eschew any inclination to preserve a literally lily-white perfection, which forces her and her characters to be keepers of our own nostalgia for “a simpler time”: a dangerous false ideal. To deny Jane Austen—and her characters—the opportunity to have vices, to falter, to fall, to bleed, to take ill, to learn the hard way, to both commit and survive oppression is to deny her humanity. And to deny Jane Austen humanity is to deny women humanity. It is to suggest that we put our bonnets back on, lower our gaze, and surrender the pen, forgoing interpretation and adaptation in favor of conformity and complicity. But we won’t. For as Tom Stoppard’s own Austen-esque masterpiece Arcadia reminds us: “You can’t run the film backwards”, and Miss Martin’s Sense and Sensibility certainly doesn’t repeat Austen beat-for-beat, nor force rough edges upon story already jagged with true, unvarnished humanity. It pushes the story forward, while also honoring the editions and adaptations which have preceded it from Emma Thompson and Ang Lee’s cinematic masterpiece to Kate Hamill’s feminist farce. And who knows what further new insights to Austen this play will inspire in turn?
-Claire Wittman,
Production Dramaturg
Sources on “The Woman of Color” &ct:
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/sanditon-black-heiress-miss-lambe
https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/volume-41-no-2/kumar
https://topazcrossbooks.com/2021/04/29/would-jane-austen-have-met-black-people-in-england
https://consideringausten.wordpress.com/austen-and-antigua-slavery-in-her-time
https://janeaustensworld.com/2021/03/29/women-of-colour-in-literature-of-jane-austens-england
https://georgianera.wordpress.com/2021/03/10/lady-elizabeth-mary-murray
https://exoticandirrational.blogspot.com/2016/03/six-months-with-jane-austen-mansfield.html
I shan’t spoil two of the three for those who have yet to peruse Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, but will eagerly herald the third: the ideal match of Jane Austen’s poignant and piquant story and playwright Claire F. Martin’s worldly-wise but not world-weary interpretation thereof.
Anyone aggrieved by a contemporary literary adaptation on stage or screen may lay aside all fears, for Miss Martin’s Sense and Sensibility is decidedly not a “darker and edgier” nor slackly, slickly modernized Austen derivative vainly tilting at provocation without ever striking heart or home. Rather, it is an act of perfect, precise balance: an adaptation faithful to the spirit, cognizant of the letter, and thoughtful about the context of both the original novel and the time and place of this premiere production.
In adapting Sense and Sensibility from Jane Austen’s earliest completed novel into her latest produced play, Miss Martin has, by necessity, translated the descriptive, narration-driven text of the book into dynamic action and neatly-paced dialogue. Having begun its life as an epistolary novel told through a series of letters, Austen’s source material favors hearsay: some of the most striking events of the plot and the richest details of character relationships are reported, either by the narrator directly to the reader or by the characters to one another. Primary protagonist Elinor does not even speak until the book’s third chapter, and the blossoming of affection betwixt her and her love interest Edward is unfolded for us through the observation of others. Indeed, the young couple’s care for one another is apparently so palpable that her mother and sisters speculate that they will at any moment become engaged—before the audience is even treated to an exchange between the two! Miss Martin expertly preserves the importance of us seeing the world through the Dashwood ladies’ eyes, while also enhancing the other characters as truly worthy of the family’s attention by giving them ample interaction and individual characterization.
Miss Martin’s most crucial amendment to Austen is expanding the role of youngest sister Margaret Dashwood, called Margot, from a delightful little tagalong to an impetuous, precociously perceptive force of nature. While this play clearly centers on the plight of the eldest daughter Elinor, who must serve as mother as well as sister to her younger siblings when their remaining living parent is unable to provide emotional and practical support, Margot’s expanded point of view literally triangulates the story of her two more plot-centric sisters, allowing us the compassionate but clear-eyed insight to Marianne and Elinor which they cannot—initially—provide to themselves or to one another. And like Margot, Miss Martin herself sees new possibilities for the too-oft stereotyped sisters: prudent Elinor’s immaculate self-denial is enriched by the toll it takes on her honesty with herself and others, while impulsive, impassioned Marianne is also a staunch advocate for her family’s honor and dignity, even when she cannot advocate for her own.
In revealing these new, strikingly germane layers of Austen’s lovingly rendered characters, it is just as important to cast with intention and consideration as it is to write. We cannot limit our understanding of either Jane Austen’s world or our own to simple demographic columns; we must appraise our work as artists, and her work as an artist, through the lens of intersectionality. Through Jane Austen’s perspective, gender was by and large the metonym for all oppression, because that was the means by which she experienced it. The society in which Jane Austen lived was relatively homogenous in terms of sexuality, race, religion, and gender roles and expression, and thus her characters were, too. However, throughout her career and her life, Jane’s cognizance of the world around her, both literary and literal, began to expand.
The Woman of Color: A Tale, published in 1808, is—like early drafts of Sense and Sensibility—an epistolary novel. Penned by an anonymous author, whom many speculate may well have been a Woman of Color herself, this tale details the life of Olivia Fairfield, a mixed-race young lady from Jamaica who travels to England to wed her father’s troubled heir. Meanwhile, in Jane Austen’s real-life social orbit, Dido Elizabeth Belle, the “natural daughter” of a British naval officer and an enslaved girl, lived a comfortable, genteel, but no doubt complicated life amongst wealthy white relatives, and whose presence in the household of her politically puissant guardian, Lord Mansfield, may have influenced his ruling in a crucial court case preceding the abolition of slavery in Britain. While we have no evidence that Jane and Dido themselves ever interacted, in part because like Jane, Dido passed away at a young age, Jane was certainly aware of her existence, having documented an apparently unimpressive visit to Dido’s white cousin, Lady Elizabeth Finch-Hatton (née Murray), who lived alongside Dido in the Mansfield home.
The “Mansfield” connection alone might catch the eye of Austen fans and scholars, but yet better, in her final work, the unfinished Sanditon, Jane Austen featured a young biracial black woman, an heiress from the West Indies, as a supporting character. Though never fully realized, Miss Lambe is even in her first-draft form a delightful addition to Austen’s canon of idiosyncratic gentlefolk. She is about seventeen, wealthy beyond measure, and constantly, frantically fussed-over by her patroness, who encourages her young charge’s “chilly and tender” hypochondria, though another character encourages the dainty Miss Lambe to face her fears and take a dip in the seaside!
Just as Austen’s characters represented and honored the communities in which she existed; to faithfully adapt her work, casting adaptations of her work must accomplish the same thing. In portraying the Dashwood sisters and their mother as Black women, the story of Sense and Sensibility not only reflects the reality of 19th century England, but also 21st century Atlanta. We must take such steps to ensure that we recognize and honor that People of the Global Majority, though historically and continually marginalized by white society and white artistic institutions, are the ones who have shaped, elevated, and refined history, art, literature, and culture as we know it. This is not only appropriate, but absolutely necessary, for us as artists and as human beings, and Jane Austen is the perfect vehicle through which to begin to redress the wrongs of so many classical literature adaptations and other historical plays.
It is our responsibility to eschew any inclination to preserve a literally lily-white perfection, which forces her and her characters to be keepers of our own nostalgia for “a simpler time”: a dangerous false ideal. To deny Jane Austen—and her characters—the opportunity to have vices, to falter, to fall, to bleed, to take ill, to learn the hard way, to both commit and survive oppression is to deny her humanity. And to deny Jane Austen humanity is to deny women humanity. It is to suggest that we put our bonnets back on, lower our gaze, and surrender the pen, forgoing interpretation and adaptation in favor of conformity and complicity. But we won’t. For as Tom Stoppard’s own Austen-esque masterpiece Arcadia reminds us: “You can’t run the film backwards”, and Miss Martin’s Sense and Sensibility certainly doesn’t repeat Austen beat-for-beat, nor force rough edges upon story already jagged with true, unvarnished humanity. It pushes the story forward, while also honoring the editions and adaptations which have preceded it from Emma Thompson and Ang Lee’s cinematic masterpiece to Kate Hamill’s feminist farce. And who knows what further new insights to Austen this play will inspire in turn?
-Claire Wittman,
Production Dramaturg
Sources on “The Woman of Color” &ct:
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/sanditon-black-heiress-miss-lambe
https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/volume-41-no-2/kumar
https://topazcrossbooks.com/2021/04/29/would-jane-austen-have-met-black-people-in-england
https://consideringausten.wordpress.com/austen-and-antigua-slavery-in-her-time
https://janeaustensworld.com/2021/03/29/women-of-colour-in-literature-of-jane-austens-england
https://georgianera.wordpress.com/2021/03/10/lady-elizabeth-mary-murray
https://exoticandirrational.blogspot.com/2016/03/six-months-with-jane-austen-mansfield.html
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