1. Oct, 2019

Sanditon, Sea and Sex

We parted company with Jane Austen’s incomplete text some time ago and although at first characters were robustly set in place using original dialogue and the author’s insights into them, we are now amidst a kind of virtual reality creation  of them, rather like the CGI backdrop of Sanditon itself, vogueish seaside resort to be, if the sanguine hopes of its would be architect, Mr Thomas Parker, are to be realised.  This meeting of families comes about due to an initial carriage accident whereby the architect and his family meet another and offer hospitality in return to the daughter of the good hearted people who come to their rescue.  

But Sidney, Mr Parker’s younger brother, given in the original text a racy charm and ease in company which shows him to be warm and popular, has been translated by now into a version of Mr Darcy, prey to misinterpretation from the moment of young Charlotte’s ingenue introduction to him and during subsequent meetings.  It cannot be said that his hidden depths remain veiled for long as, in a nod to the famous scene in a former production of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, Sidney goes for broke, surging out of the surf nude down to his knees, before the innocent eyes of Charlotte (musingly collecting shells on the shore at the time).  Strangely but then, these were regency days, I suppose, far from hiding his modesty, he continues to stand there full frontal, taking her to task for surprising him yet again with her unexpected presence.  Fortunately, Charlotte takes this in her maidenly stride, being the spirited sort but it strikes an odd note nonetheless.

And that’s not all.  You can’t say that sex remains a decorous hinterland in Sanditon, where there are some very juicy set ups.  A semi incestuous relationship between two poor nobles, a stepbrother and stepsister, who are not related by blood but still, is not only hinted at but acted upon. Then there’s the young woman companion, Clara Brereton ‘no novice’ as it turns out, even up to the full on seduction by her of the stepbrother, Lord Summatandnowt (as his plain speaking northern toned aunt, Lady Denham, might well call him).  Clara's expertly timed knee trembler in the study follows on from an earlier bit of intimacy in the meadow (where she quickly got the better of him on the pleasuring front) and is aimed at putting a spoke in the wheel of stepbrother and stepsister trying to get into the good graces of the dowager old lady aunt she, the companion, has got wormed into the place to inherit from herself, if she can.

There are of course balls and dancing and in Sanditon, a black heiress from Antigua, who is Sidney’s ward.  We get a bit right on here, as her secret light of love, Otis, is in the anti slavery movement but in a saving grace from being too good to be true, he is also a heavily indebted gambler.  So we go a bit Lydia and Wickham when they elope to London, where Charlotte is unaccountably rescued from robbers by Sidney, just passing by with a sword stick as she arrives by coach in pursuit of the lovers.  Throughout, the shadows of other original Austen characters and plots peep through the progress of Sanditon and Charlotte’s feelings (recently reaching the crest of the wave launched by Sidney’s buff bathing) are quickened still further when she finds out that Sidney has secretly paid off Otis’s debts.  Not, however, until they have rescued Miss Lamb following an exciting chase down by carriage after she has been given to the man he owed, to be married against her will. 

After all this excitement, we return to more standard territory.  Charlotte has just experienced the apotheosis of a declaration of love in the Jane Austen world.  Sidney has asked her to dance and even smiled all the way through their galliard, or whatever it is.  But fate has turned and turned up, on that very same occasion, the sweetheart who had broken his youthful heart by marrying an older, richer man, and she is now widowed and free.  No sooner has the delighted Charlotte agreed to gallop gladly round the dancefloor next with the voluble Mr Thomas Parker, than he has garrulously filled her in with this being the real reason Sidney is full of smiles tonight.  Her trembling lip and speaking dark eyes are put the fullest of tests, in close up, by seeing him now in conversation with that very person when she turns round as the dance ends. Her curls are all aquiver and her certainties once more disordered.  Still, there’s always next week’s episode. It’s bound to have been another of those pesky misunderstandings that take an inordinate amount of bosom heaving to clear up before someone sends a timely note or drops in to pay a call.  

Rather like Mr Bennett, though, I find myself having to advise Charlotte that if she pleases one viewer by accepting Sidney’s hand in marriage, she will forever displease another, namely me.  She’s admirably talented, modern and forward and has shown quite a flare for planning herself on the Sanditon front, for the regatta notion not least.  In my view, she should rescue Tom’s enterprise by taking charge of promoting Sanditon and completing its future design.  That way, nice Young Stringer, a builder working for Mr Thomas Parker and presently hiding his admiring light under a bushel, might get his moment to declare his own hand and keep her in the creative milieu.  

My advice to him would be to seize a likely time to stomp about at least partially naked, shirt off, say, while doing a bit of nifty nailing up about the premises, and give her a glimpse of what he has to offer, since Sidney has laid all his cards on the table already, so to speak.  A few understanding words later between them and Sidney having hopefully cleared off with his former affianced, it could all be sorted.

Then Charlotte will carry on staying with them and nice Mrs Parker will stop looking so worried about everything because there’ll be a capable young couple to take Thomas’s impracticality in hand.  You never know. It would tidy things up a treat and be a bit of a surprise ending. I expect romance will win out though, even though Young Stringer is no Mr Collins as an alternative to the redoubtable Sidney as a prospect and could brush up quite well given half a chance.  I expect, though, his was more a ‘Persuasion’ moment, his response to Charlotte’s charms there to show that she does possess them, even if Sidney hasn’t quite got it yet.

Perhaps, then, it will play out more along the, ‘well if you want to willfully misunderstand me yet again it’s going to take a bit more time before you get to polish my boots, my girl’ lines that Sidney has hitherto seemed to strop off into before coming round a bit.  They’ll have to get a move on anyway because I think next week is the last one in the series.  I remain hopeful, though, that my yet another version of a Sanditon ending could turn out to be a better future for Charlotte’s career fulfilment, although it will be shaky in the face of Sidney’s recent admission that he has hitherto underestimated her qualities and intelligence, hinting that  it will turn out that he is, in fact, if grudgingly put, in love with her.