There seems to have been a bit of back and forth at this point about the Sanditon finale, and I’m weighing in much too late and likely no one cares but I can’t help myself. I loved it – you can see exactly where they’re going with a second series and I can’t wait for the pining.
This isn’t Austen!
Au contraire! This series is basically an endless medley of Austen tropes from start to finish, albeit in some cases heightened or taken to the extreme. It might not feel like Austen sometimes because of this (and Davies is also drawing on genre elements of romance fiction that have developed in response to Austen).
Others are sure to have pointed out these parallels before, but to my mind, Series 1 and 2 (which we will get) are split along the following lines:
Series 1
Northanger Abbey- Pride and Prejudice– Mansfield Park
Series 2
Sense and Sensibility– Persuasion
There are shades of Emma too, but the links are not as clear. I’ll break down how I see these tropes operating (or hope for them to in Series 2) but first let’s look at the most controversial ‘non-Austen’ element of Sanditon: the Denham subplot. I think the incest storyline and the Clara-Edward rivalry is definitely at its core Austen, but for that we need to look to Mansfield Park and Persuasion.
Mansfield Park is the strongest argument that Esther-Edward is a valid Austen trope. Consider Sir Thomas’ fears when Fanny joins them at the house:
Sir Thomas could not give so instantaneous and unqualified a consent. He debated and hesitated;—it was a serious charge;—a girl so brought up must be adequately provided for, or there would be cruelty instead of kindness in taking her from her family. He thought of his own four children, of his two sons, of cousins in love, etc.;—but no sooner had he deliberately begun to state his objections, than Mrs. Norris interrupted him with a reply to them all, whether stated or not.
“You are thinking of your sons—but do not you know that, of all things upon earth, that is the least likely to happen, brought up as they would be, always together like brothers and sisters? It is morally impossible.I never knew an instance of it. It is, in fact, the only sure way of providing against the connexion.”
And yet it is possible, as Fanny and Edmund ultimately fall in love. Austen didaddress incest in her own writing and to say that such subject material is ‘not Austen’ is untrue. The difference is she ultimately condoned it as a way of reaffirming or strengthening the family – it didn’t have the sinister tones Edward and Esther have (which is more reflective of how the subject was treated in literature at the time). She also completely avoided actual brothers and sisters, and you can see this with Emma and Mr. Knightley or even Edward and Elinor. Chances are she would have been totally on board with Edward and Esther, tbh, if Edward wasn’t such an emotionally manipulative and controlling creep.
Clara and Edward have also been functioning as Mrs. Clay and William Eliot. Mrs. Clay is a threat to Mr. Eliot’s inheritance – she has wormed her way into the Kellynch household and is clearly gunning for Sir Walter and if she were to marry him and produce an heir would supplant Mr. Eliot. This is why he gives up on Anne and gets her out of the way towards the end of the novel. No, we don’t see Mrs. Clay and Mr. Eliot fucking on a cold marble floor or giving hand jobs in forests, but this is what I’m saying about Davies taking things to the extreme. The elements of this plot are there in Persuasion, he’s just heavily sexualised it which is why it doesn’t feel like Austen – but she has written these characters.
Other parallels:
Northanger Abbey
Charlotte is very much a Catherine Morland figure. Both are from large families and are introduced to society through a distant connection (the Allens and the Parkers). Her naïvete and eagerness to embrace everything in Sanditon are reminiscent of Catherine’s interactions in Bath, and both heroines inadvertently blunder into offending others.
Pride and Prejudice
Charlotte and Sidney quite obviously function as Darcy and Elizabeth stand-ins. Both judge each other incorrectly based on first impressions. Charlotte is offended by his rude and cold manner and later is easily swayed by what she hears from Georgiana. Sidney makes assumptions about her based on her background and experience in life. Georgiana is unfortunately so underdeveloped but she’s functioning as a Georgiana Darcy/Lydia Bennet figure. She’ll need more substance in Series 2. Other obvious parallels include Lady Denham as Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Eliza as Caroline Bingley or a reverse Lucy Steele.
Mansfield Park
Charlotte functions in a similar manner to Fanny at Mansfield Park – she’s essentially a stand-in servant and nanny, looking after the children and helping Tom to sort his books out. I would like a Henry Crawford subplot for her for Series 2, please and thank you.
Sense and Sensibility
I’m getting strong S&S vibes from the ending of Sanditon. Edward and Elinor were kept apart because he had already formed an earlier attachment to Lucy Steele - one of Austen’s examples of the foolishness of youth. A clear line can be drawn here between Edward and Sidney. Both are bound to women they no longer love and feel they need to give up on happiness with the woman they do love. Edward also has problems in standing up to his mother, while Sidney is sacrificing everything for the good of the family. There are also shades of Marianne and Willoughby here, in that he gives up Charlotte to marry for money - although of course Sidney’s motivation is more altruistic.
Persuasion
Sidney is also quite obviously a gender-swapped Anne Eliot at this point. I demand painful pining and having to observe Charlotte with other men etc. in Series 2! Ultimately I’m hoping for a tonal shift to the more autumnal feel of Persuasionover sunnySanditon.
Series 2 Wishlist:
Lady Susan
Lady Susan is currently functioning as a kind of Emma Woodhouse matchmaker. I’d like to see her really take Charlotte under her wing (a la Harriet?) and work on ‘improving’ her. Charlotte doesn’t need improving but I want to see her moving on from the first flush of youth and maturing a little (from a Marianne to an Elinor). I want Charlotte in more mature colours, perhaps some red silks or black even – I’m actually hoping her purple jacket and reddish ribbon at the wedding is an indication of this. I want her hair to be consistently up (which drives Sidney crazy). Sidney needs to see her for the first time at a London ball surrounded by admirers and think her so altered he just wants to die (Series 2 Campaign Slogan: SUFFERING FOR SIDNEY). This will confirm for him she’s moved on etc. Lady Susan can match her up with a...
Decoy Groom
I would like to see Charlotte form an attachment to someone who isn’t Stringer and would actually make Sidney insanely jealous. This would be a reverse Anne-Wentworth development where she believes he genuinely falls in love with Louisa and is not interested in her anymore. This person probably needs to be somewhat of a cad, of the Crawford variety, if we’re going to stick with the usual. Or perhaps a military officer? Maybe older than Sidney? I want Sidney to believe she’s fallen in love with someone else and be absolutely miserable (I love the guy, but the payoff will be x1000000). By the time the wedding’s called off (because I have to believe there’ll be some other solution to Tom’s problem otherwise we’re headed for a marriage and death-in-childbirth scenario and depressing) he’ll be in forever alone mode and won’t believe Charlotte will ever want him again. Perfect.
Georgiana Lambe
DO SOMETHING PLEASE. She started with a promising plotline and then it just disappeared over the rainbow. I don’t really care about Otis but I want her to be happy, confident, and empowered. Throw her into the London scene with Charlotte and Lady Susan please and see her hold her own.
Alison Heywood
It’s interesting that there were increased references to Alison in 1x08. I would like to see her brought into the story in a similar manner to Susan Price (or even Kitty’s removal from Longbourn at the end of Pride and Prejudice). If they’re gunning for longevity, developing Charlotte’s sister would be a good choice. Austen frequently explores sororal relationships (both supportive and combative) and perhaps there’s an opportunity there to draw on some material from The Watsons as well.
Female Friendships
I feel like we were headed in a good direction with this and then they just dropped the ball. More Charlotte and Georgiana please, and I would love Esther and Charlotte to bond more (causing awkwardness with Sidney but long term they’ll be hanging bitching about their husbands while they go off shooting on Babington’s country estate).
YoungStringer
I have absolutely no idea what they can do with this. I don’t want a lame repeat of the S1 non-triangle. Idk, I want him to be happy? Can he please just be a William Price rising through the ranks of English engineering and being happy and successful? A guest appearance only though. Ugh.
So it looks like I only come back to give my takes on Harlots now? Sheesh 11 months is a long time. Behind a cut in case you haven’t seen it yet...
I don’t mean to defend Charlotte’s death or try to pass it off as some brilliant piece of storytelling - I don’t think it was necessary and am well aware of how devastating it is considering the show’s historically positive treatment of queer storylines and sudden silence r.e. Amelia and Violet - but I think some of the subtext is getting a little lost. That her death is meaningless and is simply a casualty of a fight between two men misses the tragic forces at work here. Isaac and Hal are only fighting because Hal believes Charlotte (thanks to ‘intel’ from Isaac) has sabotaged the deal. The deal is actually sabotaged because Margaret kills it in retaliation for the arson attack; an attack that had already been avenged because Margaret’s daughters are perfectly capable of standing up for themselves. Emily had a chance to diffuse the situation but was gagged because Margaret made sure revealing what she knew would kill the deal. Yes, in the immediate sense Hal carelessly pushes her over the railing but you have to acknowledge how each character’s actions further this sequence of events. Watching as each cog winds into gear was so incredibly stressful. Margaret, who never does have a proper ‘plan’ has condemned her daughter through her reckless behaviour, behaviour that is purely driven by her overwhelming desire to protect her family. Margaret’s love for her family is her greatest quality, but her fierce desire to protect them can blind her to everything else and ultimately do them harm. For example, her obsession with seeing Lucy looked after by a keeper, really the best case scenario she can envisage, prevents her from seeing that Lucy isn’t suited to life as a harlot, or recognizing her trauma from the Reptons; this compounds Lucy’s situation until she reaches crisis point (i.e. the death of Howard). Lucy’s point that she could ‘breathe’ without her Ma in London is important I think. Charlotte, too, was finally in an ideal position. She had the benefits of a keeper with Lady Fitzwilliam but none of the pressure for a contract that she had with Howard; she also had freedom through her - admittedly insane - liaisons with Isaac. Monogamy was never for Charlotte. Neither needed their mother to do anything, in fact they’re thriving without her, as much as they miss and love her. I love Margaret Wells but her key role in the unfolding tragedy has to be acknowledged. She doesn’t think about how her return will impact her family - she can’t see beyond the primal instinct to return to them. This is tragically borne out in Charlotte’s death.
This now sounds like I’m saying everything is entirely Margaret’s fault; it’s not. You can extrapolate this idea to each character and say that their desire is thwarted by their own actions. Isaac’s terrible decision to set fire to Greek Street has culminated in the loss of this deal that would provide the brothers with so much after coming from nothing. Any chance the damage could be undone is gone with Hal’s actions - as Emily says, touch Charlotte Wells and the deal dies. I think the wider point here is that these characters are ultimately powerless within a system that is stacked against them. Their successes are short-lived and they are their own undoing. Perhaps they were going for a statement about women being at the mercy of men but I think this would be very lazy so I hope not.
All I really mean to say is that saying Charlotte only dies because she tries to break up a meaningless fight between two men misses a lot of the subtext. Sacrificing Charlotte to make a point about Margaret though is barely any better so I’m still pretty pissed.
So after the most recent episode I just want to say again that I am absolute Not Here for people hating on Lucy. Telling Fallon about George Howard was a mistake that’s clearly going to have terrible consequences, no doubt about it, but also like… she’s, what, 15? 16? And she’s being groomed by an adult man who holds a lot of social power over her. Her livelihood depends on keeping him entertained, and he seems to be entertained first and foremost by committing violence and the idea of her doing the same, so it makes sense for her to want to tell him about the person she’s killed.
Furthermore she was high when she told him and certainly not in a normal state of mind. And again, people can say that she chose to accept drugs from him, but he basically told her that she would be boring if she didn’t and since it’s literally her job not to be boring then like… of course she smoked it.
And this last one isn’t as much of an excuse as the others, but I think it still makes her decision to tell Fallon more understandable. The way I interpreted their scenes this episode was that Fallon implied Kitty was lesser and in that sense deserved to be killed to some degree; Lucy clearly picked up on that and was offended by it. She saw that Lord Fallon viewed both herself and her murdered friend as beneath him to the extent that if they were killed by a member of his class then it would be the natural order of things and something that they kind of deserved. Who wouldn’t be upset by that? And because of Lucy’s circumstances (she’s young, she aims to be a successful courtesan, she seems to admire Lord Fallon to some degree), instead of being angry at him for his shitty beliefs, it prompts her to try and prove herself to him. She wants him to view her as his equal (and I think also through proving herself to be equal and a Spartan, she wants to prove that Kitty didn’t deserve to be killed), and she tries to make this happen by showing that she too can kill, and that she killed a “superior”, and so maybe George Howard and Lord Fallon aren’t so superior to her after all.
Part of this was Lucy trying to do her job, part of it was her trying to prove that she wasn’t lesser than Fallon just because she’s a working class woman, and I think part of it sprung from a desire to defend Kitty. Lucy doesn’t know that Lord Fallon is dangerous in the same way that we, the audience, do, and he’s putting a lot of effort into grooming her. Her mistake was a mistake but an entirely understandable one imo, and I don’t think it even makes her stupid, let alone The Worst Character Ever etc.
Thank you! Definitely agreed, although I think her actions may be less about proving Howard and Fallon aren’t superior and more about justifying her own murder to herself. When Fallon says it’s a noble act she says she thought it was a desperate one, and it’s clear she’s thinking of her own actions. Through Fallon’s eyes she isn’t a desperate woman taking a man’s life (to burn in hell for all eternity) but a noble Spartan. It becomes a good thing; Howard was weak and deserved it, therefore how can she be blamed? It eases her mental burden and ‘vanquishes her demons’. This doesn’t mean she’s about to become a murderess and crucially she doesn’t know Fallon killed Kitty, the idea that he’s killed someone is more abstract to her.
“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer.”
literature posters; anne of green gables by lucy maud montgomery
