The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
Feeling must learn its form, and judgment must learn its heart.
Elinor Dashwood
Nineteen-year-old Elinor carries the family’s judgment, grief, and silence in a face trained not to betray pain.
Norland Park
A respectable house turns cold the moment colder people own its rooms.
A family’s future shrinks to almost nothing because affection favored the wrong heir.
Read →A Disappointing Will
The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew; but he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and daughters than for himself or his son; but to his son, and his son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate, or by any sale of its valuable woods. The whole was tied up for the benefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of all the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters. He meant not to be unkind, however, and, as a mark of his affection for the three girls, he left them a thousand pounds a-piece.
A four year old has just outmaneuvered three grown women, and he did it by being loud. The uncle has tied up Norland so that the child inherits, cutting Mr. Dashwood off from any way to leave money to his wife and daughters. What won the old man over is spelled out with mock seriousness: a toddler's babble, his tantrums, his insistence on his own way. Years of real attention from the women counted for nothing against that noise, and Austen lets the absurdity of the exchange do the work of the complaint.
Dispossessed at Norland
A will and a promise both fail the Dashwood women in the same breath. They will leave Norland with a fraction of what a dying father meant them to have.
Norland estate
A family estate passes to the son, and the women who made it home are left with nearly nothing.
Marianne Dashwood
Marianne turns every feeling outward, until grief itself teaches her the cost of living without restraint.
Sense and Sensibility
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