which dashwood are you?

i have recently been entertaining ideas about colonel brandon

i would like to air them here.

a disclaimer to cover and translate and clarify this whole post would be to say that i do not claim to have any immediate need for resolution or even process of this idea - that is to say, there is no man who has induced such thoughts, or sparked this particular bout of musing; these are thoughts that have come about through thinking about myself, and dear friend of mine....we were both mariannes in our youth and now i believe we may be finding the inner eleonor.

i am referring dear reader of course, to the sibling heroines of austen's -sense and sensibility-...i am referring, of course, to eleonor and marianne dashwood...

i cannot claim to be a great austennite, i am not sure i would ever want to be able to claim such. in fact i find the whole genre somewhat tiresome with its endless dramatizations and re-costuming...but i imagine that had i been a girl at her time of writing, i would have awaited her new books with such hope and probably some slight fervour, in the manner that i awaited a new blur album or christmastime book vouchers.....that replenishment of new sensory love, that stocking-up on new lyrical ideas and ficticious adventures.....that books and music alone can bring to me, film does not come close...nor pictures....not a visual learner, this one! i leave that to my catelin.

imagine, its 1846 (or whenever austen was around, i have no idea!) and you are 17, 18 years old....a girl...and austen is alive and writing in the world. imagine the thrill you would feel at knowing that you would open that newly printed volume to find a semblance of a stronger, freer, truer you, a you that felt your fetters but did not obey them or bow to her elders, a you that made time to read and study first and foremost, a you that would always rather see the scoundrel reformed out of love for you than marry a man you could guarantee would make you happy....

not so our eleonor...

you cannot help but love her. as maddeningly prim as she may be, as shriek-provokingly reserved, as much to blame for her own singleness as anyone else, you cannot help but love her.

but with marianne it is different, you can want to be her, she's the beauty, the flame, the siren of the household, still young and still not wordly, but free and impassioaed and poetic and romantic.

until perhaps you spend time with me and fiona you would not imagine that two sisters could be so different in real-life. she is eleomor to my marianne, always has been - and she, five years my junior!

as their story unfolds, and you watch like a car crash exploding and scraping and churning before your eyes as marianne falls in love and then finds herself betrayed, humiliated, abandoned and frankly, beside herself.

he is willoughby. he is wild and natural and unpretensious and adores shakespeare and speaks lyrically, with humour and flair, he has the capacity to adore and to express that adoration in public and dramatic ways. she falls for him the instant that he finds her, fallen and injured, up on the moor in a great storm. he lifts her as if she weighed no more than a twig! ensures she gets home, and call ths next day to check on her. 'what care i for colds when there is such a man!?' she is heard exclaiming, before he is even out of the house.....

the affair is mighty and tempestuous, they become close, shockingly close by the standards of the day, they are demonstrative and joyous in each-other's company.

eleonor finds it hard. not out of envy or embarassment, but out of concern for her sister. that terrible, grasping fear that one can only have for a sister, or a sister-like-friend, where you know that it is too late, and that you will be the one to help re-assemble her when it is over. she does not trust either him or her to be enough for each-other. she thinks practically at all times and looks to practicalities as excuses to not live her own life, to not live her own love or write her own story. she is the worker, the provider, the worrier.

but actually you know that she is in love, and that that love will take over her eventually, and that maybe for one moment she will allow herself sufficient freedom to let it out, let it breathe, let it be heard, received and returned.

when marianne's heart is, so coolly, so inevitably, so mercilessly broken, through the simple abandonment of her by willoghby for another, she grieves; she does this fully, intentionally, all-consumingly......it is worse than death to her - he chose not to love her anymore, he chose not to be hers anymore, but instead to adore another...

for marianne, this is the end of all that she has anticipated and longed for. it is the ruination of what she had always believed would be, when love came, the greatest acheievement and pursuit of her life, that to love would bring out the finest and best in her, that to be loved in return would be the most compelling, overwhelming and beautiful experience she could have to live through.

and now? what have i left?

well, colonel brandon transpires to be the most loving, attentive, adoring and impassioned surprise of a man that i have ever encountered in fiction. he has been secretly admiring her for the duration of the book, but would never have seen fit to offer himself to her, to ask anything of her, believing that she would not be tamed, that he would never be a match for her, that she would always want for more than he could love her with.

at her most broken he is there. not as an eager substitute, but as the one to whom she pleads 'you will not stay away long?' when he tells her he must away for a while......she soon needs him, she soon loves and wants him, with what remains of her she finds pieces enough to love again...

these may be seen as the leftover parts of her, the lost property, the shreds and shards of the whole that she used to be.....but i think that now i begin to see that the concentrated me is emerging, the essential, essence of that marianne, post willoughby, post death, post heart-break.....she becomes eleonor, she now sees love as something which must be beneficial as well as romantic, must be continuous and constant as much as it must be tempestuous, must be chosen as much - if not more - than it must be an involuntary falling.....

anyway, those were my thoughts...