That Loveliness Was Complete
This past week when I was having a few not so terrific days in a row, I splurged and bought the first series of Sanditon on Apple TV. If you’re in the US (and fun fact, most of you are), I think you can also find it on Amazon Prime. So, longtime readers know of my Jane Austen fixation, have read my article on the sponge-cake model of friendship, and have even perhaps noticed the Austen references in my novel and latest essays. At Christmas I always re-read a classic novel, usually an Austen one. And admittedly, often in the summer there’ll be another re-read, at least partially. I love her books, the ways she uses language, her comedic timing, her wit, her intelligence.
So let me begin by saying, watching the Sanditon series was an excellent escape.
There was a time when I was quite enthralled with Sanditon, Austen’s last and unfinished novel. I came into possession of a copy of the facsimile manuscript (you can find them used online for under $30 CAD) and spent many an hour delighting in Austen’s handwriting, and writing poems that began with lines from the book. I think I’d written perhaps 15 of them. I was thinking heavily then, about fragments, and kept rearranging things and making a game of it. Though in the end they were closer to song lyrics, if I recall. Funnily, there was a point in my life, where I disposed of anything resembling a literary archive and these seem to have gone into the bin. Just as well, really. They weren’t anything. I had titled my unfinished and abandoned work “that Loveliness was complete.”
If you’re interested in reading more about her manuscripts, this might be of interest. For Sanditon in particular, JASNA has an article by Michelle Levy that is quite in-depth.
But as for the new series, my only real complaint is that there might not be a series two?? This is cruel, indeed. Yes, it’s a fantastical continuation by Andrew Davies, in which the whole of the fragment is dispensed with in the first half of episode one, an inevitability given the sparse few scenes with which Austen left us. Is it still possible to bring about a second series, to Save Sanditon? Regardless, I can’t disagree with Buzzfeed, the show is definitely bingeworthy.
I’m not quite an Austen purist, per se, though I do think she’d like this adaptation/continuation more than this writer in The Guardian. There’s a reasonable amount of humour amidst the smouldering. And the fantastical anachronistic bits are such fun, that one forgives the liberties.
I suppose that it’s not the end of the world to be left hanging, since it’s been a work-out for my fogged brain to imagine all the possibilities for a next series. But at the same time, it just seems like in this uncertain world, it would be nice to have some follow through, some closure, and honestly a happy ending. The book was going to be radically different from Austen’s other works, so who knows, maybe it was going to be more open ended, more ambiguous. Maybe it’s proper that one fragment begets another fragment. But. Imagine if Charlotte Heywood were to come into a huge and mysterious inheritance and eschew dashing and tall dark and handsome men and romance altogether, and end up writing novels instead. There could be worse endings.
You can read the novel fragment on Project Gutenberg, if you’re so inclined. I’m definitely in the #savesanditon crowd. I think the only way that will happen is if a ton of people watch the first series. Would love to hear your thoughts on it if you do end up seeing it, and how you’d like Charlotte Heywood to end up. Perhaps this will tempt you.
