Tuning into the realness of Sense & Sensibility

Having finished up with Emma as part of my Jane Austen Classic Six reread, I've moved on to Sense & Sensibility which was her first published novel.

I will confess that I relate very much to this particular story as I am the eldest of three children born into a second marriage(and yes, I am most definitely an Elinor).

 As it's been several years since I've read the original book, part of my struggle is to filter out the differences from the adaptations to the text. For one, I completely forgot about Lady Middleton(then again, Austen doesn't give her much to do which explains why Emma Thompson left her out of her excellent 1995 screenplay).

However, in traveling down this road again, I do feel that a good modern take on this tale of two sisters(poor Margaret doesn't get much to do either!) would be a reality TV series. After all, most of those shows are centered around family drama and S&S certainly has an abundance of that!

It could be called The Dashwood Sisters(with a Hamiltonesque theme song that would give Margaret her "Peggy" moment) and with all of the dialogues in this story, we could start things off with their brother John Dashwood and his wife Fanny plotting on cheating the girls and their mother out of a reasonable portion of the family estate:

Another element of the reality show genre is people reluctantly living together and when the current set of Dashwoods have no choice but to accept John and Fanny moving in and taking over, simmering tensions do arise indeed!

Supporting characters are a must and S&S has plenty of engaging ones such as Mrs. Jennings, who loves to overtly make matches, along with her equally chatty daughter Mrs. Palmer(who more than makes up for her dull older sister there). Then later on, we get Lucy Steele, whose subtle schemes cause quite a bit of uproar and she would love to be on camera, giving sly smirks and winks to the audience.

However, the main troublemaker would, in my opinion, be Fanny Dashwood, the awful in-law who never hesitates in making her displeasure known to her relatives. If anyone among this group is capable of turning over a table(or inspiring said action), it is truly her:

Meanwhile, bad romances are a big attraction to this type of show and boy, does S&S have a good deal of that!

From the slow building romance of Elinor and Edward Ferrars,which is awkward enough considering he's the brother of the fiendish Fanny, that goes off track for more than one reason*cough*Lucy Steele*cough* to the stunning train wreck that is Marianne and Willoughby, right up to where she nearly dies for love, we've got a few seasons worth of set-your-DVR material here.

The fact that Col. Brandon's backstory plays a huge part in Willoughby's romantic double dealing adds more fuel to the fire there. Of course, the extra cherry on top of this scandalous sundae is that public reunion of Marianne and Willoughby in London, the kind of scene that would certainly cause a furious flurry of Twitter threads and TikTok reactions to accompany it:

Unlike those shows,  however, Sense & Sensibility does have a reasonably happy ending. For the record, I have no problem with the men that both of the Dashwood sisters ended up.

Willoughby and his smooth talking ways would've ruined Marianne sooner or later and I don't particularly care for his last minute mansplaining to Elinor(while her sister is seriously ill, no less!).

Speaking of Elinor, I get why she would forgive Edward for his prior engagement. Yes, he should have said something early on but he also wanted to do right by both Elinor and Lucy. It's been fodder for many a debate and would no doubt amuse a reality show fanbase greatly.

Perhaps someone will take this idea and make a fun webseries for Austen folks to enjoy, like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries or Emma Approved(hey, I can dream, can't I?). For now, I'll just visit with the sisters Dashwood on the page and let my imagination create a reality show of it's own: