The Sense & Sensibility ending

[Annabel Lee]

What is it about the ending that a lot of people don't like?

Personally (after seeing the movie), I didn't like it that Marianne ended up with Colonel Brandon. I thought that she was too passionate for him. For some reason unlike most of my friends, I was not mad at Willoughby; most people that I know, think he is a jerk. When I saw the movie (before I read the book) I actually pitied Willoughby. And when I read the book I think it explained things in a way that everyone got what they deserved. It did not leave me upset about Marianne's situation, although I was still sad for Willoughby.

Anyways, I'd like to know what your thoughts are on this particular subject.

Thanks!!

[JBI]

Many critics find it unromantic. It is clear that Willoughby still loves Marianne, and she him, but they don't end up together, and she ends up with the boring, older, Colonel. Though Jane Austen ends it with her eventually beginning to love him out of respect, it is seen as somewhat cheap, given that she could have been happier perhaps with a sensible person like Willoughby, but instead both end unhappily.

[Annabel Lee]

I think Colonel Brandon was more sensible than Willoughby. In my opinion Willoughby and Marianne were both too passionate for each other. Their relationship is a good example of what not to do. They let their feelings get away from them and they were so deeply in love before they had the chance to realize that they weren't right for each other. Two very passionate people cannot go together. Though sometimes it can workout alright (with God's help).
But when dealing with two people as passionate as these, I think the phrase "opposites attract" applies. Marianne needed someone stable like the Colonel (or a Mr. Darcy) to balance her out her emotions. And Willoughby would need someone more sensible and stable with her emotions than Marianne (someone like Elizabeth Benett).

[Sir Bartholomew]

i think Marianne's marriage to the colonel is the author's slap in the face to her readers: that a person with the temperament of Marianne's is better off with an old bore. Everyone, specially of today's standards, thinks this treatment is sick, including myself. That's why a lot thinks that S&S is the least of all the Austen novels. The ending had gone too far on dictating about decorum on its audience.

[Guinnevere]

Oh, no. Christopher Brandon is not an old bore - he's a faithful, dependable man with enough strength of character to keep his word. Brandon loves deeply, and he did not give up on finding his first love just because she had been passed 'from man to man' once his family had forcibly separated them. He took the responsibility of raising her 'fatherless' baby when she died, for love of her, and for pity of the child. His greatest fault, in fact, seems to be over-leniency with a rebellious teenager, which turns out disastrously.

Willoughby, on the other hand, is a selfish libertine who loses Marianne, the love of his life, because he simply cannot control his impulses. Don't forget, he brought his disinheritance on himself by his seduction of an underage girl (Brandon's ward, in fact), whom he abandoned once she became pregnant, and he then voluntarily dumped Marianne to marry for money, so that he would not have to be poor. I do pity Willoughby, but I despise him too. He is charming, but charm is not everything. His character is weak and undisciplined, he uses and hurts other people, and he is his own worst enemy.

Willoughby was Marianne's first love, but she began to get over him when she saw him for what he really was, and she fell in love with Brandon once she finally began to grow up. I find that ending to be quite satisfactory.

[Sir Bartholomew]

if you see it that way then

[mmmolde]

Emma Thompson's adaptation is a masterpiece, as is Ang Lee's direction. Take any sequence of dialogue - it is like poetry...
take any frame of the film - it is a portriat.
To compare the novel to the film is like apples to oranges.
Savor it all.

[Guinnevere]

The thing that is so great about Emma Thompson's script is that it follows the novel so faithfully, yet moves along so energetically. The characters who got cut from the screenplay were so minor they weren't even noticeable by their absence. I'd completely forgotten that Sir John Middleton had a living wife, and kiddies underfoot! Or that Lucy Steele had a sister! Naturally some expository passages had to be pared down to a sentence or two, and inserted into other scenes parenthetically, or the movie would have been ten hours long. But the muscle of the novel, and the heart of it, all made it onto the screen along with verbatim dialog from the key passages in the novel.

The screen 'Lucy' did come across as less selfishly calculating, though, and more pathetically deluded - therefore deserving some pity, as the original character never did - but that scarcely detracted from the message, nor from the enjoyment of the work as a whole, in my estimation.

[JBI]

We are talking about the movie with Alan Rickman? I feel in that movie they made Colonel Brandon too attractive.

[Jacki217]

i guess i felt that marianne was giving up on love by marrying colonel brandon. it was clear she loved wiloughby and he her. i guess that the ending was n't wrapped up in a tidy little bow with everyone in love and happy, with who they were supposed to be with in my mind, is kind of a dissappointment, but i still liked the ending. real life isn't perfect eithor is real love.

[Jane'sRedRose]

I have heard some people refer to the similarities between Marianne's marriage to the Colonel and Charlotte's marriage to Mr. Collins as almost a matter of just settling down. I know that some people may find Marianne's marriage to the Colonel as being a patchwork job, but Colonel Brandon really did love Marianne and he proved that to her on more than one occasion. He was willing to let her go when she sought a romance with Willoughby without interference, though he knew the cad he was. The Colonel loved her enough to set her free and make her own judgments of Willoughby and was there for her when Willoughby crossed her with Jane Grey. So, it may not seem like the lustful romance that Marianne had in mind, but Colonel Brandon does respect her as a woman and was willing to do whatever he could for her (ex. riding for her mother when she was ill). Passion is short-lived, but love is eternal. Maybe, that is what Marianne figured out in the end.