Chels

Way back in lockdown (can you believe it’s been five whole years?) I read the entire Jane Austen collection. Or so I thought. I bought a big special edition collection of all seven of her novels well over a decade ago, and I tackled Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice straight away. After that, I neglected the rest of the collection for a while, until I finally decided to tackle all the classics I’d amassed and never read while there was nothing else to distract me. It was very satisfying to have read what I thought was the entirety of an author’s works, and it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that wasn’t the case.

I knew of the Sanditon TV series, and I knew it was an Austen adaptation, but despite this, it didn’t register in my mind that Sanditon must be another Austen work, even though I didn’t recognise the name as that of a location or family in her other works.

This week, I’m finally rectifying this, and (hopefully) actually completing my Austen journey. As a bonus, my copy of Sanditon (the Penguin English Library edition) also comes with Lady Susan (which I’ve already tackled) and The Watsons.

*I know there are a few more shorter works in Austen’s Juvenilia, but since I don’t think any were intended to be novels, I don’t count those towards the novel collection. I still would like to read them at some point in the future, though.

Sanditon is unfinished, but there’s enough written – 12 chapters – that we can presume the way that the story would play out.

The story begins with Mr and Mrs Parker’s carriage overturning on a country road. They’re fine, but Mr Parker sprains his ankle. A local man, Mr Heywood, offers to assist him. The Parkers stay with the Heywoods for a few weeks while he heals, and to thank them for their generosity, they take the Heywoods’ eldest daughter, Charlotte, to visit their home in Sanditon.

To be honest, I would have loved a story focusing on the time when the two families lived together in Willingden. The first two chapters of the novel were so funny. I hope they were intended to be, because they really made me laugh. For one, Mr Parker spends so much time talking about Sanditon and how much he adores the place while he is still injured, and Mr Heywood, who has at least some sense of urgency regarding the injury, tells him ‘With all my heart sir – Apply any verses you like to it – But I want to see something applied to your leg’. Jane Austen had a real knack for characters, they always feel grounded and real, and despite the cultural differences in speech and language from her time and ours, the characters are easily recognisable. I mean, don’t we all know a well meaning older man that can’t stop once he gets talking, regardless of what he’s supposed to be doing?

Despite my love of the early scenes in Willingden, I was quickly enchanted by Sanditon too. The seaside town felt like it could easily be home to a murder mystery, a seaside romance, even a magical children’s tale. Of course, no Austen novel would be complete without an engaging ensemble cast, and Sanditon doesn’t disappoint. We meet Lady Denham, twice widowed, and the young woman under her charge, Clara Brereton, as well as Mr Parkers three invalid siblings, who seem to be set up in an almost comic relief role. In the ensuing chapters, it becomes clear that Charlotte Heywood is our heroine. 

Like many of Austen’s heroines, Charlotte is in search of a husband. Not actively, and it is not her only preoccupation, but it is clear that the notion is on her mind during her interactions with men in the novel. The first is Sir Edward, nephew of Lady Denham. At first he seems to be equally interested in her, but it soon becomes clear that his attention to Charlotte is part of his effort to attract Clara Brereton. Unfortunately for him, Lady Denham hopes to see him married to an heiress, to secure himself an income. I do wonder if by the end of the novel, he’d have ended up engaged to Clara (though there’s no real indication that she’s equally interested in him), or an heiress, as his Aunt wishes. 

The novel as we have it ends with the introduction of another of Mr Parker’s brothers, Sidney Parker. It’s clear even from the page or so we have that Sidney will be the object of Charlotte’s affection, and presumably, had the novel been completed, they would have inevitably fallen in love. Austen’s novels aren’t ones of great twists and turns, but that’s not a problem to me. It’s just as enjoyable to watch the inevitable union of two characters who have spent an entire novel falling in love, whether or not they deny it.Overall, I would have loved to read a full-length Sanditon, but I’m happy with what we do have, and it ends at just the right point to imagine how it would have ended. Although, perhaps a conversation between Sidney and Charlotte would have set the tone for the conflict of their love story.