In one of the last glimpses Jane Austen gives us of the world of Sanditon, her final, unfinished novel, Charlotte Heywood has just met Sidney Parker, a young man of “about seven or eight and twenty, very good-looking, with a decided air of ease and fashion and a lively countenance”.
Andrew Davies’ TV adaptation of Sanditon, which aired on Sunday, ended with Charlotte and Sidney bidding each other a tearful farewell – in love, but not together. Viewers were teased with the hope of a last-minute reconciliation, as Sidney stopped Charlotte’s carriage. Would he throw honour to the wind and choose Charlotte over Eliza? But the expected happy ever after didn’t materialise. Reader: he didn’t marry her.
The ending has enraged and upset viewers, but most of all, I think, surprised them. This is Austen, and we know what we’re entitled to: there’s even a book about it, for goodness’ sake – The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After. Would Pride and Prejudice have been truer to life, more emotionally satisfying, if Elizabeth had accepted Mr Collins’ proposal? No: not least because it would have denied us lines such as: “Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to plague you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart.” Should Marianne have ended up with Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility? No: not least because then we would not have had the glory of Alan Rickman playing Colonel Brandon.
Oxford academic and Austen expert Kathryn Sutherland, who edited an edition of Sanditon, speculates that an ending declared “an absolute letdown” by some fans was perhaps an attempt to reach for the fragmented style of Austen’s unfinished novel.
“My hunch is that after such a disappointing pastiche composition of bits of ‘everything Austen’ that characterised the series they were maybe trying to capture something of the fragment style of the unfinished original,” says Sutherland. “Much is left up in the air and unresolved: will Sidney’s mercenary marriage save Sanditon and the Parkers from bankruptcy? Miss Lambe’s story is totally unresolved. And what of Sir Edward Denham and Lady D’s fortune?”
There’s also a strong sense that ITV is trying to set us up for more. Davies said, ahead of the show’s launch, that he would love to write a second series: “I hope we’ve ended at a point where the audience is going to say: well you can’t end it at that!” The programme makers were also tweeting with an eye to the future on Sunday: “Sidney had to sacrifice his happiness with Charlotte. Divided for now, whatever the future holds for them, their love will endure.” I am expecting a deus ex machina that takes Eliza out of the picture.
And as for what the lady herself might have thought? “I imagine she’d have switched to Peaky Blinders on BBC after episode one,” says Sutherland.
