Melissa-Kelly Franklin – Bitch Flicks

‘Sense and Sensibility’: Sister Saviors in Ang Lee’s Adaptation

On first glance, it may well appear that the film follows the usual trappings of the romance genre, in which the young women eventually marry the men that they love, who fortuitously possess more than ample funds to elevate them and their families from poverty, thereby “saving” them. …If we delve a little deeper into Lee’s adaptation it becomes clear that the sisters are not saved by the men they marry, but rather by each other, and multiple times throughout the story.

This guest post written by Melissa-Kelly Franklin appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. | Spoilers ahead.

Much is made of the erotic undertones of recent adaptations of Jane Austen’s work, particularly the wildly popular BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice directed by Andrew Davies, and so it is easy for one of Austen’s most prevailing and insightful themes to be forgotten. Austen is deeply interested in the relationship between sisters and the almost mystical intimacy that stems from it. For Austen’s women characters, this sibling connection is vital in being able to cope with all the trials that family life, social circumstances, and a patriarchal world casts in their direction.

Amidst the clamor of swooning over Mr Darcy’s wet-shirt and Pride and Prejudice’s subsequent pop-cultural appropriations, the importance of the friendship between the eldest two Bennet sisters can sometimes be overshadowed. Indeed, the sensation around the “sexing up” of the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice somewhat sidelines the memory of another superb adaptation of the Austen canon, released in the same year: Sense and Sensibility. Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning adaptation of Austen’s novel, beautifully directed by Ang Lee in his English-language debut, focuses on the relationship between sisters Elinor and Marianne, not only to highlight their divergent personalities and thus the “sense” and “sensibility” of the title, but how necessary the sisters are to each other’s survival.

The family of wealthy Dashwood women find their fortunes irrevocably altered on the death of their father, whose home and fortune legally passes to his eldest son from a previous marriage and his selfish, insensitive wife. The four women are left without a home and a mere £500 a year to live on (to put this into perspective, this translates to roughly £16, 980 in today’s currency — $22, 580 in U.S. dollars — according to the National Archives’ currency converter). By the end of the story, the two eldest sisters are happily married: Elinor (Emma Thompson) to a comfortably-off, kind-hearted gentleman turned vicar, and Marianne (Kate Winslet) to an exceptionally wealthy and honorable colonel.

Some may argue that this preoccupation with handsome, eligible men makes it “fluffy” or even unfeminist. On this point, I agree with Samantha Ellis, who recently discussed the application of the Bechdel Test and why it “doesn’t always work.” She believes it is a useful tool in holding us accountable to creating complex female characters, but it should not be the only way in which we measure gender equity in film — indeed this was never its intended purpose. Ellis asserts that “sometimes women’s conversations about men are feminist”; Sense and Sensibility certainly falls under this umbrella. In the film, women’s survival is inextricably bound to marriage, when legal traditions like primogeniture prevented them from inheriting financial independence, and social propriety prevented them from earning money professionally, as Elinor so eloquently expresses to Edward (Hugh Grant):

“You talk of feeling idle and useless; imagine how that is compounded when one has no hope and no choice of any occupation whatsoever… At least you will inherit your fortune, we cannot even earn ours.”

On first glance, it may well appear that the film follows the usual trappings of the romance genre, in which the young women eventually marry the men that they love, who fortuitously possess more than ample funds to elevate them and their families from poverty, thereby “saving” them. I would argue however, that if we delve a little deeper into Lee’s adaptation it becomes clear that the sisters are not saved by the men they marry, but rather by each other, and multiple times throughout the story.

When considering which sister is the “savior” of the Dashwood family, Elinor immediately springs to mind. The opening scenes in the film reveal Elinor to be a self-contained, capable young woman, holding together a family falling apart at the seams as she navigates the grief of her mother and sisters. While the others are stricken at the loss of their father, Elinor is already pulling herself together and thinking pragmatically about their physical survival, comforting her mother and even initiating her youngest sister Margaret (Emelie Françoise) into the realities of their situation.

The importance of Elinor’s capability in this situation cannot be overstated: she is the only one of the women who fully grasps the finer details of their financial situation. In a private meeting between Marianne, Elinor, and their mother as they search for a new home, the widowed Mrs. Dashwood (Gemma Jones) suggests a small manor house, which is certainly a down-size from their expansive home Norland Park, but Elinor has to remind her that it is well outside what they can afford on their small stipend. Even after they move to the tiny Barton Cottage which is to become their home, Elinor monitors the housekeeping expenses with even greater vigilance, even cutting “beef as well as sugar” from their already meager diets. Without Elinor’s practicality, the Dashwood women may well have found themselves in even more dire circumstances.

As much as Marianne relies on her eldest sister’s good sense to ensure her immediate survival, Marianne’s spirited nature provides Elinor some respite from the gravity of the path that lays before them. Where Elinor would politely hold her tongue at their sister-in-law’s money-grubbing behavior, Marianne refuses to surrender her family home without highlighting the injustice at every opportunity. Marianne is appalled at Fanny’s request for the key to the silver cabinet for example, and rather than keeping her candid remarks between herself and Elinor, she pointedly throws the question across the breakfast table the next day: “How was the silver? Was it all genuine?” Elinor sweeps in to change the subject to something more appropriate, but one cannot help but wonder if she sometimes wished she had Marianne’s free-spirited belief in not “hiding her emotions.” Further to this point, Marianne is an important confidante for Elinor: teasing, probing and encouraging her to open up about her feelings for Edward. The confidences the sisters share when alone become an imperative cathartic release from the social restraints of the day, particularly for the propriety conscious and emotionally reserved Elinor.

The sister’s relationship, like that of any sisters, is fraught at times: their divergent attitudes towards social propriety and emotional openness sometimes puts distance between them. Marianne laments to her mother that at times she does “not understand” her sister, while Elinor privately confides to Colonel Brandon (played with the perfect combination of sensitivity, warmth and tortured sadness by the late Alan Rickman) that “the sooner [Marianne] becomes acquainted with the ways of the world, the better.” Despite her wariness of the way in which Marianne’s free behavior can “expose [her] to some very impertinent remarks,” Elinor remains unwaveringly loyal to her sister. When Marianne espies her faithless lover Willoughby (Greg Wise) across a ballroom in London, it is Elinor who is by her side, sharing in the indignity of being socially snubbed by him and his wealthy new fiancée, and it is Elinor who catches her sister when she faints (unlike that other version in which Brandon, in a cheesy “hero” shot, catches Marianne while glowering in Willoughby’s direction). In Thompson’s adapted screenplay, Elinor is there for Marianne through every indignity and public embarrassment, without agenda and in spite of her private thoughts on her sister’s past behavior.

Marianne similarly supports her sister in potentially uncomfortable social situations. Despite her public humiliation and unequivocal rejection from Willoughby by letter, Marianne leaves the sanctuary of her room and puts aside her grief to greet Edward — the man she knows Elinor is deeply in love with — when he finally visits them. Marianne’s warmth and friendliness towards him is to both make him feel at ease in their family circle, and show her support for her sister’s choice, whatever her humorous misgivings about his passionless reading and reserved nature she expresses earlier in the film. She selflessly dismisses his questions about her own health and redirects the attention to her sister, insisting “do not think of me, Elinor is well you see? That must be enough for both of us.” Little does she know that Edward is secretly engaged to the other woman in the room, Lucy Steele (Imogen Stubbs), an uncomfortable fact that only she is unaware of. At times, Marianne resents the secret she senses that lurks between her and Elinor and accuses her of hypocrisy when probed for the details of her intimacy with Willoughby: “That is a reproach from you, you who confide in no one.” Elinor replies that she has nothing to tell, but the audience knows she would share the secret if only Lucy had not elicited her vow of silence. Marianne retorts: “Nor I, we neither of us have anything to tell. I because I conceal nothing, and you because you communicate nothing.” However, when the truth comes out, Marianne rallies to her sister’s side, insisting that she for once put her own desires above those of others.

It is not until we see Elinor open up to Marianne as she lays unconscious, begging her to live, that we fully understand that not only does Marianne’s survival depend on Elinor’s practicality and pragmatism, but Elinor’s survival equally depends upon Marianne. In the dead of night, after a day of nursing her sister and the doctor’s warning for Elinor to prepare herself for the worst, Elinor begs her sister to find the willpower to fight for her life. Emma Thompson’s performance in this moment is utterly wrenching; she runs her hand along Marianne’s leg, as if to memorize the details of her beloved sister’s body before gripping her hand. She barely contains the wall of emotion threatening to overwhelm her: “Marianne, try. Please, try. I cannot do without you. I try to bear everything else. Please, dearest. Do not leave me alone.”

The first conscious words Marianne utters after her life-threatening ordeal are, “Where’s Elinor?” which further emphasizes the symbiosis of their lives. Despite their differences and the tensions they create between them, the two sisters could not survive without the succor they provide each other by simply existing, let alone the many moments of tangible support they afford one another when life in many ways, has been unrelentingly hard on them both.

Too often, Jane Austen’s work and its various screen adaptations is dismissed as trivial or thematically narrow; a period “chick flick” chiefly concerned with the pursuit of a husband to save the protagonist and her family from poverty as a result of the evils of primogeniture. It is worth remembering however, that Austen herself was a pioneer in her day as one of the first women to earn a living by her writing. Equally unconventional was her active choice to remain unmarried, after causing quite the local scandal when she accepted and then rejected the proposal of a wealthy neighbor within a twenty-four hour period. She instead chose to live with her beloved sister Cassandra for the rest of her life. Such was the closeness of their relationship, that their mother is reported to have said, “If Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.”

Austen’s own experiences of sisterhood make her renderings of sisterly relationships nuanced and detailed. Her works explore the complexity and intimacy of that connection — which may make the relationship fraught at times, but no less vital. Emma Thompson’s screenplay of Sense and Sensibility depicts this beautifully, revealing through Ang Lee’s insightful direction, that the story is much more about sisterhood than it is about romance or finding the right man.

Melissa-Kelly Franklin is an Australian-born, London-based writer and director of independent short films, with an honors degree in English Literature and History. Her feminist period short film Portrait is soon to premiere at international festivals, and she has two other film projects cooking in pre-production. Updates about her work can be found at melissakellyfranklin.wix.com/writer-director/ and she occasionally tweets @MelissaKelly_F.

Feminist Fangs: The Activist Symbolism of Violent Vampire Women

The acts of violence by the female protagonists are terrifying, swift, and socially subversive. They target misogynistic representatives of the patriarchal society that oppresses and silences women, taking them out one by one.

This guest post by Melissa-Kelly Franklin appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

The apocryphal notion that women are intrinsically sensitive, gentle and maternal is an old one, so we rarely see aggressive women in film and television unless they’re either trying to protect themselves or are seriously unhinged. Sara Century writes that female characters are “so often victims, but even when they’re violent criminals, that violence is either quickly punished, or it’s normalised and reduced by audiences and creators alike.” It would seem that even the notion that women could stray so far from their natures as to be capable of serious violence is utterly inconceivable outside the context of self-preservation, or the protection of children. Well-trodden is the trope that a woman would do absolutely anything to protect her child; so violent acts by women can be easily explained away with the justification that their maternal instincts are kicking in, thereby restoring women to their place in the “natural order.” Similarly, rape-revenge is often used as a catalyst for driving women to violence, using rape as a means of pushing a character to her extreme, thereby asserting that only horrific trauma can compel a woman to act outside of socially constructed notions of gender. Neither of these reasons are shallow or unjustified – and I’d much rather see a female character take control, retaliate and fight back, than see her as a passive victim. However, what these more commonplace depictions of violent women do, is silence other motivations which might see women as actively engaging in calculated acts of violence for personal and political reasons.

Portrayals of calculated violence by women are few and far between. Sure, there is the recently released Suffragette, which portrays the militant action of the London-based suffragette movement, but as others have highlighted, it’s taken a good 100 years for that to see the light of day; and other celebrated examples of female violence in films like Alien and Terminator see women forced into violence to protect themselves and their families. (Megan Kearns wrote an interesting piece for Bitch Flicks about Sarah Connor’s identity being inextricably tied to motherhood and her baby-making potential.) So whether she’s saving her biological children, or her wider human “family,” these violent women subliminally remind us that women’s role in society is as nurturer, protector and mother.

Two films that throw the proverbial spanner in the patriarchal works are the feminist vampire films Byzantium by Neil Jordan, and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amirpour. The acts of violence by the female protagonists are terrifying, swift, and socially subversive. They target misogynistic representatives of the patriarchal society that oppresses and silences women, taking them out one by one. Both films reflect the social anxieties surrounding such subversive women – the notion that violent women violate the very laws of nature – making these idealised givers of life quite literally, harbingers of death. The subversion of traditional gender constructs within these films depict women actively working outside social norms, effectively using violent women within the vampire genre as a symbol of feminist activism.

In Byzantium, Clara (Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) are a vampire mother and daughter duo living rough and on the run from a vampire brotherhood – all because Clara had the gall to disobey their sexist code forbidding women from creating more of their kind. As Katherine Murray discerningly points out, this is a rare vampire film where the vampire-protagonists are not rolling in cash or occupying vast estates, suggesting that we can easily attribute this to “the lack of opportunity they’ve had as women.” For over a century Clara and Eleanor have been relentlessly pursued by the brotherhood with the intention of killing the “aberration” that is Eleanor, thus restoring the status quo within their previously exclusive invitation-only boys club. Jordan introduces us to Clara and Eleanor’s desperate situation in a high-octane chase at the start of the film, which culminates in Clara’s capture. Believing he is close to finally achieving their aim, one of Clara’s assailants tells her, “I feel a great peace. As if order is about to be restored.” From the outset the film establishes an Us vs Them dichotomy, emphasising how everyone who chooses to function outside of patriarchal gender constructs is inevitably punished. Clara’s response? She shuts him up by taking off his head.

It appears throughout the film that Clara’s prevailing motivation is to protect the life of her daughter, making her one of the “violent mother” character types, but her acts of violence clearly go beyond protecting her daughter. Clara and Eleanor are targeted because they dared to violate the sacred code of the vampire brotherhood (a not even thinly veiled allusion to patriarchy) and the balance of power must be restored. The brotherhood is not actively seeking Clara’s death, rather they want to destroy the product of her disobedience – the reminder that Clara is the loose cannon that refuses to conform to their arbitrary gender rules. In their world, women are even denied the intrinsically feminine power to reproduce, as “women aren’t permitted to create.” While it is resoundingly clear that Clara would go to any lengths to protect her daughter, she is also driven by the desire for freedom so they can live unfettered by social rules which say they cannot do, say or share the same privileges that men enjoy. Clara’s deeply felt respect for individuality, freedom and personhood is made poignantly clear at the end of the film, when she acknowledges that Eleanor should make her own way in the world and discover her identity apart from being a daughter.

The boys gather to chat about whether Clara (Gemma Arterton) should be allowed to join their vampire club

Clara’s targeted attacks against patriarchy aren’t limited to members of the vampire brotherhood. The exploitation and persecution of women is also seen in the human world of the film. Desperate and struggling women are seen throughout the first half of the film, from the lone, drugged girl that Eleanor discovers barely conscious on a park bench, to the sex-worker being taunted by promises of a cigarette by the pimp in the amusement park. Clara sees an opportunity to gather together these women and free them from the power of the odious pimp, by first seducing him, then killing him. Clara’s rescue of the girls may well be self-motivated, but by taking them out of the hands of the pimp and into her matriarchy at the Byzantium hotel, she provides them with a safer, cleaner and fairer environment in which to work. And in case we didn’t get that this act of violence was done for a good cause, she croons to his corpse, “the world will be a better place without you.”

While we might laud Clara’s vigilantism, we feel conflicted in our admiration for her badass defiance of convention in the high-tension scene where she kills Eleanor’s teacher. We struggle more with this kill than previous ones, as the teacher is well-intentioned, inspires his students and is genuinely concerned for Eleanor’s welfare. It’s clear that Clara undertakes this execution to keep their secret and preserve their liberty, but the way she relishes her torturous performance leading up to the kill is chilling. We get a brief insight into why Clara isn’t about to take any risks on letting this man live. She tells him that once “I made a fatal error. I was merciful.” That mercy lead to the rape of her daughter, and her punishment for saving her is to be pursued for over a century by a brotherhood that seeks their destruction. While the murder is not justifiable, it’s understandable that Clara would have some serious issues trusting educated white men in positions of authority, and would not give pause to eliminating the threat. This scene reveals the desperation and degradation of the individual – and the wider repercussions – when denied all agency and personhood.

On the hunt: Clara’s first kill as a newborn vampire

Female agency – or lack thereof – is a similarly prevalent theme in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Like Clara and Eleanor of Byzantium, the women in Amirpour’s film are searching for a way to free themselves from patriarchal oppression. Sex-worker Atti (Mozhan Marno) saves every cent and dreams of escaping Bad City to explore the places marked out on the huge map on her wall, and even the more privileged daughter of a wealthy family feels the need to conform to conventional beauty standards by having a nose-job. Only the Girl (i.e. the vampire protagonist played by Sheila Vand) moves freely about the city, addressing oppression with her own form of violent justice. The title of the film effectively draws on the inherent vulnerability ascribed to a lone woman at night in order to subvert our expectations of the narrative. In this film, the girl walking home alone is not the potential victim, but rather, the predator. In a nail-biting, but darkly comic illustration of this idea, the Girl meets a sweet, good-looking young man named Arash (Arash Marandi), drugged up from a party and dressed as Dracula. In his stupor he assures her that he wont hurt her, and in delicious moment of dramatic irony, we know that the Girl may well hurt him. Fortunately for Arash, something about his lost-kitten like vulnerability touches her, and a romantic connection between them develops.

Will she or won’t she? The Girl takes Arash home after finding him lost and alone one night

The Girl’s acts of violence are never gratuitous. Her first kill of the film is the pimp, Saeed, whom she witnesses taunt Atti and refuse to pay her, forcing her perform oral sex as an inducement. The Girl observes from a distance with eerie, omnipotent stillness. When Saeed later takes the Girl home and attempts to get physical with her (his seductive dance moves are met with a subtle eye-roll from the Girl which is just priceless), she attacks him, drinks him dry and steals his valuables to give to Atti later. As Ren Jender suggests, this vampire is a vigilante who stalks the streets of Bad City satiating her hunger only on exploitative men who mistreat desperate women.

Later in the film we see Arash’s drug-riddled father visit Atti. He watches her dance sensually, then insists that they share some drugs. When she refuses adamantly, making it clear she doesn’t want any of Hossein’s kind of “good time,” he decides to enforce the ‘fun’. In a moment looking disturbingly like a potential rape, he whips off his belt, binds Atti’s hands and violates her by forcibly injecting the drugs. While stalking the streets nearby, the Girl’s hypersensitive instincts alert her to Atti’s situation, and she swoops in like an avenging angel to show Hossein once and for all that no means no.

There is one terrifyingly menacing scene when the Girl probes a little boy with questions, asking if he is good. “Don’t lie” she hisses, terrorising him with the threat of taking out his eyes if he’s ever bad. It’s an easy conclusion to draw that by ‘good’ she means not growing up to become like the exploitative men of Bad City. The threatened eye-gouging punishment is a clear symbol of her preventing him from ever seeing, and thereby objectifying women. While there is no physical violence in this moment, the mere threat of it is enough to achieve her aim. The Girl is the stuff of misogynists’ nightmares.

“I’ll be watching,” the Girl warns the Street Urchin, and she always is

Both Byzantium and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night suggest that action against sexism and misogyny should be targeted and dramatic. Society has always deemed violent women as creatures to be feared, as by eschewing established gender structures they are unpredictable and uncontrollable, violating the supposedly natural laws that define their femininity. That’s not to say these films encourage bloody, criminal violence, rather they advocate the rejection of restrictive social constructs of femininity in redressing gender imbalance, using violent women characters as a potent symbol of feminist activism.

Melissa–Kelly Franklin is an international filmmaker, writer and actress collaborating in London, Bristol and Berlin. She holds an honours degree in English Literature and History, with one film soon to be released and another cooking in pre-production. Updates about her work can be found at melissa-kellyfranklin.tumblr.com and she occasionally tweets at @MelissaKelly_F.