Comparing Jane Austen and Frank Capra

Film Friday

Teaching Sense and Sensibility in my Jane Austen First Year Seminar is giving me the chance to once again relish the magnificent way that the author dispenses poetic justice. This time through, I found that the ending of the novel reminds me of the ending of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Since the ironic Austen and the sentimental Capra (“Capra-corn”) aren’t generally paired together, this requires some explanation.

From one point of view, justice does not seem to have been served in Sense and Sensibility‘s conclusion. Edward, the worthy oldest son, has lost his inheritance to his foppish and thoroughly undeserving younger brother Robert. The mercenary Lucy Steele, meanwhile, has climbed far beyond her station. Unlike Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey, her marriage gamble pays off—she drops a secure engagement with Edward to reel in the new heir.  (Isabella, by contrast, ends up nobody.)

John and Fanny Dashwood appear to escape without any penalty for having backtracked on John’s promise to his dying father to support his half-sisters.  (Instead, they give them absolutely nothing and don’t even invite them to stay with them when Elinor and Marianne are in London.)  The tyrannical Mrs. Ferrars, meanwhile, is never punished for having taken every  opportunity to affront Austen’s heroine, the admirable Elinor Dashwood.  Nor does she appear to pay for having disinherited Edward.

And then there is Willoughby. What does he get for playing with the affections of Marianne and then dropping her in such a cold manner that she almost dies from the shock? A very wealthy wife.

If we look closely at Austen’s prose, however, we see that the villains don’t get off scot-free. In fact, they spend the rest of their days in a living hell. Here is life in the Ferrars household:

Lucy became as necessary to Mrs. Ferrars, as either Robert or Fanny; and while Edward was never cordially forgiven for having once intended to marry her, and Elinor, though superior to her in fortune and birth, was spoken of as an intruder, she was in everything considered, and always openly acknowledged, to be a favorite child. They settled in town, received very liberal assistance from Mrs. Ferrars, were on the best terms imaginable with the Dashwoods, and setting aside the jealousies and ill-will continually subsisting between Fanny and Lucy, in which their husbands of course took a part, as well as the frequent domestic disagreements between Robert and Lucy themselves, nothing could exceed the harmony in which they all lived together.

Don’t be fooled by  “on the best terms imaginable.” That is undoubtedly a cliché that they use to describe their relationship to the rest of the world. The key phrase is “setting aside,” a brilliant use of understatement. Basically, they are living a life where Fanny and John are in constant battle with Lucy and Robert, where Lucy and Robert are constantly at each other’s throats, and where all must continually suck up to Mrs. Ferrars.

In contrast to this, Edward and Elinor get to escape this hellhole, and he gets to pursue the one career that interests him, which is the church. They also get to live close to three worthy people: Marianne, Mrs. Dashwood, and Colonel Brandon.

Willoughby, meanwhile, must live his life in perpetual regret. First, he learns that he probably could have married the open-hearted Marianne instead of a shrew. How do we know that his wife is a shrew? Because we are told that she “was not always out of humor, nor his home always uncomfortable.” Read carefully and you will see that she all but drives him out of the house.  Although Austen seems for a moment to suggest that Willoughby escapes an unsatisfactory life, she then plunges him back into one with her subtle last sentence:

Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang; and his punishment was soon afterwards complete in the voluntary forgiveness of Mrs. Smith, who, by stating his marriage with a woman of character, as the source of her clemency, gave him reason for believing, that had be behaved with honor towards Marianne, he might at once have been happy and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought it own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted; nor that he long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret. But that he was for ever inconsolable — that he fled from society, or contracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a broken heart, must not be depended on — for he did neither. He lived to exert, and frequently to enjoy himself. His wife was not always out of humour, nor his home always uncomfortable! and in his breed of horses and dogs, and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of domestic felicity.

By contrast, if Willoughby had married Marrianne, the two could have spent long evenings together before the fire reading the poetry of William Cowper together.

It’s a Wonderful Life. Capra’s most beloved film, seems to depart from the Hollywood formula (dictated by the Hayes Code) of rewarding every virtue and punishing every vice. Seemingly without consequence, Mr. Potter steals $8000 from the Bailey Savings and Loan (thanks to George’s inept uncle).  True, he suffers one disappointment: he doesn’t get to see the bank go under.  But he gets the cash.

George’s compensation for losing the money is that he learns how much the community appreciates him as everyone chips in to make up what he has lost. But wouldn’t it be even more satisfying to see Mr. Potter got nailed?

Actually not. Potter hasn’t gotten away with anything, achieving instead perpetual loneliness. The unfamiliar sight (for golden age Hollywood) of seeing someone get away with a crime forces us, the audience, to ask questions of Potter. The film, like the book, prompts us to see where true values lies.  And it does so with Austenian subtlety.

Capra’s uncharacteristic ending may be tied to the fact that he and Jimmy Stewart were World War II veterans returning home. At some level they had to know that life was unfair and that they could never be adequately compensated for what they had seen and suffered. They also understood what was most important in life: the love and support of family and friends. Money can’t get anywhere close.  Why spell it out?