keladry_lupin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
keladry_lupin) wrote2007-02-15 10:36 am
keladry_lupin) wrote2007-02-15 10:36 am
Entry tags:
Fascinating
I've mentioned many times that I listen to the feature commentaries on a lot of the DVDs I watch. It's a fascinating thing, because you get to hear about little things that the film makers put in; the little things that you don't notice when you're watching the film, but each one contributes to the whole. As a writer, I find them invaluable; my lovely readers notice some of these details that I put in (when I remember to), but these details do get absorbed and make the story, as a whole, more palatable.
So. As we watch Sense and Sensibility, we see that Elinor Dashwood decides that the family must go without certain staples because of money concerns: first sugar, then beef. James Schamus and Ang Lee mention this, and say that they added beef to the list of foods the Dashwood women went without, because they might already have been participating in a consumer boycott that was going on in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England. It was the sensibility of householders -- women -- that boycotted Caribbean sugar, as a part of the abolitionist moviement: the use of slaves on the plantations.
The dialogue of the film only talks about how they must economize, and makes no mention of any politics. Other Jane Austen stories aside, the novel Sense and Sensibility doesn't mention a boycott or the political climate (outside world) at all, either. I've embarked on writing a Sense and Sensibility AU story; would it be too jarring to mention, even in passing, this sugar boycott that I think Elinor and her mother and sisters would have supported? The plight of slaves wouldn't matter to Fanny Dashwood or Lady Middleton, when compared to the comfort of themselves and their families, of course, but what about the Dashwoods and the other women in the story? Mrs Jennings, for example, Lucy Steele Ferrars, or Charlotte Palmer? What about the men? Sir John, Colonel Brandon, or Edward Ferrars?
I Googled this boycott and came up with a few references, and they all mention Caribbean sugar. And now I want to find out if there were any other sources of sugar, and what were the alternatives for sweeteners at that time. I don't want to get too political in this story, because Jane Austen's focus was on the characters and their little world: their trials, their neighbors, and how they dealt with it all. I'm not sure that even the smallest mention of this boycott would work, because I'd have to assume that my readers didn't know about it, which means I'd have to explain ... that would just be holding up the story.
Bummer.
So. As we watch Sense and Sensibility, we see that Elinor Dashwood decides that the family must go without certain staples because of money concerns: first sugar, then beef. James Schamus and Ang Lee mention this, and say that they added beef to the list of foods the Dashwood women went without, because they might already have been participating in a consumer boycott that was going on in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England. It was the sensibility of householders -- women -- that boycotted Caribbean sugar, as a part of the abolitionist moviement: the use of slaves on the plantations.
The dialogue of the film only talks about how they must economize, and makes no mention of any politics. Other Jane Austen stories aside, the novel Sense and Sensibility doesn't mention a boycott or the political climate (outside world) at all, either. I've embarked on writing a Sense and Sensibility AU story; would it be too jarring to mention, even in passing, this sugar boycott that I think Elinor and her mother and sisters would have supported? The plight of slaves wouldn't matter to Fanny Dashwood or Lady Middleton, when compared to the comfort of themselves and their families, of course, but what about the Dashwoods and the other women in the story? Mrs Jennings, for example, Lucy Steele Ferrars, or Charlotte Palmer? What about the men? Sir John, Colonel Brandon, or Edward Ferrars?
I Googled this boycott and came up with a few references, and they all mention Caribbean sugar. And now I want to find out if there were any other sources of sugar, and what were the alternatives for sweeteners at that time. I don't want to get too political in this story, because Jane Austen's focus was on the characters and their little world: their trials, their neighbors, and how they dealt with it all. I'm not sure that even the smallest mention of this boycott would work, because I'd have to assume that my readers didn't know about it, which means I'd have to explain ... that would just be holding up the story.
Bummer.