#willoughby

[hotjaneaustenmenpoll]

Quarter-Final Two

Propaganda...

Willougby (1995) :

95 Willoughby is testosterone on legs when he whisks Marianne into the cottage. Everyone is flummoxed by him and I love it. You feel Marianne’s pain and shock that this seemingly perfect man who was her soulmate is a cad. She questions her own judgment in everything wondering if any of it was real. Pretty perfect.

Look is the man a rake yes! But you can't be a rake if you're not hot and this is a hotness competition - out of all the men left in this tournament John Willougby is the man who knows the art of seduction. Look at how he takes off Marianne's shoe in this scene - think of how he would take off everything else. He runs through the rain - sweeps her off her feet and then asks to call - comes the next day with flowers and a pocket of SHakespeare sonnets - he may not be reliable but he is undoubtedly hot!

1995 Willoughby was so good that Emma Thompson married him

Captain Wentworth (1995):

Ciaran Hinds has that perfect ruggedness yet friendliness to his face that makes him the perfect charming Wentworth. And all of the longing that he manages to convey in his eyes is so hot.

Wentworth may be angry/resentful with Anne but in general he is charming and the best friend you could ever have. Ciaran gets the pleasant parts of his character and brings them out, while keeping a guarded coolness (protective camouflage) with Anne.

I dunno if this counts as propaganda or not, but Ciaran Hinds has a face that looks like it was jackhammered out of a shale cliff.

If a line like 'I am half agony...half hope' comes out of a face like that you know that man has a soul for poetry.

[roughridingrednecks]

Willoughby

[bethanydelleman]

Sense & Sensibility should be called, Men with Secret Pasts. Edward can't marry Elinor because he has long been engaged to Lucy, Colonel Brandon hasn't been around because he has a ward from his former love who has gone missing, and Willoughby left Marianne because he seduced and impregnated that very ward!

More than any other Jane Austen book, the past actions of men, specifically Edward and Willoughby, are getting in the way of the future happiness of women. There is nothing Elinor or Marianne could have done better, they were loving men that had already made mistakes.

Or maybe this should be called, Men Ruining the Lives of Women. John Dashwood doesn't help his sisters (sure, Fanny talked him into it but he held the purse), Willoughby has ruined one woman completely and devestated Marianne, Colonel Brandon's brother destroyed Eliza the 1st, Uncle Dashwood decided against giving the girls a proper inheritance, and Edward's foolish decision to propose to Lucy has hurt Elinor.

There is nothing that any of the Dashwoods could have done better. No, not even Marianne, in my humble opinion.

[tricoufamily]

tiny tweaks to them bc it's render horsie time. also bonus church look it's where they met. this is also willoughby's court outfit

[frenchcurious]

Duesenberg Model J Limousine by Willoughby 1930. - source Amazing Classic Cars.

[wil0]

you know i'd do anything for you

[thenaervassa]

process

[acmeoop]

Willoughby & Bugs Layout Drawing “The Heckling Hare” (1941)

[texaschainsawmascara]

Preacher’s Daughter

fancast

Ethel Cain - Dakota Fanning

Vera Cain - Chloë Sevigny

Joseph Cain - Neal McDonough

Grandma Ethel - Blythe Danner

Janie - Storm Reid

Willoughby Tucker - Mason Thames

Logan Phelps - Kyle Gallner

Isaiah Abram - Caleb Landry Jones

vote me wrong (or right) on my mycast if you please

[mxcottonsocks]

Just stumbled upon quite a fun series of videos on youtube. There are more for other Austen books, but here are the Sense and Sensibility ones:

Marianne Dashwood to John Willoughby:

John Willoughby to Marianne Dashwood:

Lucy Steele's letter to Edward Ferrars:

[hotjaneaustenmenpoll]

Propaganda...

Willoughby (1995):

Willoughby (2008):

[roughridingrednecks]

Willoghby

[bethanydelleman]

So many people judge Elinor Dashwood for accepting Willoughby's "apology" (it's really just a sob story where he throws every female in his life under the bus), but she doesn't really forgive him AND she is in a very delicate emotional state and dead tired when it happens. For a full defense, I've taken the quotes that show what Elinor is thinking during Chapter 44-46 of Sense & Sensibility. (This is really long)

He arrives right after Elinor is finally assured that Marianne is going to live, after some very trying moments where Mrs. Jennings was predicting that her sister would die. She is waiting for her mother to arrive, and then he walks in. Her emotional state is intense:

Never in her life had Elinor found it so difficult to be calm, as at that moment. The knowledge of what her mother must be feeling as the carriage stopt at the door—of her doubt—her dread—perhaps her despair!—and of what she had to tell!—with such knowledge it was impossible to be calm.

She is not happy to see him, she only barely agrees to hear him out, she is mostly pissed, "Miss Dashwood, at this point, turning her eyes on him with the most angry contempt" And this is Elinor! Who usually controls her expression of feelings.

Elinor remains pretty annoyed with him throughout:

“I have,” returned Elinor, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him, “I have heard it all. And how you will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I confess is beyond my comprehension.”

But as Willoughby goes on, Elinor wavers:

Elinor’s heart, which had undergone many changes in the course of this extraordinary conversation, was now softened again

“You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable,” said Elinor, while her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion

She does agree that his explanation at least makes him a slightly better person, but her language is hedged, a lot:

“Yes, you have certainly removed something—a little. You have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly know—the misery that you have inflicted—I hardly know what could have made it worse.”

And even when she is admitting this, she's going over in her head what could have made him such a terrible person:

Elinor made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain—Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment. The attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature.

Now we have the ending:

He held out his hand. She could not refuse to give him hers;—he pressed it with affection. “And you do think something better of me than you did?” said he, letting it fall, and leaning against the mantel-piece as if forgetting he was to go. Elinor assured him that she did;—that she forgave, pitied, wished him well—was even interested in his happiness—and added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it.

So she ends the conversation/whine fest with a lecture on how Willoughby could improve himself! This may be a great example of Christian forgiveness, but she certainly doesn't think he is a good person.

Now Elinor is alone and she reflects on how his charm overcomes her knowledge of his faults:

Willoughby, he, whom only half an hour ago she had abhorred as the most worthless of men, Willoughby, in spite of all his faults, excited a degree of commiseration for the sufferings produced by them, which made her think of him as now separated for ever from her family, with a tenderness, a regret, rather in proportion, as she soon acknowledged within herself—to his wishes than to his merits. She felt that his influence over her mind was heightened by circumstances which ought not in reason to have weight; by that person of uncommon attraction, that open, affectionate, and lively manner which it was no merit to possess; and by that still ardent love for Marianne, which it was not even innocent to indulge. But she felt that it was so, long, long before she could feel his influence less.

and slightly later:

But the rest, which one night entirely sleepless, and many hours of the most wearing anxiety seemed to make requisite, was kept off by irritation of spirits. Willoughby, “poor Willoughby,” as she now allowed herself to call him, was constantly in her thoughts; she would not but have heard his vindication for the world, and now blamed, now acquitted herself for having judged him so harshly before. But her promise of relating it to her sister was invariably painful. She dreaded the performance of it, dreaded what its effect on Marianne might be; doubted whether after such an explanation she could ever be happy with another; and for a moment wished Willoughby a widower. Then, remembering Colonel Brandon, reproved herself, felt that to his sufferings and his constancy far more than to his rival’s, the reward of her sister was due, and wished any thing rather than Mrs. Willoughby’s death.

I think wishing Willoughby a widower is the most damning line here, but the sentence prior make it clear that it is for Marianne's sake, not Willoughby's, that Elinor wishes he was free to marry. And she repents almost immediately. Also, and importantly, Elinor is still not sleeping! So she is still running on anxiety and no sleep when she wishes Mrs. Willoughby dead.

Later, when she does tell Marianne about the encounter a few weeks later, we can see her opinion of Willoughby has definitely soured:

“The whole of his behaviour,” replied Elinor, “from the beginning to the end of the affair, has been grounded on selfishness. It was selfishness which first made him sport with your affections; which afterwards, when his own were engaged, made him delay the confession of it, and which finally carried him from Barton. His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle.”

To summarize: Elinor was tired and emotional when Willoughby arrived and under the influence of his charm, she did begin to think better of him. She did forgive him, but while still dwelling on his faults. When she has time for rest and reflection, and without him present, she thinks more clearly and knows that everything Willoughby did was selfish.

[tricoufamily]

"that nice young preacher, brother taylor, dropped by today said he'd be pleased to have dinner on sunday—oh, by the way he said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on choctaw ridge and she and billie joe was throwing somethin' off the tallahatchie bridge"

[kichimiangra]

She's outside at the window again... she wants you to let her in...

[wenzelsworld]

I have a sister now. 🙄 #functionalonlychild