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Sense and Sensibility (film)
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=== Class === Thompson viewed the novel as a story of "love and money," noting that some people needed one more than the other.{{sfn|Thompson|1995|p=255}} During the writing process, executive producer [[Sydney Pollack]] stressed that the film be understandable to modern audiences, and that it be made clear why the Dashwood sisters could not just obtain a job.{{sfn|Stempel|2000|p=249}} "I'm from [[Indiana]]; if I get it, everyone gets it," he said.{{sfn|Thompson|1995|p=265}} Thompson believed that Austen was just as comprehensible in a different century, "You don't think people are still concerned with marriage, money, romance, finding a partner?"<ref name=dailybeastlunch /><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-25029680.html |title=Hollywood reeling over Jane Austen's novels |first=Jack |last=Kroll |work=[[Los Angeles Daily News]] |date=13 December 1995 |access-date=27 August 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921054108/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-25029680.html |archive-date=21 September 2013 }}</ref> She was keen to emphasise the realism of the Dashwoods' predicament in her screenplay,<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-12-10-ca-12297-story.html |title=Emma Thompson, sensibly: The levelheaded actress turns screenwriter with her adaptation of Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility.' |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=10 December 1995 |first=Jon |last=Stuart |access-date=26 April 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921053740/http://articles.latimes.com/1995-12-10/entertainment/ca-12297_1_emma-thompson |archive-date=21 September 2013 }}</ref> and inserted scenes to make the differences in wealth more apparent to modern audiences. Thompson made the Dashwood family richer than in the book and added elements to help contrast their early wealth with their later financial predicament; for instance, because it might have been confusing to viewers that one could be poor and still have servants, Elinor is made to address a large group of servants at Norland Park early in the film for viewers to remember when they see their few staff at Barton Cottage.{{sfn|Thompson|Doran|1995|loc=5:40β6:25}} Lee also sought to emphasise social class and the limitations it placed on the protagonists.{{sfn|Kohler-Ryan|Palmer|2013|p=41}} Lee conveys this in part when Willoughby publicly rejects Marianne; he returns to a more lavishly furnished room, a symbol of the wealth she has lost.{{sfn|Scholz|2013|p=133}}{{sfn|McRae|2013|p=35}} "Family dramas," he stated, "are all about conflict, about family obligations versus free will."{{sfn|McRae|2013|p=36}} The film's theme of class has attracted much scholarly attention. Carole Dole noted that class constitutes an important element in Austen's stories and is "impossible" to avoid when adapting her novels. According to Dole, Lee's film contains an "ambiguous treatment of class values" that stresses social differences but "underplays the consequences of the class distinctions so important in the novel";{{sfn|Dole|2001|pp=59β63}} for instance, Edward's story ends upon his proposal to Elinor, with no attention paid to how they will live on his small annual income from the [[vicarage]].{{sfn|Dole|2001|p=63}} Louise Flavin believed that Lee used the houses to represent their occupants' class and character: the Dashwood sisters' decline in eligibility is represented through the contrast between the spacious rooms of Norland Park and those of the isolated, cramped Barton Cottage.{{sfn|Flavin|2004|p=49}} James Thompson criticised what he described as the anaesthetised "mΓ©lange of disconnected picture postcard-gift-calendar-perfect scenes," in which little connection is made between "individual subjects and the land that supports them."{{sfn|Thompson|2003|pp=24β5}} Andrew Higson argued that while ''Sense and Sensibility'' includes commentary on sex and gender, it fails to pursue issues of class. Thompson's script, he wrote, displays a "sense of impoverishment [but is] confined to the still privileged lifestyle of the disinherited Dashwoods. The broader class system is pretty much taken for granted."{{sfn|Higson|2011|p=150}} The ending visual image of flying gold coins, depicted during Marianne's wedding, has also drawn attention; Marsha McCreadie noted that it serves as a "visual wrap-up and emblem of the merger between money and marriage."{{sfn|McCreadie|2006|p=75}}
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