Sanditon is one of Jane Austen’s two unfinished novels – the other being The Watsons – and it’s somewhat better known as a result of the Masterpiece series (which I have yet to watch – should I?). Unlike The Watsons, which Austen set aside for unknown reasons, Sanditon was interrupted by the author’s untimely death (sob). Various authors (and now television showrunners) have tried to guess where Austen may have been headed with the characters – she only got twelve chapters in, so it’s hard to say – but I chose not to read past the point at which Austen laid down her pen.
So, how far does that get a reader, exactly? Far enough to get a flavor for the characters and the setting – the fictional seaside town of Sanditon. The book opens with an accident on the road. Mr. and Mrs. Tom Parker are traveling to the town of Willingden, looking to poach a doctor to add to the population of their adopted hometown, Sanditon. Mr. Parker’s great ambition is to make Sanditon one of the great holiday towns of the English coast, and he thinks having a doctor in residence will draw more visitors. (This is largely because his hypochondriac sisters refuse to visit.) Unfortunately, Mr. Parker finds himself in need of a doctor when his chaise runs off the road and he sprains his ankle. Alas, there’s no doctor in Willingden – Mr. Parker had read of a dissolution of a medical partnership in the town, but it turns out that was a different Willingden, whoops – but there is the large and jolly Heywood family, who take the Parkers in while Mr. Parker’s ankle heals enough for him to travel. As Mr. Parker rests and recuperates, he tries to entice the Heywoods to visit Sanditon, which has every advantage:
Nature had marked it out, had spoken in most intelligible characters. The finest, purest sea breeze on the coast – acknowledged to be so – excellent bathing – fine hard sand – deep water ten yards from the shore – no mud – no weeds – no slimy rocks.
Oh, good, no one likes slimy rocks.
Mr. Parker has invested heavily in Sanditon and sees himself as something of a club promoter for the town. As he was boasting of Sanditon’s advantages and his own perspicacity in developing it, I kept envisioning him as something of a Georgian version of Tom Haverford.
Tom Haverford Parker spends two weeks resting his ankle and trying in vain to convince the Heywoods to take a vacation – but Mr. and Mrs. Heywood are the ultimate homebodies. They have no objection to their children traveling, though, and so when the Parkers finally shove off for Sanditon, they have Charlotte Heywood, one of the daughters of the family, in tow.
As the Parkers and Charlotte drive to Sanditon, Mr. Parker regales Charlotte with a lengthy description of the town and its inhabitants – including his fellow Georgian club promoter, Lady Denham, who it actually turns out is super cheap; his sisters and younger brother Arthur, who went to the Mr. Woodhouse school of self-diagnosis; and his other brother, Sidney:
Sidney says anything, you know. He has always said what he chose, of and to us all. Most families have such a member among them, I believe, Miss Heywood. There is someone in most families privileged by superior abilities or spirits to say anything. In ours, it is Sidney, who is a very clever young man and with great powers of pleasing, He lives too much in the world to be settled; that is his only fault. He is here and there and everywhere. I wish we may get him to Sanditon. I should like to have you acquainted with him.
I see you, Jane Austen. It seems pretty clear that Sidney is intended to be Charlotte’s love interest, but he doesn’t turn up until near the end of Austen’s chapters. What kind of love interest would Sidney be? Hard to say – from this description he could be a Bingley, a Darcy, or a Wentworth type, probably not a Tilney or Knightley. But it does appear that Austen has Sidney in mind for the romantic hero, especially after Charlotte meets the other eligible bachelor of the neighborhood, the young baronet Sir Edward Denham, who turns out to be (a) somewhat ridiculous; (b) hard up for cash and therefore required to marry for money; and (c) into someone else. Sir Edward’s step-aunt, the dowager Lady Denham, grills Charlotte about her intentions in a slightly watered down Lady Catherine de Bourgh manner (but with more satisfaction than Lady “I should have been a great proficient” Catherine gets out of Lizzy in Pride and Prejudice).
‘Indeed! He is a very fine young man, particularly elegant in his address.’
This was said chiefly for the sake of saying something, but Charlotte directly saw that it was laying her own to suspicion by Lady Denham’s giving a shrewd glance at her and replying, ‘Yes, yes, he is very well to look at. And it is to be hoped that some lady of large fortune will think so, for Sir Edward must marry for money. He and I often talk that matter over. A handsome young fellow like him will go smirking and smiling about and paying girls compliments, but he knows he must marry for money. And Sir Edward is a very steady young man in the main and has got very good notions.’
‘Sir Edward Denham,’ said Charlotte, ‘with such personal advantages may be almost sure of getting a woman of fortune, if he chooses it.’
This glorious sentiment seemed quite to remove suspicion.
See, Lady Denham, you have nothing to worry about.
Because there’s really no plot to speak of – Austen died before she got there – the real enjoyment factor in Sanditon is the characters. Their dialogue is just as sparkling as in Austen’s finished novels, and I found myself laughing out loud at the Parker family’s and the other characters’ foibles, and especially at Charlotte’s gently clear-eyed reactions to them. Mr. Parker being Tom Haverford, I saw Charlotte as the Ann Perkins of the crew. Essentially good-hearted, definitely cute, polite to a fault, and always getting dragged into weird exchanges with people.
(Is this entire review just an excuse to post Parks and Recreation gifs? Maybe. It might be.)
Anyway – Austen spends the first twelve chapters getting all her pieces into their places. The Parker sisters show up, bringing their hypochondria with them, and also a family from the West Indies, or a girls’ school, or both?, with the sickly heiress of Lady Denham’s dreams, Miss Lambe (also one of the only people of color in all of Austen’s work – and I imagine Austen was quite ahead of her time in writing this character), and Sidney Parker pops up as well. Just as it seems the action is about to get going – it stops. And we’ll never know exactly what Austen had in mind for these characters. Would Sir Edward Denham get dragged into a marriage of convenience with Miss Lambe, or would he successfully seduce Miss Clara Brereton, his rival for Lady Denham’s fortune? Would Sidney Parker turn out to be the hero after all? Would Charlotte Heywood, with her wit and good sense (like a combination of Lizzy Bennet and Elinor Dashwood) fall for Sidney Parker, if he is in fact the hero? Would the Parker sisters and Arthur ever get over their hypochondria? Would club promoter Mr. Parker make Sanditon the hippest destination on the coast? We don’t get to find out – but we can use our imaginations.
Now I’m down to just The Watsons and my volume of Jane Austen’s letters. I don’t know how I am going to live in a world where I’ve read everything that Austen has written. Send wine, folks.
covered in flour 