Did Anyone Ever Try Telling Marianne Dashwood to Shake It Off?
About That Taylor Swift/Jane Austen Connection...
NOTE: I’d like to start by pointing out that idea for this post pre-dates my last post, my not-review of The Darcy Myth by Rachel Feder, and in fact at least half this I had already written before I even started reading that book. But in one chapter of The Darcy Myth, Feder tries to draw a parallel between Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” and our obsession with Mr. Darcy-esque characters and real-life men we perceive as our Mr. Darcys. That didn’t really land for me, because “All Too Well” is clearly about Marianne Dashwood and Mr. Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility. Observe:
When Taylor Swift released the re-recorded version of her 2012 album Red in the fall of 2021, it stirred up some decade-old emotions for all of us. The entire internet hated Jake Gyllenhaal again, “sad girl fall” had a huge moment, and we saw the genesis of Swift’s filmmaking career with a short film based on the fan-favorite song from the original album, “All Too Well.” Red (Taylor’s Version), as the re-recorded album is titled, includes a 10-minute version of the song (the original is about four and a half minutes), a sort of “director’s cut” with four-ish additional verses of lyrics (it’s hard to define it exactly, because some of the additional lyrics could be said to be bridge or chorus lyrics). The added sections of the longer version are especially gut-wrenching, in a heartbroken breakup song that already packed an emotional punch.
They say all’s well that ends well
But I’m in a new hell every time
You double-cross my mind
You said if we had been closer in age
Maybe it would have been fine
And that made me want to die
While listening to the 10-minute version of “All Too Well” several times over the first few days after its release, a thought took seed in my mind that I’m sure many a Swiftie/Janeite has had before, that Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility would LOOOOOOOVE Taylor Swift. Like, she would GET her on a deep emotional level. (I think she would also love Lana Del Rey and Phoebe Bridgers, but we’ll get to that another time.)
The more I processed this connection, the more it made sense. Swift’s public and artistic persona (if not her real personality), especially in the earlier years of her career, projected the image of a romantic, idealistic young woman, ready to fall in love in an epic way. Songs like “Love Story,” “Mine,” “Enchanted,” and “Today Was a Fairytale” ascribe an abstract, mythical quality to the romantic relationships they document. “Enchanted” captures the giddy excitement of meeting someone for the first time and instantly being drawn to them, but also the nervousness of not knowing if you’ll get to see them again.
This is me praying that
This was the very first page
Not where the story line ends
My thoughts will echo your name, until I see you again
These are the words I held back, as I was leaving too soon
I was enchanted to meet you
We could say that “Enchanted” is about love at first sight, a phrase coined by Christopher Marlowe in his unfinished 1598 epic poem Hero and Leander:
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?
Marlowe’s contemporary William Shakespeare was well-versed (pun intended) with the idea of instantaneous attraction, too. What is Romeo and Juliet if not an instalove tragedy? Swift’s “Love Story,” it should be noted, also heavily references Romeo and Juliet, and the music video is an intentional homage to both Renaissance-era and 19th-century romance stories.
The feelings evoked in “Enchanted” and “Love Story” would be very relatable to Marianne Dashwood after her meet-cute with Willoughby. Their first meeting is excitingly romantic: it’s raining, she falls and hurts her ankle, and he runs over when he sees her fall, sweeps her off her feet and brings her home. Who could resist falling in love, at least a little bit, after such a rescue? Plus, he’s hot. Her feelings on this first meeting are described in chapter nine of the book:
Marianne herself had seen less of his person than the rest, for the confusion which crimsoned over her face [“blushing all the way home,” as “Enchanted” phrases it], on his lifting her up, had robbed her of the power of regarding him after their entering the house… His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story.
Marianne envisions her potential romance with Willoughby as a highly idealized, almost abstract pantomime of love stories she’s read in romantic fiction. This fixation on stories as a basis for real life perceptions of romance is reflected in “Love Story,” in which the narrator compares herself and her love interest to Juliet and Romeo and declares, “You be the prince, and I’ll be the princess.” “Today Was a Fairytale” also evokes a romantic fantasy based in fictionalized or mythical depictions of love, opening with the lines:
Today was a fairytale
You were the prince
I used to be a damsel in distress
You took me by the hand, and you picked me up at six
Today was a fairytale
This description also shares parallels with Marianne and Willoughby’s first meeting, when she was indeed a damsel in distress. Willoughby appears to share Marianne’s attraction, spending much of his time with her and the Dashwoods, dancing with her at every opportunity, and whispering with her in the corner at social gatherings. When Marianne’s sister Elinor warns her about getting too attached to Willoughby too quickly, Marianne argues that their connection goes deeper than most:
I have not known him long indeed, but I am very much better acquainted with him, than with any other creature in the world, except yourself and mama. It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.
Of course, spoiler alert, things do not work out with Willoughby. He turns out to be a rake (a.k.a. a fuccboi), ghosts Marianne and gets engaged to a wealthy heiress just for her money when he’s disinherited for his misdeeds. When Marianne finally sees him again in London, his seeming cold indifference towards her gives her such emotional whiplash that she sinks into a deep depression, leading to a physical illness that nearly kills her. I’d like to think that if Marianne had been able to listen to “All To Well” after this “breakup” it would have helped her process. There’s something cathartic about screaming the lyrics to an emotional and hard-hitting breakup song that’s weirdly empowering, even when you haven’t just had your heart broken.
And you call me up again just to break me like a promise
So casually cruel in the name of being honest
I'm a crumpled up piece of paper lying here
'Cause I remember it all, all, all
Too well
Many Swift scholars consider “All Too Well” to be her magnum opus, but a lot of her hit songs especially from her first four albums (her self-titled debut [2006]; Fearless [2008]; Speak Now [2010]; and Red) express similar powerful emotions of heartbreak, ranging from tense and melancholy with the likes of “Dear John,” “Fifteen,” and “Sad, Beautiful, Tragic,” to vengeful and angry, and really fun to scream-sing, such as “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “I Knew You Were Trouble,” and “The Story of Us.” I can picture Marianne listening to any one of these songs on repeat while getting over Willoughby, actually, but in particular, “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” one of the previously unreleased tracks from the 2021 re-recorded version of Fearless, to me seems to parallel her situation really closely. I have even heard, though I can’t find an official source to confirm, that Swift was actually inspired by Sense and Sensibility when she wrote the lyrics:
It’s such a shame
‘Cause I was Miss “Here to stay”
Now I’m Miss “Gonna be alright someday”
And someday maybe you’ll miss me
But by then, you’ll be Mr. “Too late”
Goodbye, Mr. "Perfectly fine"
How's your heart after breaking mine?
Of this set of lyrics in particular, Swift has said on the record, “I love the bridge, I think the lyrics are just wonderfully scathing and full of the teen angst that you would hope to hear on an album that I wrote when I was 17 or 18.”
Swift’s (or the narrator of the song’s) prediction of her former lover’s future regret for the way he treated her echoes Willoughby’s regret for his treatment of Marianne. He visits the house where she is lying ill, (possibly) dying, to attempt to explain himself to her sister Elinor, hoping that Elinor will relay his message and Marianne will forgive him. His explanation somehow, miraculously improves Elinor’s opinion of him (I’ve never bought that, though), and as he leaves, he expresses regret and self pity for the position he has put himself in, mind you.
“I must rub through the world as well as I can. Domestic happiness is out of the question. If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means--it may put me on my guard--at least, it may be something to live for. Marianne to be sure is lost to me for ever. Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again—"
Elinor stopped him with a reproof.
"Well,"—he replied—"once more good bye. I shall now go away and live in dread of one event."
"What do you mean?"
"Your sister's marriage."
"You are very wrong. She can never be more lost to you than she is now."
"But she will be gained by some one else.”
Bro.
We do learn at the end of the book, in which Marianne ends up with the kind and wise Colonel Brandon, that “Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang” and “he long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret.” But we also find out that he ends up, like, okay? He might not be super into his wife, but he basically gets away with all the terrible things he does with no material repercussions, and is even happy sometimes. He’s… Mr. Perfectly Fine.
Though there’s no official confirmation of inspiration from Austen on “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” Swift has cited a familiarity with a beloved Austen film adaptation, stating, "The next record I was nonstop watching Sense and Sensibility, the Ang Lee one. That was for an album called Evermore. I have very specific film memories for things."
Evermore and its sister album Folklore, both released in 2020, are unique among Swift’s work for being largely fictional narratives, rather than describing events or emotions from Swift’s own experience, though her own life does creep into a few songs as well. Many of the stories told through the songs on these two albums also have a sense of hindsight, of removal from the immediate emotions of the initial experiences, as if being recalled a long time after they happened. The title track of Evermore evokes this same sense, and also seems to echo how an older, wiser Marianne might reflect on her heartbreak at 16.
And I was catching my breath
Staring out an open window
Catching my death
And I couldn't be sure
I had a feeling so peculiar
That this pain would be for
Evermore
Marianne’s pain is not for evermore, fortunately, and she ends up pretty much okay, and even happy, as we would expect for a Jane Austen heroine. Though what’s unique about Marianne, as Moreland Perkins notes in Reshaping the Sexes in Sense and Sensibility, “no other Austenian heroine past childhood undergoes a metamorphosis that involves a transformation in her character and personality.” Looking back on her experience, Marianne reflects in a conversation with Elinor that she made some imprudent choices, as teenagers often do; she is literally 16 years old for much of the book, which I think can be easy to forget. She says,
I cannot express my own abhorrence of myself. Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected, or some failing indulged. Every body seemed injured by me. The kindness, the unceasing kindness of Mrs. Jennings, I had repaid with ungrateful contempt. To the Middletons, to the Palmers, the Steeles, to every common acquaintance even, I had been insolent and unjust; with a heart hardened against their merits, and a temper irritated by their very attention.
It’s me, hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.
I have previously noted the parallels between Swift’s song “Anti-Hero” from her 2022 album Midnights and the character of Emma Woodhouse, the titular heroine of Austen’s Emma. The song’s description of its narrator’s “covert narcissism I disguise as altruism” echoes Emma’s inflated sense of her own insight and goodness–”with insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of every body's feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange every body's destiny.” And the “Anti-Hero” speaker’s declaration that “I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror” mirrors (see what I did there) Emma’s lack of self-awareness for much of the novel. She meddles in others’ lives and speaks and acts carelessly, even hurtfully, toward those far less privileged than herself, all under the delusion that she is being charitable, until lifelong family friend Mr. Knightley chastises her for her lack of true compassion. Her growing love for Mr. Knightley (which she doesn’t even recognize until the end of the book, because, hello, no self-awareness whatsoever) causes her to take his censure especially to heart:
She was vexed beyond what could have been expressed—almost beyond what she could conceal. Never had she felt so agitated, so mortified, grieved, at any circumstance in her life. She was most forcibly struck. The truth of his representation there was no denying… How could she have exposed herself to such ill opinion in any one she valued!
But I think “Anti-Hero” could easily fit in with the self-reflection of a slightly older and wiser (or “older but just never wiser”) Marianne Dashwood, as well.
And, there is another massively popular music artist whose work I believe lines up more closely with the more positive elements of Emma Woodhouse’s character, and her name is Beyoncé.