We watched "Sense and Sensibility" last night. I have great admiration for Emma Thompson's script, for which she won an Oscar. And the actors are sublime, especially Kate Winslet. Jane Austen is a master at teaching right speech. Marianne has to learn her impulsive speech hurts herself and her reputation, but also her sister Eleanor very much. She learns that what is not spoken can be devious and cruel, as in Willoughby's charming disinformation. She learns that words must be backed up by actions or they are hollow. Colonel Brandon's actions speak more loudly than his words, and his sensitivity and insight into her life wins him her hand in marriage.
Then there are the characters who's tongues are like swords, wounding their victims. Lucy Steele is actively using her speech to manipulate and hurt others for her own gain. Interestingly, she ends up triumphant with the rich Ferrars brother. The Ferrars are a shallow, vain family with tongues like vipers. Austen has given us a taste of the real world, in which justice does not always or even often triumph.
And one of the highlights speech characterization is idle chatter, not intended to harm, but thoughtless and insensitive. Sir John Middleton, his mother-in-law and her daughter rattle on without enough empathy to see what their words do to others. They are cautionary characters, not bad people, actually kindly, but without the ability to really step outside of themselves to imagine a world without themselves at the center.
The whole film might be seen as a treatise on right speech and not speaking reactively, but rather responding with awareness and sensitivity. Pausing, as it were, before emitting sound.
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