More on Laura Wade’s adaptation of The Watsons
Alert Janeite Amo found a reference to Laura Wade’s stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s unfinished work, The Watsons, which we blogged about a while back.
‘I’m also doing a play with Laura Wade [writer of Breathing Corpses and Other Hands] based on an unfinished novel by Jane Austen called The Watsons. Laura has finished the novel herself, dramatised it and introduced a character called Jane Austen and a character called Laura Wade. There is an argument between the two about how the play should finish and a debate about what brings greater happiness in the 18th century versus the 21st century. For Austen, for example, the happy ending was a marriage because the idea that you could sleep with your prospective partner before marriage was totally impossible.’
For Austen, the happy ending was a marriage because it provided social and financial protection to her heroines. Certain adapters to the contrary, it’s not all about sex. 
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:31 am
If you substitute the word “immoral” for “impossible” in the last sentence of that quotation, it becomes a lot more accurate. Sorry, Laura Wade, you may disagree, but that’s what Austen thought. It’s disingenuous to ignore the fact, and there’s no need to be all 21st-century-superior about it, either. JA knew all about sleeping together before marriage–just ask Andrew Davies.
[/snark]