REVIEW: Colonel Brandon’s Diary by Amanda Grange
How did Colonel Brandon ever get such a bad rap? Is it the flannel waistcoat? Is it that a man of five and thirty can never hope to feel deep affection? Granted he’s not a hawt and sexay beast like Willoughby, but then Colonel Brandon wouldn’t dump a woman at a ball in front of half of London, either (not to mention some of Willoughby’s other less-than-stellar behavior). And yet more than one critic has suggested that Marianne Brandon would not have the completely happy and satisfying marriage that she would have had with Willoughby. We beg to differ, and apparently so does Amanda Grange, because the hero of Colonel Brandon’s Diary has more tragedy and romance in his life than any three or four bodice-ripping Regency rakes. Elopements! Duels! Adultery! Love children! This is Jane Austen? the skeptic might ask; we reply, it sure is! It’s all in Sense and Sensibility, cunningly hidden in the backstory, but Amanda Grange has brought this dramatic tale to full life in the best book yet in her series of heroes’ diaries.
James Brandon is an Oxford scholar, wanting nothing more than to become an attorney and marry his cousin Eliza; he cannot remember a time when he did not love her. But James’ greedy father forces Eliza, his ward, to marry his elder son. James thinks the best thing to do is to take himself away, and joins the army and purchases a transfer to the Indies, hoping that his absence will allow Eliza to accept her marriage and make the best of it; but when he hears of her divorce, and then his brother’s death, he goes home to look for his lost love. Anyone familiar with S&S remembers what happens: the reunion in tragic circumstances and, shortly afterwards, Eliza’s death, leaving James to take care of her daughter, also named Eliza. A few years later, he encounters another young lady who reminds him of Eliza, not so much in looks but in disposition, and though he had thought it impossible, he gets a second chance at love.
As we’ve already pointed out, Colonel Brandon’s backstory is full of dramatic incident, and the writer who attempts to tell his tale could easily fall into the kind of melodrama that makes such a story, well, not at all like anything Jane Austen would write. Fortunately, Amanda Grange does not allow her hero to wallow in sentimentality. Even an entry such as the one about Eliza’s death is written with military precision that is nonetheless full of feeling:
Eliza is dead. She died in my arms.
Oh God! Eliza.
Nothing more is needed; we’ve taken the journey with James and Eliza, and we feel all the emotion in those few words. It brought your reviewer to tears (a little embarrassing, since she was on public transportation at the time). You know Willoughby would have overegged the pudding by quoting a sonnet or some such thing.
Ms. Grange deals well with Brandon’s conflicting emotions: his hatred of Willoughby, both for influencing Marianne against Brandon and for seducing and abandoning the younger Eliza, and his desire to not cause Willoughby harm because it would hurt Marianne. We see his nobility and his great heart when he offers the Delaford living to Edward Ferrars, whose story strikes a sympathetic chord. He even gets in a few zingers on John Dashwood. Maudlin sentiment is further stayed by the trademark touches of quirky humor that Ms. Grange brings to all of the books in this series, because, after all, Jane Austen’s books are funny.
Like all the books in this series, we know the ending, and yet we enjoy retaking the journey and getting to know this endearing hero. Colonel Brandon has cast off his flannel waistcoat forever and taught us, along with Marianne Dashwood, the true worth of a real hero.
August 18th, 2008 at 9:10 am
What an excellent review!
Elizabeth Fay, in her book “A Feminist Introduction to Romanticism,” makes a comment pertinent here, relating also to Anne Eliot’s point that because men write the books, judgments about feelings as written in books are not so very reliable. Fay writes:
“Perhaps one of Austen’s private jokes is that Marianne chooses wrongly because she has based her judgment on literary representations of emotion written by men, and not from real-life emotion or from critiques by women. She therefore chooses someone who acts in imitation of literary emotional sensitivity, Willoughby, rather than the man who is really the more sensitive and refined of the two, the truly romantic Brandon.”
August 18th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Of all of Austen’s novels, I was most disappointed with the ending of Sense and Sensibility. Yes, the characters get their happily ever after, but I always thought that Elinor and Brandon were a better fit. Maybe it’s because I had zero sympathy for Edward or Marianne, but I don’t think either of those characters deserved Elinor and Brandon. I’m sure I’m in the minority with this sentiment. Maybe Grange’s book will help me understand Marianne’s appeal to Brandon.
August 18th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I sort of felt like that too at times - that Elinor would have been a better match for Brandon because she was more mature and their characters were more similar. Quiet, reliable, suffering in silence and all that. But at the same time I think that it was good for Elinor to get what she really wanted in the end: it was her reward for being so good to everyone throughout the rest of the novel, especially for having to suffer the exultations of Lucy Steele!
I’d like to read this Diary to get an understanding of how Colonel Brandon managed to stay in love with Marianne for so long when she behaved like such an idiot sometimes! It’d be great to have a snippet of Brandon and Marianne’s married life together, like Amanda Grange has done in her other books. I’d like to see that she was happier with him than she would’ve been with Willoughby.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:09 am
I could not agree more mjryan. I remember reading the book for the first time and being utterly confused as to the ending. I was convinced Brandon and Elinor would end up together–after all, they seemed to have so much in common in terms of love lost and shared so many little confidences during the story.
August 26th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Love these comments. Exactly right.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:16 am
Well i have to disagree. Yes, maybe Elinor and Brandon are similiar in nature, but how boring would their marriage end up. Marriane is such a free spirit and that attracts Brandon because she is so different to himself. The term ‘Opposites attract’ really fits here and is a good base for a passionate and loving marriage. If Elinor and Brandon ended up together, it may have been good at first but gradually would disolve any passion (if there ever was any between them)and they would end up being two strangers living with eachother. It may have seemed at one point that Elinor and Brandon were going to end up together, but thats what Jane Austen novels are like, full are twists and unexpected turns, when reading one of her novels for the first time you have no idea where you going to end up. Not like the romantic novels written today, you can tell whats going to happen when you first start reading it.
Anyway, maybe im just being difensive because sense and sensibility is one of my favourite novels and i would not want it ending in any other way.