Sense and Sensibility & 'evermore'

In 2022, Taylor Swift sat down with TIFF for an in-depth interview on her short film All Too Well. In this interview, Swift explains how film has always informed her song writing as she has ‘very specific film memories for things’. Taking a departure from writing of her own experiences and becoming more of a narrator to a story with the sister albums folklore and evermore, she discusses how she drew a lot from folktales and period pieces for these two albums. Swift was ‘nonstop watching Sense and Sensibility, the Ang Lee one’ - the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility - when writing evermore. 

All images from Sense and Sensibility 1995, Columbia Pictures

At this, my ears pricked up. She essentially admits that the album is inspired by the emotional themes of the classic Austen novel. Even the colour theming of oranges and warm tones in evermore’s cover art feels like an homage to the colour palette of Lee’s film. Upon my subsequent listen to the album after watching this interview, it was hard not to pick up on the songs and lyrics in evermore that can easily relate to both the 1995 film and the novel of Sense and Sensibility.

Songs that capture Elinor and Edward

gold rush: This track is applicable to Elinor Dashwood’s discomfort in falling in love with someone. ‘I don’t like anticipating my face in a red flush’, ‘I can’t bear to think about you anymore’. This is especially true when Elinor hasn’t seen Edward Ferrars in a long time and learns of his engagement. Lucy Steele and her family adore him. He’s popular and taken! – ‘everybody wants you but I don’t like a gold rush’.

champagne problems: Edward regrets how much he hurts Elinor after having to leave her to honour his engagement to Lucy Steele. ‘I dropped your hand while dancing, left you out there standing, crestfallen on the landing’, ‘Your heart was glass I dropped it’. (‘Your sister splashed out on the bottle’ – Marianne, Elinor’s sister, is overjoyed when she senses Elinor and Edward love each other).

happiness: ‘Haunted by the look in my eyes that would've loved you for a lifetime, leave it all behind’ feels like Elinor’s voice imploring Edward. ‘I hope she'll be a beautiful fool, who takes my spot next to you. No, I didn't mean that. Sorry, I can't see facts through all of my fury’ is so Elinor coded. Her emotions fight against her reason: Elinor is angry that Edward has a fiancée but she immediately apologises because she knows it’s not Lucy’s fault and Edward is doing the right thing by not breaking off the engagement and ruining an innocent woman’s reputation. Elinor loves Edward because he is an honourable person, yet it is the reason they can’t be together. ‘I can’t make it go away by making you a villain’, ‘No one teaches you what to do when a good man hurts you’.

Songs that capture Marianne and John

tolerate it: ‘Wait by the door like I’m just a kid, use my best colours for your portrait’ – Marianne Dashwood is young, naïve, and full of love to give. She desperately wants to impress John Willoughby and she is so infatuated with him. It seems he is infatuated with her too when in the country. In London society however, John gives Marianne the cold shoulder. ‘If it’s all in my head tell me now, tell me I’ve got it wrong somehow’. 

The entire bridge of tolerate it is appropriate for this storyline: ‘While you were out building other worlds, where was I? Where's that man who'd throw blankets over my barbed wire? I made you my temple, my mural, my sky. Now I'm begging for footnotes in the story of your life. Drawing hearts in the by-line. Always taking up too much space or time.’

closure: After John acts like he has no idea who Marianne is, she receives a letter from him. He tries to gaslight her and insists they were not properly together. ‘Yes I got your letter, yes I’m doing better, it cut deep to know you, right to the bone’, ‘I know that its over I don’t need your closure’, ‘Don’t treat me like some situation that needs to be handled. I’m fine with my spite.’ 

Again, the entire bridge works here too: ‘I know I'm just a wrinkle in your new life. Staying friends would iron it out so nice. Guilty, guilty, reaching out across the sea, that you put between you and me. But it's fake and it's oh-so unnecessary.’

Songs that capture Marianne and Colonel Brandon

ivy: This song could so easily be from Colonel Brandon’s perspective. The pain he has carried from another life softens when he spends time with Marianne. ‘My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand taking mine, but it’s been promised to another’. Marianne’s hand is cold because she doesn’t reciprocate Colonel Brandon’s love at first as she spends much of the story in love with John (and I suppose it also fits with Marianne almost dying in the cold before Colonel Brandon saves her). ‘My house of stone, your ivy grows, and now I’m covered in you’. Colonel Brandon is a reserved, hardened, and closed up older man but he can’t stop Marianne’s infectious full-of-life personality having an effect on him. 

long story short: I could imagine this song for Marianne when she reflects on her love for John and begins to regret it. It’s her turning point. ‘I fell from the pedestal…’ Her reputation as a lady in society is damaged by her public show of affection for John and his pretending not to know her. ‘…right down the rabbit hole’. She knows she’s been played. ‘Long story short, it was the wrong guy. Now I'm all about you’. Marianne begins to realise how great Colonel Brandon is.

The song that feels most inspired by Sense and Sensibility is the title track of evermore. The bridge summarises the two main love stories. 

The brackets ( ) are the male perspectives sung by Bon Iver. 

Elinor and Edward realise they can’t be together. It leaves Elinor feeling stranded with only her thoughts of Edward, and Edward grieving that the cost of honouring his engagement is Elinor: ‘And when I was shipwrecked (Can't think of all the cost now), I thought of you (All the things that will be lost now)’.

When Marianne catches a fever that renders her unconscious and Colonel Brandon saves her, she realises his love is selfless and real unlike John’s, and begins to love him back. Colonel Brandon prays she survives: ‘In the cracks of light (Can we just get a pause?), I dreamed of you (To be certain we'll be tall again)’.

I like to think both the sisters get their own chorus in this song. These two choruses are identical bar one line and this highlights that they are sisters but have their opposite personalities and struggles.

‘And I was catchin' my breath. Starin' out an open window, catchin' my death’. Elinor is often inside looking out of the window in the film to reflect how she is reserved and controlled. However, always keeping her feelings in to hold the family together, she knows is slowly killing her. Elinor yearns to be selfish. She wants to see Edward from her window return to her on his horse and be free with him. ‘I couldn't be sure, I had a feeling so peculiar, that this pain would be for evermore’.

‘And I was catchin' my breath. Barefoot in the wildest winter, catchin' my death’. Marianne is outside for a lot of the film to reflect how she doesn’t restrict herself and how she feels freely. However, she learns this makes her easy to take advantage of because it almost kills her (both figuratively and literally). Marianne realises she should embrace those who only want to protect her out of love, like her sister and Colonel Brandon, and consider them more. She knows she will always have that experience of heartbreak to remind her. ‘I couldn't be sure, I had a feeling so peculiar, that this pain would be for evermore’.