(Warning- if you have seen the movie Sense and Sensibility, but have not yet read the book, I suggest you NOT read this message. Spoilers!)

Oh my goodness...I am reading Sense and Sensibility for the first time right now (and I LOVE it, by the way) and have just read a passage in it (chapter 44) that was not in the Emma Thompson version, so I did not know almost anything about it. I had read something about it briefly before, here it is: "Thompson's original version had Willoughby return to Marianne's deathbed for eight pages of dialogue" which was cut for the film by the director Ang Lee. But I had forgotten about that, and was so shocked and pleased at what I came across whist reading! Willoughby does most certainly give HIS side of the story, which is so sadly left out of the film. I have heard of people very much liking Willoughby (like you, Carrie! : ) but I never could exactly "like" him seeming how much of a jer...I mean "Libertine" he was! ; D Also, the time with the letter he "wrote" Marianne, when he sent back to her her letters and lock of hair, was in the film, but it did not ever clear up his side of the situation, and it was just assumed that he had indeed written it and was now indifferent to Marianne. But, in the book, it is explained that Miss Grey had gotten a hold of Marianne's last letter to Willoughby before he did, and out of jealousy wrote a truly cruel and cold letter which he had no choice but to copy over in his handwriting. NONE of this is explained in the film, and we are left to believe the worst. The emotions I felt while reading this chapter were quite intense, and one time during reading and another at the end of the chapter, I heaved two massive sighs....; }
Oh yes, I DO still realize that there are many things in his life that Willoughby cannot take back, like his affair and child with Eliza, and his rejection of her, and the way he handled telling (or, rather, NOT telling) Marianne about the situation, and living a life of too much freedom and vanity, but all in all, he can "now do greater justice to my faith in him than he had before" (a sort of Emma quote, but no duh). I feel relieved, even though they are all fictional characters (or ARE they?!...) to find him not so very wicked after all, (I still HATE Wickham, but perhaps that will change when I read the book...) yet a few things bother me more now then they ever did before. You see, I now find myself longing for him never to have married Miss Grey, whom he never did love in the first place, and for Marianne to never to fall in love with Col. Brandon, and that Willoughby and Marianne will be reunited and married in the end...(some of you may call that "Heresy!," but we shall see...! ; )but then again I am sure that Brandon and Marianne will be perfectly happy in their lives together, and with no personal scandle to taint it all. But on the other hand, I wonder if love would be enough for them, because no matter how much Marianne may have loved him, he is not necessarily deserving of her, considering her sterling past and his wrong one. So, whatever input you all may have regarding this, please say. It should very interesting! : }