Diana Reid's 'Sense and Sensibility': Willoughby Love-Bombs Marianne, Then Ghosts Her
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Turning Austen's 400-plus-page novel into a film just over two hours long meant leaving some scenes or characters on the cutting-room floor, so the sisters would have room to flourish.
What struck Reid and her producer was the Willoughby character and his relationship with Marianne: he love-bombs her, she says, and then ghosts her, behaviors she calls identical to phenomena people experience today. The vocabulary around those behaviors has changed, she says, but what he does to Marianne is textbook.
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Calling him a love-bomber is a gift to the modern reader: it turns a literary cad into a man who would be caught inside a week on a dating app. The joke lands because the conduct is textbook — the script hasn't needed a rewrite.
Careful, though — the label may be doing less work than the behavior. If the moves are identical to what people experience now, naming them mostly describes conduct readers already recognize, and what he does to Marianne is textbook either way.