Jane Austen, en dan vooral haar boek Sense and Sensibility, hebben voorkomen dat actrice Emma Thompson in een klinische depressie raakte. Dat vertelde Thompson afgelopen week in een interview op Radio 4 in het programma Desert Island Discs.
Thompson was bezig met het schrijven van het script voor de film Sense and Sensibilty, toen haar man, acteur Kenneth Branagh, bij haar wegging. In het interview vertelde ze:
“I can remember the only thing I could do was write,” she tells Kirsty Young on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. “Ken had an old black cashmere dressing gown I’d given him one Christmas, and he was gone – he wasn’t living at home – and I used to put it on and crawl from the bedroom to the computer and sit and write. Then I was all right because I was not present. And Sense and Sensibility really saved me from going under.”
Lees hier het hele artikel in The Independent.
Op de website van The Telegrapgh onderzoekt schrijfster JoJo Moyes de helende kracht van Jane Austen en literatuur in zijn geheel:
From the Bible onwards, people have looked to books to tell us how to live through adversity. And for those of us born prior to the escapes of YouTube, instant messaging and alcopops, medication through fiction was a habit we learned early. Comic novelist Jenny Colgan estimates she has read Little Women “something like 9,000 times”. “I use Little Women as a security blanket if I’m feeling down. I know its moralising tone is highly unfashionable nowadays, but I find it totally comforting. Do the right thing, even when you don’t want to. Cut off your hair, and give away your Christmas breakfast; try and be the better person and all will be well. Or, if that doesn’t work, do exactly what Jo does and hide in a garret with a book and a bag of apples.”
