Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

 

Summary (from the publisher): In her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen presents us with the subtle portraits of two contrasting but equally compelling heroines.

For sensible Elinor Dashwood and her impetuous younger sister Marianne the prospect of marrying the men they love appears remote. In a world ruled by money and self-interest, the Dashwood sisters have neither fortune nor connections. Concerned for others and for social proprieties, Elinor is ill-equipped to compete with self-centered fortune-hunters like Lucy Steele, while Marianne's unswerving belief in the truth of her own feelings makes her more dangerously susceptible to the designs of unscrupulous men.

Through her heroines' parallel experiences of love, loss, and hope, Jane Austen offers a powerful analysis of the ways in which women's lives were shaped by the claustrophobic society in which they had to survive.

Review: In this first novel written by Austen, we follow the Dashwood sisters and their widowed mother as they forced to leave their family estate in Sussex and move to a modest cottage owned by distant relations in Devon. Here, the two oldest daughters, Elinor and Marianne, experience love and heartbreak. Ultimately, they learn they must mix sense and sensibility to achieve happiness. 

This book has classic Jane Austen elements: a society in which status and money dictate love and connections, a genteel family down on their luck financially, unmarried daughters that desperately need to marry in the absence of other viable occupations, sisters with very different personalities, tongue in cheek humor, and social calamities. I was really rooting for gentle Edward Ferrars the whole time. It's funny how similar the themes and plot details in this feel to Pride & Prejudice, just turned on their head and scrambled up in the later novel. 

In many ways, this is Elinor's story and I was glad because she was my favorite. She is thoughtful and prudent where her sister is exuberant and opinionated. Whereas Elinor is only 19 and offers counsel to her mother, Marianne is "sensible and clever; but eager in everything: her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was everything but prudent." Even in her great disappoint in love, Elinor immediately feels sympathy for her suitor and his predicament rather than her own loss. Meanwhile we virtually learn nothing about the younger sister, Margaret. 

I admire how witty Jane Austen is and how she pokes fun at the characters she least admires in such deliberate and cutting ways. On the surface, this book appears to be a lot of people talking drawing rooms and at parties, and yet the social machinations result in great tension and anxiety for the characters and their happiness. I will say that to be just over 300 pages in the eBook format, this felt like a very long read and I'm glad I enjoyed it so much or I doubt I would have stuck it out. I read this once before in 2010 and virtually recall nothing so I'm glad to have read it a second time and hopefully will recall more moving forward. 

"Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favorite maxims."

"Yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, til it has been made at least twenty times over."

Stars: 4.5