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For Christmas I got a beautiful set of hardback Jane Austen books. I intend to read them in publication order, and to that end first reread Sense and Sensibility. I had read this before but not for a very long time, I think in college or possibly even high school, and I know I’ve seen the movie but that was also many many years ago.
As her debut novel, this is not Austen at her peak, but it still hits all the classic Austen hallmarks–open talk about money, dryly witty but very mean descriptions of basically all the secondary characters, genteelly prospect-less heroines, problems that would be solved quicker if British people were ever allowed to talk about their feelings, general domestic shenanigans, and at least one person getting gravely ill or injured as a key plot point.
Our main heroine here is Elinor Dashwood, an extremely no-nonsense and scrupulously polite young woman with formidable emotional self-control, especially for a nineteen-year-old. She does most of the sense-having in the Dashwood household, as her mother and sisters are both much more emotionally expressive and inclined toward the romantic. The ne plus ultra of emotional sensitivity is the middle daughter, Marianne Dashwood, a seventeen-year-old who seems determined to embody every stereotype about over-emotional teenage girls that currently exists, although I don’t have much of an idea about how prevalent those stereotypes were in the 1810s or if it’s just Marianne.
The final romances in this one seem a little underdeveloped compared to her later works, but overall that’s OK, because the friendships–both real and the ones that are developed under polite duress and therefore sort of faked, like the one between Elinor and Lucy Steele–take center stage in a way I really enjoy. Colonel Brandon’s friendship with Elinor, which causes several people to think those two should get engaged, is a really lovely and rare example of a strong, selfless cross-sex friendship between two people who are both in love with other people and are able to become really good platonic friends without anything getting weird. The relationship between the girls and Mrs. Jennings, who is vulgar and frequently misreads situations but who does turn out to be a truly good-hearted and reliable person, is also great, and frequently very funny.
When Austen’s books were first published people were really scandalized about how economic they were, and while I think that is very funny because in a society where women weren’t allowed to have jobs, of course economics would be a critical consideration for marriage. But this upset people anyway. I love it, not just because it’s a more realistic way for the characters to talk–honestly, some of them are so blunt about it that I find myself thinking Austen may be laying it on a little thick–but it’s also very funny, because clearly some of these characters are telling themselves the same self-flattering but ludicrously un-self-aware things that the scandalized reviewers were.
Anyway, after many convoluted disappointments and scheming and general domestic shenanigans, Elinor and Marianne both end up happily and comfortably married, and then a movie was made about it with a truly excellent cast, which I should maybe rewatch.
Pride and Prejudice is next! I am much more familiar with that story, as it’s one of the only two Austen novels that I have read more than three times, so I don’t think I will be as surprised as I was in this one (I genuinely did find myself wondering what happened next, or how our heroines were going to get out of this one, because I couldn’t remember how the plot went), but it should be enjoyable all the same.
As her debut novel, this is not Austen at her peak, but it still hits all the classic Austen hallmarks–open talk about money, dryly witty but very mean descriptions of basically all the secondary characters, genteelly prospect-less heroines, problems that would be solved quicker if British people were ever allowed to talk about their feelings, general domestic shenanigans, and at least one person getting gravely ill or injured as a key plot point.
Our main heroine here is Elinor Dashwood, an extremely no-nonsense and scrupulously polite young woman with formidable emotional self-control, especially for a nineteen-year-old. She does most of the sense-having in the Dashwood household, as her mother and sisters are both much more emotionally expressive and inclined toward the romantic. The ne plus ultra of emotional sensitivity is the middle daughter, Marianne Dashwood, a seventeen-year-old who seems determined to embody every stereotype about over-emotional teenage girls that currently exists, although I don’t have much of an idea about how prevalent those stereotypes were in the 1810s or if it’s just Marianne.
The final romances in this one seem a little underdeveloped compared to her later works, but overall that’s OK, because the friendships–both real and the ones that are developed under polite duress and therefore sort of faked, like the one between Elinor and Lucy Steele–take center stage in a way I really enjoy. Colonel Brandon’s friendship with Elinor, which causes several people to think those two should get engaged, is a really lovely and rare example of a strong, selfless cross-sex friendship between two people who are both in love with other people and are able to become really good platonic friends without anything getting weird. The relationship between the girls and Mrs. Jennings, who is vulgar and frequently misreads situations but who does turn out to be a truly good-hearted and reliable person, is also great, and frequently very funny.
When Austen’s books were first published people were really scandalized about how economic they were, and while I think that is very funny because in a society where women weren’t allowed to have jobs, of course economics would be a critical consideration for marriage. But this upset people anyway. I love it, not just because it’s a more realistic way for the characters to talk–honestly, some of them are so blunt about it that I find myself thinking Austen may be laying it on a little thick–but it’s also very funny, because clearly some of these characters are telling themselves the same self-flattering but ludicrously un-self-aware things that the scandalized reviewers were.
Anyway, after many convoluted disappointments and scheming and general domestic shenanigans, Elinor and Marianne both end up happily and comfortably married, and then a movie was made about it with a truly excellent cast, which I should maybe rewatch.
Pride and Prejudice is next! I am much more familiar with that story, as it’s one of the only two Austen novels that I have read more than three times, so I don’t think I will be as surprised as I was in this one (I genuinely did find myself wondering what happened next, or how our heroines were going to get out of this one, because I couldn’t remember how the plot went), but it should be enjoyable all the same.
