Sense and Sensibility

This proves on how amazing Jane Austen was a writer. I got such back pain and I wasn't really in reading mood reading this yet I loved the book. I've seen the movie and loved it and luckely I loved the book the same. It's not a simple love story, it's about troubles economy wise and love and it's not always as easy with Love. Excellent book!

This is my second reading of

Sense and Sensibility. I'm not going to pretend that I can write a meaningful review of this book in the face of the mountains of scholarship that precede me. So just a few numbered points:

1. Chapter two is still the most perfect character study I have ever read.

2. If I ever have a daughter, I still plan on naming her Elinor.

3. Marianne walks a highwire between annoying and earnest, and I love her for it this time more than the first.

4. Friggin' Willoughby. Am I right ladies?

3.5 star

It was one of the slow burn reads without much emphasis on daily life drama. Except for Marianne Dashwood. I liked the Elinor Dashwood's character. So calm and composed.

I have mixed feelings about the book as some characters and story parts rang very shallow whereas some other were really good. As the story is set in 1811 England, the females had no other job than grow up, get a rich husband and produce some babies (possibly an heir), the story revolves around the same thing. It's still a good book.

Happy Reading!!

What can I say? I love Jane Austen books. The detailed social settings, her deep insight into people's characters and the social machinations they pull to get ahead, the sweet and always happy endings, the observant wry sense of humor...

Not as good as "Emma" or "Pride and Prejudice" but a fairly good book, and more wonderful characters.

Elinor was pleased that he had called; and still more pleased that she had missed him.

Sense and Sensibility is, thus far, the most scandalous and sensational of all of Austen’s novels: it’s got children born out of wedlock, married men declaring their love for women who are

not their wives, secret engagements, a pair of doppelgängers… Yet for all that, it’s also my least favorite so far. Apparently it was her first published novel (though my beloved

Northanger Abbey was written first), and while I’ve heard some argue that this is her masterpiece, I think it’s actually her weakest—though I certainly wouldn’t say it’s bad or unenjoyable.

Austen plays favorites

hard, which left me generally annoyed at the usually perfect, highly judgemental Elinor, and equally frustrated by the other characters who are drawn as being either silly and overly sensitive or mean-spirited and stupid. (Mrs. Jennings alone seems to escape relatively unscathed, coming across as sensible but not uppity.) I’m fine with unlikeable or flawed characters, but Austen seems to put forth Elinor as a paragon of virtue, while putting down characters like Mrs. Palmer (who dares to be bubbly and cheerful) and Marianne (who is foolish enough to be a sensitive romantic) and Mrs. Dashwood (who is so silly to still grieve over her late husband even though he’s been dead for, like, long enough to get over it already!). Even when it comes to the romances,

Marianne must learn a hard lesson and ends up with a man old enough to be her father who is seemingly in love with her because she looks almost identical to the first and now-dead girl that he loved—super weird—while Elinor is rewarded for her good behavior by ending up with the man she wants even though it seems equally impossible

. I

want to root for the sisters, but it’s a challenge.

That isn’t to say that I had no emotional investment. Elinor does have a petty streak, and when she leans into it, she’s very fun. (The repartees between her and Lucy are an absolute delight.) Similarly, towards the end of the novel, when Austen feels that Marianne has sufficiently overcome her weaknesses, she lets the reader feel some pity for her without guilt.

Plot-wise, as I alluded to earlier, this has some crazy twists and turns, and I was regularly surprised by who was coupling up. It also has mysterious gentlemen rescuing a damsel in distress only to disappear into the rain, girls screaming in anguish, and all other manner of dramatic moments. (There is an especially crazy part where

Colonel Brandon finally finds his divorced first love and is relieved that she’s dying since she’d ruined her reputation; Elinor does not indicate that this attitude is in any way surprising. This is even more shocking in light of the fact that Willoughby, who knocks up the woman’s daughter, gets to marry and live a life of respectability…and is even granted Elinor’s pity and a shot at redemption

.) But, I’m sorry, a lot of it was just boring to me. The second half is where almost all of the drama is, and I enjoyed much of it, but the first half dragged. If I’d connected more with the characters, and if Austen had been less caustic in her wit, I could have enjoyed the endless drawing room discussions and balls and talk of who has how much money…but as it was, I didn’t love it.

As usual, Austen is often very funny, even if many of her jokes were a bit too mean to really land with me. I don’t think there’s anything that stylistically unique about this novel when compared with her others.

One last random observation: it’s very interesting to me how relatively frank Mrs. Palmer’s pregnancy is discussed, especially when compared with later Victorian literature wherein the mere mention of a woman’s “condition” is enough to excite blushes of embarrassment. They reference her due date (albeit in different terms), and—hilariously—Mrs. Jennings at one point asks Colonel Brandon (who is in no way related to either of them), “How does Charlotte do? I warrant you she is a fine size by this time.”

Some favorite passages:

The gentleman offered his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther delay, and carried her down the hill.

and he then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of a heavy rain.

“I do not believe,” said Mrs. Dashwood, with a good humoured smile, “that Mr. Willoughby will be incommoded by the attempts of either of my daughters towards what you call catching him. It is not an employment to which they have been brought up. Men are very safe with us, let them be ever so rich.

and her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens.

The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. She played over every favourite song that she had been used to play to Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spent whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears. In books too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving. She read nothing but what they had been used to read together. Such violence of affliction indeed could not be supported for ever; it sunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy; but these employments, to which she daily recurred, her solitary walks and silent meditations, still produced occasional effusions of sorrow as lively as ever.

“Dear, dear Norland,” said Elinor, “probably looks much as it always does at this time of the year. The woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves.” “Oh,” cried Marianne, “with what transporting sensation have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as possible from the sight.” “It is not every one,” said Elinor, “who has your passion for dead leaves.”

She came in with a smile, smiled all the time of her visit, except when she laughed, and smiled when she went away.

It was impossible for any one to be more thoroughly good-natured, or more determined to be happy than Mrs. Palmer.

Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion; and upon Elinor therefore the whole task of telling lies when politeness required it, always fell.

“Pardon me,” replied Elinor, startled by the question; “but I can give you no advice under such circumstances. Your own judgment must direct you.”

“Me!” returned Elinor in some confusion; “indeed, Marianne, I have nothing to tell.” “Nor I,” answered Marianne with energy, “our situations then are alike. We have neither of us any thing to tell; you, because you do not communicate, and I, because I conceal nothing.”

The latter, though unable to speak, seemed to feel all the tenderness of this behaviour, and after some time thus spent in joint affliction, she put all the letters into Elinor’s hands; and then covering her face with her handkerchief, almost screamed with agony.

She expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own, and she judged of their motives by the immediate effect of their actions on herself.

That she was, to all appearance, in the last stage of a consumption, was—yes, in such a situation it was my greatest comfort. Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death; and that was given. I saw her placed in comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I visited her every day during the rest of her short life: I was with her in her last moments.”

She felt the loss of Willoughby’s character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart; his seduction and desertion of Miss Williams, the misery of that poor girl, and the doubt of what his designs might once have been on herself, preyed altogether so much on her spirits, that she could not bring herself to speak of what she felt even to Elinor; and, brooding over her sorrows in silence, gave more pain to her sister than could have been communicated by the most open and most frequent confession of them.

Good gracious! In a moment I shall see the person that all my happiness depends on—that is to be my mother!” Elinor could have given her immediate relief by suggesting the possibility of its being Miss Morton’s mother, rather than her own, whom they were about to behold; but instead of doing that, she assured her, and with great sincerity, that she did pity her—to the utter amazement of Lucy, who, though really uncomfortable herself, hoped at least to be an object of irrepressible envy to Elinor.

But that was not enough; for when people are determined on a mode of conduct which they know to be wrong, they feel injured by the expectation of any thing better from them.

Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.

in dawdling through the green-house, where the loss of her favourite plants, unwarily exposed, and nipped by the lingering frost, raised the laughter of Charlotte,

and Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book.

Nothing was wanting on Mrs. Palmer’s side that constant and friendly good humour could do, to make them feel themselves welcome. The openness and heartiness of her manner more than atoned for that want of recollection and elegance which made her often deficient in the forms of politeness; her kindness, recommended by so pretty a face, was engaging; her folly, though evident was not disgusting, because it was not conceited; and Elinor could have forgiven every thing but her laugh.

The night was cold and stormy. The wind roared round the house, and the rain beat against the windows; but Elinor, all happiness within, regarded it not. Marianne slept through every blast; and the travellers—they had a rich reward in store, for every present inconvenience.

With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman!

“As to that,” said he, “I must rub through the world as well as I can. Domestic happiness is out of the question. If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means—it may put me on my guard—at least, it may be something to live for. Marianne to be sure is lost to me for ever. Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again—”

and, if nothing more advantageous occurred, it would be better for her to marry you than be single.”

The whole of Lucy’s behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience.

Instead of falling a sacrifice to an irresistible passion, as once she had fondly flattered herself with expecting,—instead of remaining even for ever with her mother, and finding her only pleasures in retirement and study, as afterwards in her more calm and sober judgment she had determined on,—she found herself at nineteen, submitting to new attachments, entering on new duties, placed in a new home, a wife, the mistress of a family, and the patroness of a village.

I can't say it's my absolute favorites of Austen's works, but I loved the sisterly vibes in this one better than in P&P