Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
#26 in my book challenge for the year, and #2 in my summer reading challenge was Sense and Sensibility by Austen. I very much enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Emma, so I was surprised by how little I liked S & S. The first few pages of the book are entirely concerned with explaining in detail why the two heroines, Elinor and Marianne, are poor. The book finished stronger than it started, but I was not at all surprised by its surprise and the characters did not engage my interest. The two heroines and their love interests are the four “best” characters in the book, but I found none of them very complex or compelling. Almost without exception, all the other characters are mean-spirited, stupid, or both. S & S was published before P & P, but parts of them were written concurrently. I think the later publication of P & P allowed Austen valuable time to develop as a writer. Like P & P, S & S is about issues of class, and public/private life. They both began as epistolary novels. But in S & S, Austen did not yet have the light touch with her non-central characters that enabled them to be interesting, sympathetic or funny even though not as well-behaved and insightful as the main characters.
June 13th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
I read both of these books last summer, and discussed them at length in my fab book group. If I remember correctly, Jane Austin was, like, 18 when she wrote this? I agree that S & S lacked the character development that P & P had. But Austin was a reported to be a closet lesbian, and I believe as she got older, she had less concern about actual pride, predjudice, sense and sensibility in her own life. I think she ‘came out’ in a way, with her writing as she matured.
I also think that she died very young?
June 14th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Well, that pretty much summed up my thoughts on S&S vs P&P. I just did not enjoy it, which disappoints me as it was my first book for the Summer Reading Challenge.
June 15th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
She died in her mid forties. The ending of S & S reminded me of the end of Little Women, in which Jo married the older Professor Behr. Alcott also possibly preferred women, so adding a conventional marriage to a non-sexual male was her way of deferring to the demands of the reading public. S & S, with its double marriage to two non threatening, non handsome men, strikes me as similar.