Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: reading reflection
Jane Austen loves to gossip. And I love that for her. And I also love it for classic literature, that we've canonized a book that comes through with a gasping, can you believe this happened? tone. Like she's clamoring over herself to get to the next wild twist in the story of these two sisters and their complicated romantic entanglements. Once you strip away the regency language, this is just some lady telling you about the romantic pitfalls of two girls and some wildly audacious men. I haven't read Pride and Prejudice in almost a decade (and have been meaning to read more Austen ever since), but in my recollection, it's a much more buttoned up narrative, much more shaped, and while still voicey, more precisely contained. I like both modes, but I'm not surprised Sense and Sensibility was her first novel.
I always find it funny that Austen, in some circles, is held up as a precursor to modern romance novelists, that it's her love stories she's most remembered for because I always find her to be more so using the romantic threads as a venue for discussing her societal and class commentary. Especially in Sense and Sensibility, Austen spends much of the novel, but especially in the early chapters, spelling out the family's financial situation, and each new character is assessed by their fortune as they enter the scene. This information informs every interaction that follows on. There are plenty of feelings, but it is the practicalities that win out at the end of the day. They also serve to explain the holes that emotionally do not track in the development of relationships. Then as now, people do not act purely off of love when it comes to dating and relationships. Much of it does boil down to improving one's situation, finding stability through the alliance of marriage. Interestingly, it is the men, more so, who end up social climbing through marriage, or at least trying to. Though it is understood that Elinor and Marianne need to marry well to overcome their brother stiffing them on the inheritance. Austen uses her novels as a way to make commentary on social class above all else.
The book takes place on both rural estates and in London, showing the contrast in socializing in these various places. In the fallout of their father's deaths, the family must leave their beloved Norland to live in Barton Cottage with their mother. It is there, adjusting to their new situation, that they begin to meet the people that will populate their social situation. Elinor and Marianne both fall in love, though Marianne does so loudly, buoyantly, and full of feeling while Elinor feels it is her role in the family to withhold her feelings and be sensible above all else. She tries not to lead with her heart or fall into Marianne's dramatics, but the open question around whether her new romantic thread will come to fruition fills her mind.
I particularly enjoyed this Austen novel because the romances aren't straightforward. It's less a matter of evolving feelings and being wooed than complex webs of withheld information and shifting loyalties. The sisters find out rather dramatically through distant acquaintances that the men they love aren't exactly being honest with them. Marianne falls deeply for a man that then ghosts her as soon as she gets to London. He sees her at a ball and looks right through her; he won't respond to her letters after doing everything but explicitly promising her marriage. Elinor similarly learns that her beloved is actually secretly engaged to another woman. It is all quite dramatic and surprising, and I don't know why I was shocked to learn that men have been leading women on and toying with their emotions forever. In many ways, the romantic entanglements in the novel felt incredibly modern. Because all of the information is gathered indirectly, the game of telephone also leaves plenty of room for twists as the truth slowly trickles to the surface. The book will keep you guessing about where the Dashwood sisters will land until the very end.
Part of what delights me about classics is realizing how little has changed over time. There's a comfort in knowing that we all face the same problems, just wearing different outfits, with varying technologies, and increased monetary inflation. There were also plenty of phrases that surprised me as I was reading that I thought were fairly modern inventions, even as they are regarded as cliches nowadays. I admire their ability to persist through time.
While there are sections that get tedious as we read about very similar parties that are not at all edited for brevity or to get past the formalities, the repetitiveness is easily powered through for just how much Austen packs into this story as we get to learn about all the main players and then see the whole social sphere's reflections on them. There are so many layers at play in this classic, and I find it's one that is fairly easily legible in its concerns to the modern reader. I understand better now why they're doing another Sense and Sensibility adaption, this time starring Daisy Edgar Jones.
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