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A review by lory_enterenchanted
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
emotional
reflective
tense
3.5
I decided it was a good time to reread Jane Austen, in conjunction with the 2025 celebrations of 250 years since her birth.
I'm going through my hardcover illustrated editions, some of which I have never properly read. Sense and Sensibility is a Heritage Press edition with lovely typography and strange, blocky illustrations by Helen Sewell. Though not pretty, I find them quite appropriate to this book, which is full of unpleasant characters and painful situations. It's basically protracted agony for Elinor throughout, from two fronts: dealing with her sister's emotional self-indulgence in her affair with Willoughby, while concealing her own pain at being unable to marry her true love, Edward. To add another twist to the screw, Elinor is taunted by Edward's heartless fiancée, Lucy.
After her jilting and a psychologically induced illness, Marianne learns a lesson about selfishness, and everything sorts itself appropriately, if a bit suddenly, in the end. It is altogether a book about being selfish (Marianne and Willoughby) and selfless (Elinor and Edward). The latter is rewarded, but so is the former (in the person of Lucy and Robert). Selflessness in fact has to be its own reward, the sense that one has done the right thing. Selfishness will win the day on a material level, something we can see happening everywhere at the moment.
I find it most interesting to see how Austen works out such a moral situation through characters representing the kind of people she would have known herself, their inner nature revealed through outer actions and conversations of the most banal kind. I think it's her genius to point toward that moral-spiritual aspect of ordinary life, bringing down what was once the stuff of gods and heroes into the context of her middle-class genteel world.
Something about this book does not allow me to enjoy it as much as some others, though. I don't truly warm to the characters that are supposed to be sympathetic, and there is no relief from the tension and sadness, other than laughing at the unpleasant characters is about the only way. It's a book that takes a dim view of most of human nature, with just a few points of light.
I'm going through my hardcover illustrated editions, some of which I have never properly read. Sense and Sensibility is a Heritage Press edition with lovely typography and strange, blocky illustrations by Helen Sewell. Though not pretty, I find them quite appropriate to this book, which is full of unpleasant characters and painful situations. It's basically protracted agony for Elinor throughout, from two fronts: dealing with her sister's emotional self-indulgence in her affair with Willoughby, while concealing her own pain at being unable to marry her true love, Edward. To add another twist to the screw, Elinor is taunted by Edward's heartless fiancée, Lucy.
After her jilting and a psychologically induced illness, Marianne learns a lesson about selfishness, and everything sorts itself appropriately, if a bit suddenly, in the end. It is altogether a book about being selfish (Marianne and Willoughby) and selfless (Elinor and Edward). The latter is rewarded, but so is the former (in the person of Lucy and Robert). Selflessness in fact has to be its own reward, the sense that one has done the right thing. Selfishness will win the day on a material level, something we can see happening everywhere at the moment.
I find it most interesting to see how Austen works out such a moral situation through characters representing the kind of people she would have known herself, their inner nature revealed through outer actions and conversations of the most banal kind. I think it's her genius to point toward that moral-spiritual aspect of ordinary life, bringing down what was once the stuff of gods and heroes into the context of her middle-class genteel world.
Something about this book does not allow me to enjoy it as much as some others, though. I don't truly warm to the characters that are supposed to be sympathetic, and there is no relief from the tension and sadness, other than laughing at the unpleasant characters is about the only way. It's a book that takes a dim view of most of human nature, with just a few points of light.