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readalert 's review for:
Sense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen
This is my third Austen novel and definitely my least favorite so far. Undoubtedly, that is influenced by the fact that unlike with Pride and Prejudice and Emma, I don't have nostalgia for an adaptation of this one that I was a fan of as a teenager. It is also just because of the text though. All of the flaws of Pride and Prejudice and Emma are also present in this book, but magnified to a larger degree. It's a big morality tale about why being a normal teenage girl with normal teenage feelings makes you a bad person. But even that isn't particularly well executed- Marianne's cosmic punishment for behaving improperly around her crush and committing the crime of wanting her family to pay attention to her when she's sad is that she falls ill and nearly dies. But it is a cosmic punishment, not an effect of her improper behavior; it would be one thing if her illness was a continuation of the breakdown she had where she couldn't eat or sleep properly because Willoughby married someone else, but she gets sick because she took a walk when it was still wet after rain. There's not a throughline there like I think we are supposed to read.
The relationships are also nothing. Marianne doesn't give a shit about Colonel Brandon for 90% of the novel, and even once she changes her mind, it's just gratitude for his kindness, not love. And yes, it would likely grow to love in the fullness of time, but ultimately she marries him because her family wants her to and because it secures her financially, which is a wild redemption arc for the woman who wrote Lizzie Bennet to write. Meanwhile, Elinor does love Edward, and he is charming in the like two or three chapters we see them talk together, but they do only talk in like two or three chapters. Their entire relationship is telling, not showing.
Certainly the most important relationship in the novel is that between Elinor and Marianne, but I don't even find that particularly compelling, because it is composed almost entirely of Elinor telling Marianne she should behave better or her feeling superior to her sister in her own thoughts. They clearly love each other and care about one another's happiness, but that takes a constant backseat to the morality tale about the evils of deeply felt emotions. There's very little give and take with their relationship; Elinor is simply always in the right except for the one criticism that she doesn't confide in Marianne, but even that is due to extenuating circumstances that still frame Elinor as correct.
I still had fun with the book; I do enjoy the style of Austen's writing, and it was filled with a lot of twists and turns that often had me gasping aloud. But I don't see myself revisiting this one like I do with other Austen works. 2.5⭐️
The relationships are also nothing. Marianne doesn't give a shit about Colonel Brandon for 90% of the novel, and even once she changes her mind, it's just gratitude for his kindness, not love. And yes, it would likely grow to love in the fullness of time, but ultimately she marries him because her family wants her to and because it secures her financially, which is a wild redemption arc for the woman who wrote Lizzie Bennet to write. Meanwhile, Elinor does love Edward, and he is charming in the like two or three chapters we see them talk together, but they do only talk in like two or three chapters. Their entire relationship is telling, not showing.
Certainly the most important relationship in the novel is that between Elinor and Marianne, but I don't even find that particularly compelling, because it is composed almost entirely of Elinor telling Marianne she should behave better or her feeling superior to her sister in her own thoughts. They clearly love each other and care about one another's happiness, but that takes a constant backseat to the morality tale about the evils of deeply felt emotions. There's very little give and take with their relationship; Elinor is simply always in the right except for the one criticism that she doesn't confide in Marianne, but even that is due to extenuating circumstances that still frame Elinor as correct.
I still had fun with the book; I do enjoy the style of Austen's writing, and it was filled with a lot of twists and turns that often had me gasping aloud. But I don't see myself revisiting this one like I do with other Austen works. 2.5⭐️