Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

As promised, here’s my review of Sense and Sensibility. I really should have put up this discretion before I started reviewing books, but oh well, too late now. I have a sort of strange way of looking at books. As a literature major, I look at many technical aspects of what I read. This includes pacing, diction, characterization, historical context, etc. However, I’m also a bad literature student in that I’m also very subjective. I have a personal investment in everything I read so I also review and rate books according to my own personal response and feelings. As I have been told by many a professor, I should not think of the characters as real people, but as projections of an author’s motives and professional desires. I’ll stick with that in my papers, but all that crap is going out the window for this blog. Also, all my reviews will contain spoilers; you have been warned.

Now, continuing on to S&S. I’ll preface my review by saying I have a love/hate relationship with Jane Austen: I love Pride and Prejudice, and I hate Persuasion. I’m all for quiet and demure romances, but for me to be invested or engaged in a love story, it needs to have some degree of passion and likeable characters. Sense and Sensibility is pretty much lacking in both.

S&S was Austen’s first published novel, and as the novel was more of an intangible and fledgling idea rather than a full-scale genre, I can forgive her of several technical failures. While I may be able to forgive the author, however, I still can’t ignore the book’s problems. The opening is rather slow. I still can’t decide whether the book has not enough exposition or too much of it. We do, however, meet our two female leads, Marianne, who’s like that really happy person that everyone knows and secretly hates, and Elinor, who is intelligent and likeable, but also quite dull. We also meet a third sister, Margaret, who disappears for the rest of the novel because she’s apparently too young to be important at all.

Austen’s social commentary starts right away, but rather than the acerbic yet subtle witticisms seen in the author’s later work, the social commentary in S&S is like an in-your-face explosion. The narrator seems rather cranky, the characters are far too exaggerated and unrealistic, and everyone says “monstrous” a lot. This novel reads more like a sarcastic satire than a dry, tongue-in-cheek observation of Regency life. It’s a little off-putting to say the least.

The male leads are even less appealing than the female ones. Willoughby is attractive but an ass. Edward is nice but boring and spineless. Colonel Brandon is the only interesting and likeable man in the whole novel, but he’s essentially ignored for most of it.

The plot of this novel really falls short. The central plot between Willoughby and Marianne is admittedly pretty engaging and will keep you turning pages. However, after the climax and the departure of the sisters from town, the pacing really begins to just drag on. On and on. So I’ll just skip to the end. Attention-spoilers coming up.

I hated the end. Willoughby is entirely irredeemable in my book. So is Edward. I really did not like Edward; he was extremely boring and annoying, with almost no redeeming qualities. I do not think it is honorable to marry someone you dislike, thus creating an unhappy future for both, just because you said you would. Honestly, I was hoping that Marianne would die so that Elinor and Colonel Brandon could end up together. While Marianne does become a likeable character in the end, I still do not see how she and Colonel Brandon could ever be compatible and fall in love. (Maybe if Austen had actually depicted their romance rather than just tacking it on to the end, I wouldn’t be so pissed.)

To wrap up this review: Sense and Sensibility was not a torture to read. It did have some very good moments, and I enjoyed reading most of it, but it will never hold a place in my heart like Pride and Prejudice.