Sense and Sensibility, Part 2

I thought of Marianne when I saw this tree. She loved imperfect trees!

As I observed when reading about Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s novels are relatable because the situations she writes about are timeless. The same is true with Sense and Sensibility. There’s the age-old “he likes her, but she likes someone else” scenario that we see with Colonel Brandon/Marianne/Willoughby. Haven’t we all liked someone who liked someone else? Also, Marianne’s heartbreak is universal—haven’t we all been crushed by someone we believed we were meant to be with? This evokes a feeling of empathy within the reader. When Marianne has her heart broken by Willoughby, you want to come visit her, armed with some cheesy DVDs and a bottle of wine to comfort her. And then proceed to egg Willoughby’s house, Combe Magna. Elinor’s situation is also relatable. After she discovers that Edward is secretly engaged, she must try to appear objective in front of both the calculating Lucy and Edward. She has to try to keep her feelings private when others try to tease them out of her, like Mrs. Jennings, who is a universal representation of the middle-aged lady who is always in everyone’s business.

Now, a word about the men that the Dashwood sisters end up with. I think I prefer Edward Ferrars. At first, he seems like he’s kind of dull. But he has that nerdy allure that I would no doubt be drawn to. And he has good taste in women—Elinor’s pretty cool. However, I’ve never completely warmed to Colonel Brandon. He seems…ever so slightly creepy in his attentions to Marianne. I think it’s the age difference between him and Marianne (when they meet, he’s thirty-five, and she’s barely seventeen). He’s always underfoot. But he’s stable and quietly devoted, and Marianne needs someone like that.

While rereading Sense and Sensibility, I had forgotten that Willoughby visits Elinor, when he thinks Marianne is dying. His conversation with Elinor humanizes him a little. But I still think he’s awful. My opinion of Lucy Steele remains the same as well. I’m tickled by the fact that Mrs. Jennings calls her a “worthless hussy” when everyone learns that Lucy has eloped with Robert Ferrars. Lucy’s elopement is pretty much a deus ex machina, but at least Edward, dear simple Edward, wasn’t tied down to such a horrid woman.

Great passage (Elinor is talking to Marianne about Willoughby, and in typical Elinor fashion, tells the absolute truth about his character): “The whole of his behaviour,” replied Elinor, “from the beginning to the end of the affair has been grounded on selfishness. It was selfishness which first made him sport with your affections; which afterwards, when his own were engaged, made him delay the confession of it, and which finally carried him from Barton. His own enjoyment, or his own case, was in every particular his ruling principle.”

 Up next: Madame de Treymes (by my beloved Edith Wharton)

Sense and Sensibility, Part 1

I am tickled pink by the cover of this edition!

Author: Jane Austen

Category: I first read this about two and a half years ago, when I was unemployed. I enjoyed it because it was actually funny, but it also had a sense of melancholy that I could relate to at the time.

My thoughts: I think that between the two Jane Austen novels I’ve read, I will always prefer Pride and Prejudice. However, Sense and Sensibility has its own charms, and I like it more than I did when I read it for the first time. I feel as if Jane Austen goes deeper here than in Pride and Prejudice on the subject of unrequited love and its emotional effects. As any preteen girl can tell you, crushes are hard! I’m not finished reading the book yet (I’ve got about 100 pages to go), and I’d like to write about the characters first, as I did with Pride and Prejudice.

I think when I was younger, I was like Marianne Dashwood in terms of personality. I felt passionately about my opinions, staunchly defended them, and freely spoke my mind. Then I got older, and discovered tact. Marianne doesn’t worry about the politeness that dominates this society and its conversations. If she doesn’t want to do something, she doesn’t make polite excuse. She just says that she’s not interested. Of course, this leaves her sister Elinor to smooth over any ruffled feathers. The fact that Marianne feels things very deeply is manifests itself in her swift infatuation with Willoughby and her shattered reaction to his cold treatment of her later. Marianne’s heartbreak is incredibly palpable. I suppose that the moment when you realize you are very wrong about ideas that you thought were unshakeable is always heartbreaking. However, Marianne brings my favorite moment in the novel, as seen in the Great Passages at the end of the post.

Now, Elinor. She is a rock, a steady presence in a novel full of mean girls (Mrs. Ferrars and Fanny Dashwood) and silly people (Mrs. Jennings, Sir John, and Mrs. Palmer). Elinor knows how to take care of business. She withholds her emotions, and keeps the secrets of herself and others, even though it causes inner turmoil. She reminds me a bit of Victoria Leonard from one of my favorite novels, Summer Sisters. Elinor can read people in a way that her mother and sister can’t. She’s suspicious, rightly, of Willoughby’s intentions. In discussing Elinor, her rival and foil, Lucy Steele must be mentioned. What a vile creature! She is cunning (and not in a good way) and calculating. There were passages when I frankly admired Elinor for not getting up and smacking Lucy Steele in the face. Elinor, instead of playing games like Lucy, is determined to be a grown-up about the love triangle between Elinor, Lucy, and Edward.

At first glance, Willoughby and Wickham seem almost interchangeable as Austen villains. But the undercurrent of danger is stronger with Willoughby. Wickham is a jerk, but Willoughby downright dangerous. He is seducer and ruiner of women. His attentions to Marianne and her family are almost bipolar: he’s familiar enough with the Dashwood family to practically order Mrs. Dashwood not to make any alterations to their cottage (at that point, he got on my nerves—who is he to tell a grown woman what she should or shouldn’t do to her own house?). But then, when he sees Marianne at a party, he is so so cold to her.

Earlier, I mentioned the novel’s mean girls, Mrs. Ferrars and Fanny Dashwood. Like mother, like daughter (they would probably get along well with Caroline Bingley from Pride and Prejudice). They are nice to Lucy Steele only because they don’t like Elinor. However, Marianne puts them in their place, as seen in the moment below, when the two ladies are praising Miss Morton, who they hope will marry Edward Ferrars, at the expense of our beloved Elinor.

Great passage: Marianne could not bear this. She was already greatly displeased with Mrs. Ferrars; and such ill-timed praise of another at Elinor’s expense, though she had not any notion of what was principally meant by it, provoked her immediately to say with warmth: “This is admiration of a very particular kind! What is Miss Morton to us? Who knows, or who cares, for her? It is Elinor of whom we think and speak.”

My Kind of Town!

Last week, I went to Chicago, home of Maud Martha and landing station to many Great Migrators, to visit my friend Alex. We had a blast! We visited the Art Institute, and stayed there for hours. We learned that your ticket is good until the museum closes, so we went to the museum in the morning, left to have lunch, and came back to see more art. It is a stupendous museum. We also went on a Chicago architecture tour. I loved seeing the old Montgomery Ward buildings (my family used to be big fans of the Montgomery Ward catalog; I have a Montgomery Ward blanket that’s probably older than me, and is in great condition!). We also stopped by the Chicago Children’s Museum, where I took the picture above, a replica of Willis Tower (that’s its proper name, but it will always be Sears Tower to me).

P.S. I decided to read Sense and Sensibility.