The novel starts by challenging the reader. The first two chapters deal with Entailment and money, and how much should be given to John Dashwood's step sisters. It deals with pounds, and Allotments for servants and carriages. These chapters seemed to test my will. My love of Austen and desire to devour the novel, however, was strong: strong enough to get me through the exposition. As with Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice before it, I read and re-read, taking apart each sentence, and finding each foreign word's meaning. As I fell into the story, I began to write in the margins, and underline passages. I made a list of words that I did not know, and soon there was not a page that was not written on.
With good books, I always find, the reader's relationship with the story and the characters changes, from first opening it, to reading the last word. Apart from what ever troubles befall the characters, the reader begins to better know them, and a relationship forms. With Elinor I felt a Solidarity, and a likeness of character. Margaret, as well, I felt close too, as we are both thirteen. With others, like Mrs. Jennings and Lucy Steele, I was shocked to find their true characters. With Mrs. Jennings, I expected to find a Gossiper, who was not very bright, and interfered with every one's lives. Instead, I found a steadily kind, friendly woman; she was a doting mother and grandmother, a good friend to the Misses Dashwood, and, even when she believed Col. Brandon to be proposing to her friend, she moved away, to where she could not overhear, even though she dearly wanted to listen. With Lucy Steele, I was at first at a lost to find a fault in her, except perhaps her acutely lacking mind. By the end her character had been exposed.
The beaux in Sense and Sensibility widely differ. There is Edward Ferrars, brother of the horrible sister-in-law, Mrs. John Dashwood. He reminded me of Darcy, from Pride and Prejudice. He is shy, and only very agreeable, once he is better acquainted with his company. It recently struck me, on re-watching the Emma Thompson S&S movie, that Edward was the beau most likely to be not what he seemed. He comes from a Vile and Proud family, he fails to visit the Dashwood women at Barton cottage for a large part of the novel, and then is always disappearing. And yet his character is 'til the last, Honest and true to his word. It is Willoughby, Marianne's hero, and at first very nice and zealous in his love for Marianne, who betrays all, and is not who he appears.
Willoughby rescues a hurt Marianne, in the middle a storm, and carries her back to the cottage, in a very heroic way. He courts her for many weeks, and then, one day, suddenly leaves. He never proposed to M., of course, but it is still despicable, how he acted towards her. The trouble of who wrote the malicious and also fallacious letter to Marianne, ending their relationship, denying ever having loved her, and sending back all of her notes, is the one mystery left unsolved. Of course, Willoughby tells Elinor that his fiance dictated that letter, and that every word pained him, and Elinor, the almost omniscient character, believes and pities him, but Willoughby has never really given us a reason to trust him.
Colonel Brandon, who really never had a place in my heart until he gave Edward the Delaford parish, seemed to be expected to marry either of the Misses Dashwood, as though they were Interchangeable. Of course, this was not Brandon's doing, nor Austen's invention; from what I understand, this was generally the case, in the day. In Brandon, I at first felt little interest. (I now realise that the feeling of familiarity I had with regard to his story line, came from the likeness to Jane Eyre. Brandon is twice Marianne's age, as Mr. Rochester was to Jane Eyre, when they married in Charlotte Bronte's novel.) However, Brandon character is almost the best of all the beaux. He is steady, faithful, and good; in short, everything Willoughby was thought, and failed to be.
In watching Charles Davies' BBC adaptation this morning, I found myself becoming more and more allied with Brandon. He was always in the background, the one that Marianne liked but did not love. Davies always gives the men larger parts, as Austen often does not, which gave Brandon's character a chance to come out. He is a splendid writer, and I feel that it would have made Austen proud. I highly recommend the three-part series--it is at once concise and expansive in its detail, both true to the text, and novel in its voice.
As well as Emma Thompson wrote in her S&S film, as well as Ang Lee directed, and as brilliantly as Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson acted, I dare say Andrew Davies' is a bit better. It is, at least, truer to the text. Somewhat unfortunately, this gives Willoughby more screen-time, but it also leaves you wanting almost nothing. In addition, Charity Wakefield is an absolutely perfect Marianne, Lucy Boynton is a perfect Margaret and David Morrissey a perfect Colonel Brandon. A true masterpiece.
Sense and Sensibility, as with Pride and Prejudice, had a complex plot that nearly killed me towards the end, and took quite a bit of work to understand. It took watching the films several times, re-reading and reading passages again, and a long time, to figure out what happened to each story line, to each character. It only gets easier, I suppose, because I was conscious, with S&S, who I liked and why, and who I disliked, and why. It took a year, with P&P, and six months with Persuasion, to learn to love the book. With Sense and Sensibility, I now very much like it, though I can't decide if I like it better than P&P.
Of course, I read Jane Eyre and then Pride and Prejudice in sixth grade, and Persuasion in seventh. I suppose both the experience of having read three novels like this, combined with what I have learned in the last two (is it two? or three?) years, have only made it easier to appreciate S&S.
I have a list of books about Jane Austen and her time, as well as a few dozen books I've been meaning to read. My plan for this winter is to collect firewood, build fires, and read in front of the fire.
I am now again in love with Austen. I really do want to read Mansfield Park, but I think I'll let that desire fuel my reading Emma, so that I will read it quickly (no more than a few weeks), and can then have a lunch with Cruce Stark for my birthday (in April), to discuss Austen. I am looking forward to it, but I am torn between wanting to read Austen and every book about her or her life, and the stack of books I am neglecting.
Are not Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes every bit as deserving of my attentions as Emma Woodhouse? I suppose I will just have to hurry up and finish the two books of short stories by Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. After that, I shall surround my self with Austen and Regency Era books, work on keeping the fire going, and my supply of firewood, marsh-mellows, and hot chocolate from running out.
An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
-Augustine Birrell
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