Sense and Sensibility

Pride and Prejudice has long been one of my favorite books. As a senior in high school, I read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Pride and Prejudice. I can imagine it was a torturous reading list for the average seventeen-year-old boy, but I was in heaven. All this dramatic romance tickled me and, in many ways, rekindled my faith that literature could be fun to read. I had always done well in English, but years of Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest had left me slightly unwilling to take my required reading to bed with me. The texts I read in my senior year did much to make up for the more depressing things we read.

In any case, I digress. I've always loved Pride and Prejudice, but I think I was too young at the time to be concerned with the relentless societal commentary contained within its pages. The utter ridiculousness of Elinor's and Marianne's positions in Sense and Sensibility blind-sided me. I little expected the heavy sarcasm that dripped from the pages describing the two sisters. Having watched Emma Thompson's film but not read the book, I expected to identify as much with Elinor on the page as I did on the screen. This was definitely not the case. I felt very strongly that Marianne was too emotional and Elinor too sensible to be even slightly realistic. Elinor hides every struggle from her family, while Marianne falls physically ill from her severe depression. Everyone was just a bit over the top. However, I can't help but love the language with a passion that approaches Marianne's devotion to Willoughby. I want to make it very clear that none of the these things I have mentioned is a criticism of Austen, only of myself. I found the book delightful, and though I don't think I can approach it with the same naivete that I approached Pride and Prejudice the first time, it was still an engrossing and enlightening read.

The only thing I missed about this story was an engaging male lead. None of the men approach Mr. Darcy in all his dashing glory. Willoughby is obviously the counterpoint to Wickham and was even slightly more sinister, but neither Edward Ferrars nor Colonel Brandon seemed to be the combination of fabulous qualities that Darcy was. While Marianne ends up very well off, Elinor is basically living as a servant on her sister's grounds. I honestly can't remember what happens to Jane by the end of Pride and Prejudice, but I'm sure that she doesn't end up married to Darcy's employee. Still, the girls are both happy, as is their mother. It was a pleasant ending, beautifully written. I heartily wish this was the case more often with our "literary fiction."