Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1811)

Two sisters, different as night and day, seek love and matrimony in Jane Austen's first published novel.

Book Review: Sense and Sensibility is so ubiquitous, the classic novel, the screen adaptations, that it's become part of our common knowledge. There is no need to repeat the story, but only make a few observations. Jane Austen's writing style takes a bit of getting used to, averaging about four commas per sentence with not infrequent semi-colons just for fun. But once accustomed, there's a certain comforting formality about her language, like a cozy blanket on a winter day, mirroring the cozy formality of the story and customs of the time. But within that comfort, Austen writes with a wry, arch, dry humor, and sarcasm, irony, and the occasional satirical bite, all of which serve to throw some daring decolletage among the prim and proper. Austen is not as socially conscious a writer as Dickens, instead writing of a class in which having only three servants puts one near poverty and those servants are as near invisible as it's possible to be. But beneath the class consciousness in Sense and Sensibility is the awareness that a woman who makes a bad match, or fails to make a match, could fall into genuine, desperate poverty unless a kind relation serves as safety net. Hence the constant concern and mention of money and income, making Austen appear part accountant. Marrying for money, for both women and men, is understandable and forgivable as a means to maintain class, which is why marrying for love is almost a surprise ending. And although perhaps not a feminist tract, because of their potentially desperate position Austen throws some sharp elbows in the fight for women's place in society. Of one character she notes that through his "unaccountable bias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly woman." When a mother considers a woman for the wife of one of her two sons, the comment is made, "The lady, I suppose, has no choice in the affair," the assumption being she will willingly marry either son for money. When a young man is thrown over for money, he is "convinced that nothing could have been more natural ... nor more self-evident." At the same time, the main actors, both heroes and villains, in Sense and Sensibility are primarily women, having all the best lines and doing most of the heavy lifting in moving the plot. The fate of the three pairs of lovers rests on women: one rational, protecting her family; one passionate, and almost dying for it; one scheming, getting what she wished for if not what she wanted. Our protagonist is logical, educated, uninterested in the stereotypical feminine concerns of the time, and makes the best match of the three. A classic, in all senses of the word. [4 Stars]