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Melindam's Reviews > Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility
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by
Melindam's review
bookshelves: jane-austen-related, classics, favourites
Oct 30, 2014
bookshelves: jane-austen-related, classics, favourites
Read 7 times. Last read August 25, 2017 to September 2, 2017.
CRACKING THE AUSTEN CODE! :)
...
...
... OR ATTEMPTING IT (Review still under construction)
"Many of Jane Austen's admirers, it is true, read her novels as a means of escape into a cozy sort of Old English nirvana, but they find this escape in her pages only because, as E. M. Foster has written, the devout "Janeite" "like all regular churchgoers ... scarcely notices what is being said."
(...)
Nor do we need such a great deal of ingenuity to see that all, or nearly all, the great issues in human life make their appearance on Jane Austen's narrow stage. True, it is only a stage of petty domestic circumstance; but that, after all, is the only stage where most of us are likely to meet them.
Jane Austen's stage, then, is narrow; it is also devoted to entertainment; and we may fail to recognize the great issues of life in their humorous garb unless we are prepared to view the comic mode as an entertainment which can be both intellectually and morally serious.
(...)
Today we are less accustomed to look for universal norms in what we read ... partly because we tend to see life, and therefore literature, mainly in terms of individual experience. Jane Austen's own standards were, like those of her age, much more absolute; and as a novelist she presented all her characters in terms of of their relations to a fixed code of values. " - Ian P. Watt
Note to self and readers in general: When you are reading Jane Austen, try to consider "the universal norms" of her and her times and not only your individual experience!
OK, so I was 15 when I first read S&S and I DID read it only according to "the terms of individual" experience. I read this PEARL OF A BOOK (my present, Austen-conscious self shudders and wants to perish the thought) as a common romance novel! No wonder, I was totally shocked at the unromantic ending.
A few years later -when my then-BF did a (kinda) Willoughby on me- I appreciated the ending a bit more, but it still left me unconvinced about the book's obvious merits.
And then came the film of 1995 with Alan Rickman, The Divine, which just so totally distorted my "objective" views of Colonel Brandon's character that I have not recovered ever since! (I know, I know, I am not alone in this and IT IS such a comfort! OH, OK, I liked David Morrissey a lot as well in the BBC mini-series of 2008!).
Anyway, time went by and I read & re-read this novel (as well as all the others) and found myself -as always with ALL AUSTEN NOVELS- with different feelings/thoughts/ideas at different times.
Maybe, just maybe, I am old enough now to venture a review.
Even when we consider Sense and Sensibility through the lense of romance (unadvised, but there you go), it is definitely the least romantic JA book, even though having Marianne Dashwood, the most romantic and truly tragic JA heroine as one of its centre. (So here's one in the eye of all who shun Austen in favour of the Brontes under the falsely construed grounds that she did not know/write about passion. And I am looking at you, Charlotte Brontë, who started this.)
The novel IS NOT ABOUT ROMANCE -even though on the surface there is little else to see-, IT IS ABOUT EQUILIBRIUM, about self-knowledge & acceptance. Until the heroines don't go through their "baptism of fire" that is self-knowledge, they don't gain the right of passage to a happy ending (This is the same for Elizabeth, Emma, Catherine and even for Anne, though maybe not for Fanny and Elinor). Admittedly, the "happy ending" is rather questionable here with our 21st century-sensibilities, but let's call it that anyway. And please don't forget Alan Rickman!
TO BE CONTINUED....
...
...
... OR ATTEMPTING IT (Review still under construction)
"Many of Jane Austen's admirers, it is true, read her novels as a means of escape into a cozy sort of Old English nirvana, but they find this escape in her pages only because, as E. M. Foster has written, the devout "Janeite" "like all regular churchgoers ... scarcely notices what is being said."
(...)
Nor do we need such a great deal of ingenuity to see that all, or nearly all, the great issues in human life make their appearance on Jane Austen's narrow stage. True, it is only a stage of petty domestic circumstance; but that, after all, is the only stage where most of us are likely to meet them.
Jane Austen's stage, then, is narrow; it is also devoted to entertainment; and we may fail to recognize the great issues of life in their humorous garb unless we are prepared to view the comic mode as an entertainment which can be both intellectually and morally serious.
(...)
Today we are less accustomed to look for universal norms in what we read ... partly because we tend to see life, and therefore literature, mainly in terms of individual experience. Jane Austen's own standards were, like those of her age, much more absolute; and as a novelist she presented all her characters in terms of of their relations to a fixed code of values. " - Ian P. Watt
Note to self and readers in general: When you are reading Jane Austen, try to consider "the universal norms" of her and her times and not only your individual experience!
OK, so I was 15 when I first read S&S and I DID read it only according to "the terms of individual" experience. I read this PEARL OF A BOOK (my present, Austen-conscious self shudders and wants to perish the thought) as a common romance novel! No wonder, I was totally shocked at the unromantic ending.
A few years later -when my then-BF did a (kinda) Willoughby on me- I appreciated the ending a bit more, but it still left me unconvinced about the book's obvious merits.
And then came the film of 1995 with Alan Rickman, The Divine, which just so totally distorted my "objective" views of Colonel Brandon's character that I have not recovered ever since! (I know, I know, I am not alone in this and IT IS such a comfort! OH, OK, I liked David Morrissey a lot as well in the BBC mini-series of 2008!).
Anyway, time went by and I read & re-read this novel (as well as all the others) and found myself -as always with ALL AUSTEN NOVELS- with different feelings/thoughts/ideas at different times.
Maybe, just maybe, I am old enough now to venture a review.
Even when we consider Sense and Sensibility through the lense of romance (unadvised, but there you go), it is definitely the least romantic JA book, even though having Marianne Dashwood, the most romantic and truly tragic JA heroine as one of its centre. (So here's one in the eye of all who shun Austen in favour of the Brontes under the falsely construed grounds that she did not know/write about passion. And I am looking at you, Charlotte Brontë, who started this.)
The novel IS NOT ABOUT ROMANCE -even though on the surface there is little else to see-, IT IS ABOUT EQUILIBRIUM, about self-knowledge & acceptance. Until the heroines don't go through their "baptism of fire" that is self-knowledge, they don't gain the right of passage to a happy ending (This is the same for Elizabeth, Emma, Catherine and even for Anne, though maybe not for Fanny and Elinor). Admittedly, the "happy ending" is rather questionable here with our 21st century-sensibilities, but let's call it that anyway. And please don't forget Alan Rickman!
TO BE CONTINUED....
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Quotes Melindam Liked
“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”
― Sense and Sensibility
― Sense and Sensibility
“What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.”
― Sense and Sensibility
― Sense and Sensibility
“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.”
― Sense and Sensibility
― Sense and Sensibility
“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”
― Sense and Sensibility
― Sense and Sensibility
Reading Progress
July, 1991
–
Started Reading
July 18, 1991
–
Finished Reading
1993
–
Started Reading
1993
–
Finished Reading
1995
–
Started Reading
1995
–
Finished Reading
1999
–
Started Reading
1999
–
Finished Reading
2003
–
Started Reading
2003
–
Finished Reading
2006
–
Started Reading
2006
–
Finished Reading
October 30, 2014
– Shelved
November 4, 2014
– Shelved as:
jane-austen-related
August 30, 2016
– Shelved as:
classics
August 30, 2016
– Shelved as:
favourites
August 25, 2017
–
Started Reading
September 2, 2017
–
Finished Reading
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Tadiana ✩Night Owl�
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rated it 5 stars
Aug 25, 2017 09:25AM
I think this is my second favorite Austen book, after P&P. It used to be Persuasion, but I really think S&S passed it up in my most recent round of Austen reading.
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It is always difficult to set up this particular list. :) P&P used to be my favourite followed by S&S.
Now, it is Emma, followed by P&P, Persuasion, S&S, Northanger Abbey and then comes Mansfield Park as the "least" favourite (meaning I read it "only" every 2-year as opposed to reading all the other 5 annually).
My favorite is P&P. Has anybody seen the movie ? If you like Jane Austen I think you'll enjoy this movie
Yes, I saw it and enjoyed it a lot.
Melindam, is there an Austen Code? New to me! Anyway, I've read this twice, gave it 4 stars, but it's time for a third read. It tops a lot of "Best Ever" list. It might get a fifth star from me, but oh Im stingy with those.
:) There might be. You never know with Jane Austen. The thing I love most about her books is that you can always discover new layers/dimensions.
Melindam wrote: ":) There might be. You never know with Jane Austen. The thing I love most about her books is that you can always discover new layers/dimensions."
Austen can challenge readers. The first few lines of "Pride and Prejudice" might take a second reading. The first page of "Sense and Sensibility" might take 2 readings as there are a half dozen intersecting characters on the first page. But get this opening: "Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family. No, I warn you, that if you do not tell me we are at war, if you again allow yourself to palliate all the infamies and atrocities of this antiChrist (upon my word, I believe he is), I don't know you in the future, you are no longer my friend, no longer my faithful slave, as you say. There, how do you do, how do you do? I see I'm scaring you, sit down and talk to me." THAT'S an opening! That's a character declaration! THAT's a message to the reader: "I see I'm scaring you..." That's a challenge, absolutely, because that opening paragraph is enough to cause anyone to re shelve the book. (It's "War and Peace", natch.) But I love that opening because it is challenging, audacious, and chock full of meaning. But for me, in all of literature, my favorite opening line is just four words, and you might see it on billboards across the country every now and then, "Who is John Galt?" Well, he's right there on the first page, and oddly, right there on the first page, Rand has a character give another character a dime (I think) cause that character wants to warm up, wants a cup of coffee. And oddly, the title of that first section is "The Theme". Yes, Rand's basic premise is one should work hard, and one owns what one produces, and one should be able to freely enjoy one's own inventions and profits. BUT, right on the first page, Rand says sometimes, you gotta help your fellow man, but it's gotta be YOUR choice to do so. I love that Rand says, first and foremost, be kind and courteous. I think many people miss that. They miss that singular dimension by the end of the book. And great books have layers upon layers to be discovered, as you say. And for me, that's what makes a 5 star book: I read it and there is a new revelation. First read with "Sense" I rated it 3 stars. Second time, 4 stars. Same with "Wuthering Heights" which I hated the first time cause i thought it was supposed to be an historical romance. And it is anything BUT a romance.
I think one of the geniuses of Austen is that her books work on so many different levels. In a regular good book I will come back to it years later and probably get pretty much the same experience I got the first time. In a great book I will see new things, no matter how often I return to it.
No matter how often I reread this (and all the other Jane Austen books), I always notice different things. I also read it as a romance novel the first time and I recognised a lot of myself in Marianne (Sturm und Drang feelings and barely bothering to be polite to people you don't like)This time, I noticed that she hardly ever has anything positive to say about children.
I always enjoy and admire the way JA manages to describe a character in one scene or even one sentence.
Excellent review! Sense and Sensibility is my favorite Jane Austen, I read it when I was 13. It was actually the 1995 film that spurned me to become an Austen fan.
