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In a typical romantic comedy, two young characters meet, are attracted to each other, but experience all sorts of complications that keep them apart �� social pressure, other partners, &c. Eventually though, love prevails, they are reunited and live happily ever after; the end. The tone is, for the most part, lighthearted. This romcom blueprint is as old as the hills but, in a way, never gets old. The earliest example of it would probably be Menander’s plays; endless variations came after that: from the chivalric romances to Shakespeare’s comedies, to �ѴDZ���è����, to Marivaux, to countless fairy tales of would-be princesses. And closer to our time, Harlequin novels, French art-house films, and innumerable popular Hollywood comedies and Bollywood musicals.

One could bet that such an overabundant genre would keep banging on about the same old things ad nauseam. In a way, it does. But what is fascinating is that, while the basic plot has become completely formulaic and clichéd, each period, each author has managed to convey a specific view, a specific zeitgeist on love and the search for romantic bliss: from medieval courtly love to post-modern sexting and Tinder virtual dating tribulations. Jane Austen takes place in the middle of this long literary and artistic tradition.

Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel (1811), displays a significant command of modern writing techniques: free indirect speech, subtext, scenes, summaries, plot twists, red herrings, MacGuffins and cliffhangers. No wonder she is still widely read and considered one of the most entertaining writers in the English language. Austen builds her novels with plot devices that crime novels authors, a century later, will use to even greater dramatic effect. The only difference is that the quiz or puzzle isn’t who the murderer might be, but rather who will get married and with whom.

Sense and Sensibility is lighthearted and sparkly to all appearances, but there is also a darker side to this novel. It depicts the late 18-century English gentry, a social environment where romantic love is chiefly governed by financial considerations and parental interference. Marriages are, for the most part, arranged, and the conflicts that make the crispy bits of the story often come from a misalignment between the inclinations of the heart and the tyranny of household finances. Hence the constant obsession with income, inheritance, estate, property, dowry, annuity, economic power and so forth. Instead of Sense and Sensibility, the title of this novel could have been Love and Money.

Austen’s book is not just about the dichotomy of human dispositions �� sense (Elinor) vs sensibility (Marianne). It is also and more essentially about the duplicity and treacherous pitfalls of social interactions. Austen marks almost every dialogue with ironic comments and subtle observations about physical signs, such as the flushing of the skin, the movement of the eyes, the fidgeting of the hands or feet, &c. All this reveals layer upon layer of cognitive dissonance below the seemingly well mannered verbal conversations. Underneath a masquerade of proper conduct and decorum, the whole social game gradually develops as a corrupt nest of vipers, booby-trapped with subterfuge, economic rapacity, concealed mindfucks, gossip-mongering old nags (Mrs Jennings), moneygrubbing fishwives (Mrs Ferrars, old and young), and devious, selfish young beaux (Willoughby and Edward).

Austen makes it amply clear that a character such as Marianne, always blunt and uncompromising, is maladjusted to this social milieu. In the course of the novel, we see her, at first, as a zesty, vibrant, high-spirited girl. She soon becomes an infatuated young woman, prone to outpours of suffocation and hyperventilation. She then falls into a severe state of depression and illness. And at the close of the novel, she is a weakened, dispirited housewife, married to an insipid older man she has never loved �� yet, she is inexplicably happy! Meanwhile, Elinor, the level-headed, restrained, stilted and sightly boring sister, ends up with a happy (read: compromise) marriage of her own. In short: sense and sensibility, same difference.

The predictable “happy ending�� feels completely artificial and botched, as if Austen had been reluctant to write the unavoidable conclusion of her book. But this mushy dénouement comes with a subtle morality bonus. Austen isn’t ready to smash every social convention of her time. Still, her acerbic satire is the first drop of acid that will eventually erode the oppressive lid of the age-old capitalistic patriarchy.