Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Jane Austen  (Penguin, 1969)

371 pp.  First reading.
Posted 18 March 2006.
 

I think it was Virginia Woolf who said that even a jaded literary critic will, when she turns to Jane Austen's novels, find her critical spirit disarmed, able to do naught but simply enjoy the company of this splendid novelist and her stories.  It's a nice thought, and it rings true.  The enjoyment of her books does have that simple, uncomplicated quality. 
 
Austen's greatness is by me so readily granted that I had almost thought it a truth universally acknowledged.  But then it happened that I was reading Sense and Sensibility on the airplane when, to my surprise, the woman seated next to me ventured to ask whether I was reading it "for pleasure".  Of course I was.  "But don't you find it painful?"  It was an unexpected question, and I was about to seek clarification when I noticed that my interlocutor was clutching Michel Foucoult's History of Sexuality to her chest. Her question suddenly took on sinister overtones. My heart fell, and Gandalf whispered in my ear, “There are fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the earth”  -- things deeper and darker than mere ignorance or bad taste.  I should have bravely soldiered on, but an interruption from the stewardess provided an exit.  A moment later she had returned to her book, and I, more appreciatively than before, returned to mine.

Sense and Sensibility was Austen's first novel, and I would rank it, with Emma and Pride and Prejudice, among her finest.  It follows the loves and courtships of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne.  The former is tactful, reserved, and rational; the latter is rash, impulsive, and emotional.  You might say that it is a study in contrasts between reason and feeling – or, not to put too fine a point on it, between sense and sensibility.  

I have achieved minor notoriety among my friends as a reader who consistently fails to remember how books end.  It's a fact that I do forget, but it's not a point of pride.  Jane Austen's books have always been an encouragement in that regard; I can always remember how they end. There is a happy ending with marriages. In this case getting there is a bit of a bumpy ride, and perhaps the plot suffers a little from a deus ex machina, but I'm not really bothered.  The pleasure here is in the telling.

[Austen’s irony]
The whole of Lucy’s behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience.

[A bit of moral wisdom]
…when people are determined on a mode of conduct which they know to be wrong, they feel injured by the expectation of anything better from them.

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