Sense and Sensibility is the first novel by the British witer Jane Austen (1775-1817) and was published in 1811. The novel is about the history of two sisters, Elionor and Marianne whose antagonistic personalities illustrate the two female answers facing the dominat hypocrisy.
This is a book with some main characters, but with many minor characters, and maybe you feel lost throughout the book.
The two sisters Elionor and Marianne have different pesonalities.
Elionor, the eldest was very understanding, and possessed a coolness of judgment, which let her though only nineteen, be her mother's counsellor. She had an excellent heart and her feelings were strong, but she knew how to govern them.
Marianne was sensitive and clever, but eager in everything, her sorrows and her joys had no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting. She was everything but prudent.
Jane Austen was very young when she wrote her first novel, she was about 19 years old. And I wonder which was her intention, in these times when there were few women who published books.
It has been interesting for me to realise how these two young ladies live at this time, and how was this English society, gentry families three centuries ago.
Perhaps the Austen's intention was not to debate the superior value of either sense or sensibility in good judgement, perhaps her writtings were just a way to escape of her fate. Austen in her novel highlights the dependence of women and men on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Real love on marriage is something secondary.
Although Jane Austen was very
young when she wrote the novel, she was already very sharp and ironic in her writtings.
For exemple, Marianne, the passionate woman who loves deeply, she got married with Colonel Brandon, A man who was not her authentic love, he was just a pretender, but we can read in the book : "Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate (irony ?). Instead of falling to an irresistible passion, as once she had, she found herself at nineteen placed in a new home, the wife of Colonel Brandon, the mistress of a family, and the patroness of a village"...
I notice that the sense of the hipocrisy was very strong (it seems that not other options there were for women and men at this time and in this social level), but Marianne was a nice person and she found her own hapiness in forming his, and soon she began to love Colonel Brandon deeply, for she could never love by halves.
We read a romantic end for the two sisters. but for other minor characters with not so high level of human qualities, the theatrical performance of course will be broken.
I think Jane Austen had a very elegant writting style, with sharp, ironic, polite and kind dialogs and comments, which make the readings a pleasure.
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