Sense and Sensibility (Everyman's Library)
by Jane Austen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jane AustenEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1992-03-10
ISBN: 0679409874
Number of pages: 408
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Summary of Sense and Sensibility (Everyman's Library)
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)In its marvelously perceptive portrayal of two young women in love, Sense and Sensibility is the answer to those critics and readers who believe that Jane Austen?s novels, despite their perfection of form and tone, lack strong feeling. Its two heroines?so utterly unlike each other?both undergo the most violent passions when they are separated from the men they love.
What differentiates them, and gives this extraordinary book its complexity and brilliance, is the way each expresses her suffering: Marianne?young, impetuous, ardent?falls into paroxysms of grief when she is rejected by the dashing John Willoughby; while her sister, Elinor?wiser, more sensible, more self-controlled?masks her despair when it appears that Edward Ferrars is to marry the mean-spirited and cunning Lucy Steele.
All, of course, ends happily?but not until Elinor?s ?sense? and Marianne?s ?sensibility? have equally worked to reveal the profound emotional life that runs beneath the surface of Jane Austen?s immaculate and irresistible art.
Though not the first novel she wrote, Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen published. Though she initially called it Elinor and Marianne, Austen jettisoned both the title and the epistolary mode in which it was originally written, but kept the essential theme: the necessity of finding a workable middle ground between passion and reason. The story revolves around the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Whereas the former is a sensible, rational creature, her younger sister is wildly romantic--a characteristic that offers Austen plenty of scope for both satire and compassion. Commenting on Edward Ferrars, a potential suitor for Elinor's hand, Marianne admits that while she "loves him tenderly," she finds him disappointing as a possible lover for her sister:
Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!Soon however, Marianne meets a man who measures up to her ideal: Mr. Willoughby, a new neighbor. So swept away by passion is Marianne that her behavior begins to border on the scandalous. Then Willoughby abandons her; meanwhile, Elinor's growing affection for Edward suffers a check when he admits he is secretly engaged to a childhood sweetheart. How each of the sisters reacts to their romantic misfortunes, and the lessons they draw before coming finally to the requisite happy ending forms the heart of the novel. Though Marianne's disregard for social conventions and willingness to consider the world well-lost for love may appeal to modern readers, it is Elinor whom Austen herself most evidently admired; a truly happy marriage, she shows us, exists only where sense and sensibility meet and mix in proper measure. --Alix Wilber
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