Week 2: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility. Wordsworth Editions, 2007.

A shelfie. I bought a boxed set of Jane Austen last year, and this is the fourth of the seven books to be read (I have already read Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion).

Back when I were a lad (the late 1970s), we were forced to read P&P at high school. I hated it, which I largely suspect was due to the teacher’s failure to explain the society in which it was written, and what J.A. was attempting to do (we got the surface layers—the overt action—only).

Fast forward many years, and I watched a movie adaptation of P&P (the Keira Knightly–Matthew Macfadyen version) with my then wife, and I realised there was a lot more going on than meets the eye).

Last year, I intended going to the Jane Austen Ball in October, and bought a boxed set of J.A.’s novels. I started with P&P, and from the very first sentence, this was a completely different book [seriously, who rewrote P&P between the late 70s and the early 2000s?]. This was funny, it had claws like a cat (and didn’t hestitate to use them), and it was subversive. I also read and enjoyed Emma and Persuasion. I started S&S and Mansfield Park, but couldn’t get into them, and put them aside (Northanger Abbey is on hold until I've read a least a few of the novels it references).

Since I'm waiting on some new books to arrive (living Down Under, it's usually much cheaper to buy books online from the States and/or the U.K., but it means a few weeks wait instead of instant gratification), I grabbed what was unread and to hand.

S&S isn't in the same class as P&P, but it isn't a bad book either, and it seemed to improve the further one read—by the end it was something of a hybrid between a comedy of manners and an opera buffa. The supporting characters are rather one dimensional, and neither Elinor or Marianne Dashwood are particularly likeable, which made it difficult to get emotionally involved with the story. I'm glad I read it, but it's unlikely to get a re-read.

As an aside, I quite like the Wordsworth Classics books. They're decent quality mass-market paperbacks with one standout feature: they're very low priced. In a country where a regular paperback (e.g., a Penguin Classics) sells for $15–$25, being able to buy a decent quality book for around $5–$7 means a lot more reading for the same limited budget.

Stats to Date

Books Read: 3

Books by Male Authors: 0
Books by Female Authors: 3

Books by Australian Authors: 2

Fiction Books: 3
Verity Books: 0