Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

What, precisely, is Jane Austen's schtick?  Is she a chronicler of her age, a satirist or just a teller of romantic tales?  Or is she all of the above?

Sense and Sensibility is an odd novel.  On face value, it is a tale of two sisters looking for love.  They find it; they lose it; and when it comes calling again, love turns out not to be so straightforward.  So far, so good.

On the other hand, the novel is studded with more than its fair share of unattractive and insensitive characters.   A social calculus, based on each individual's social standing, appearance, personal fortune or likelihood of inheritance, is always at play.  The prospects of the characters are bloodlessly assessed on this basis.  John Dashwood, contemplating the negative effects that illness has had on the looks of his half-sister, says: "I question whether Marianne now will marry a man worth more than five or six hundred a year, at the utmost ..."  A callous observation, indeed, and one that draws no protest from Marianne's sister Elinor.  John's wife Fanny, a worthy successor to Lear's Goneril and Regan, is equally unattractive.  Over-zealous in protecting her own son's patrimony, Fanny effectively disinherits the widow and daughters of her father-in-law, and her husband meekly acquiesces to her views on the matter. And we haven't even got to the dubious suitors.

Are we to assume that this is how Austen's contemporaries actually thought, spoke and acted, or is she satirising their fears and vanities?  Is Sense and Sensibility itself a satire on the genre of the sentimental novel?

Elinor and Marianne Dashwood embody, respectively, the attitudes sense and sensibility alluded to in the novel's title.  Where Elinor is pragmatic, thoughtful and guarded, playing her cards close to her chest, Marianne is ruled by her passions and wears her heart on her sleeve.  Both experience heartbreak, and each deals with it according to their own nature, almost disastrously in Marianne's case.

Comparisons are odious, as Dr Johnson said, and this novel will not fare well when compared to a work like Pride and Prejudice.  Its relative lack of restraint in terms of emotion and analysis, perhaps, mars rather than elevates it.  Having said this, I did enjoy this book despite its flaws, mainly because Austen gave me good reason to care for the gentle characters in the book.  I became genuinely anxious for their welfare and happiness, and that is something I cherish in a novel.

I read the Signet Classics 200th Anniversary Edition.  It contains an introduction by Margaret Drabble and an afterword by Mary Balogh.  In some respects, these two treatments of the novel are diametrically opposed to each other, which in itself is thought-provoking.  Worth the money.