I'm the youngest of three sisters. Our mannerisms are enough alike that when people meet us for the first time, they're often startled by how much we "look alike" even though there are clear and obvious differences in our appearances.
People who know us all often get confused about which one of us is leaving a phone message, because our voice intonations are so similar. We laugh alike and often find the same things funny! Over the years, when we've lived miles (and even continents) apart, we've discovered other odd similarities that make us all chortle over what we call the "sister connection." One time that we like to recall is the summer we helped my middle sister move into a new apartment and she asked us to put down new shelf paper in her kitchen drawers. When she handed it to us, my older sister said "oh, I have this exact same pattern in my kitchen!" And then I looked at it and burst out laughing because...of course I did too.
I mention the "sister connection" here because Jane Austen understands the deep bonds between sisters. She should, since she had an amazingly deep bond with her sister Cassandra. I love Austen's novels and return to them for many reasons, but one of the best is how well she captures the differences and yet deep similarities in sisters, and the love they have for each other through life's ups and downs. She captures this well in the relationship of Lizzie and Jane in Pride and Prejudice, but I think my favorite Austen sister pairing will always be Elinor and Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility.
How Different Can Two Sisters Be?
The “sister connection” in Sense and Sensibility is the engine that drives the story. Although the novel has all the elements that Jane Austen’s novels have come to be known for -- love, romance, mistaken impressions, economic obstacles to marriage, challenging family dynamics – it’s the deep exploration of Elinor and Marianne’s characters and how their temperaments affect their responses to all those things that colors the heart of the book.
Having recently read it again for the first time in a few years, I was struck anew by the force of the characters – how well drawn and intimately explored the major and even minor characters are. Austen’s plots are always well-thought-out and fascinating, but it’s her attention to character that shines through, and that’s especially true here. She packs in an astonishing amount of detail through the way her characters speak to and interact with one another – or don’t.
And the main characters she explores at length are Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Like most Austen heroines, they are warm and intelligent women whose economic circumstances place them in social peril. Following the custom of the day, in which property was often entailed to the male line, their father’s beautiful estate, called Norland, has been passed down to their half-brother John. This leaves them, along with their mother and much younger sister, virtually homeless. It doesn’t help that John is married to a shrewd and conniving woman named Fanny who can’t wait to turn them out, and who convinces John that he doesn’t really need to honor his dying father’s promise to help his stepmother and her daughters.
It’s Elinor and Marianne’s reactions to this crisis that help unfold their characters to us. As the eldest daughter, Elinor maintains a deep sense of responsibility for her family. She’s calm, quiet, and reserved, keeping her deepest feelings to herself, especially if a situation is better served by not sharing them. She represents the “sense” of Austen’s title. Marianne, about two years younger (both girls are in their late teens) is much more high-strung, taking after their mother. She delights in poetry and music, the more romantic and gothic the better. Marianne tends to over-react to most things, and often blurts out whatever she’s feeling. She represents “sensibility.”
Both women have plenty of opportunity, of course, to exhibit their character traits, not just in the initial crisis, but in the potential love stories that follow. It wouldn’t be an Austen novel if there wasn’t a love story, and the romantic plots and sub-plots get quite complex in this one. Neither girl has a fortune, of course, so their prospects for matrimony are dim, though they do seem to keep running into highly eligible men!
Elinor falls for Fanny’s brother Edward Ferars, and thinks he returns her feelings, only to find out a stunning secret about his past that would appear to take him out of her life forever. Since she’s Elinor, she suffers in silence, not letting on to anyone the depth of her bitter disappointment. Marianne, on the other hand, is embarrassed to be courted by a very good man named Colonel Brandon, who to her mind is ancient (he’s 35). But she wastes no time letting everyone know exactly how she feels about Mr. Willoughby, one of the new neighbors they meet when the move to Barton Cottage (kindly rented to them at low cost by a long-lost cousin). Willoughby is as demonstrative as Marianne, so the family and entire neighborhood is shocked when he suddenly seems to cut her off completely. Marianne’s emotional distress also runs deep, but her lack of self-control stands in stark contrast to Elinor’s rigid self-control. In fact, it almost leads to her ruin.
What’s most remarkable about Austen’s portrayal of these two women and their very different temperaments is that she shows growth in both of them. While Austen clearly favors Elinor’s approach to life, she doesn’t make it a neat and tidy journey for either sister, and manages to show the need for balance between heart and head. Marianne must grow in self-control and in her desire to think of others besides herself, but Elinor learns that there are times when it’s entirely appropriate, and indeed necessary, to show one’s heart. It’s a fascinating character study.
So Much Wit!
It’s also just a very funny book. Sense and Sensibility was first published anonymously in 1811, but it was a book that Austen had been working on for many years. She was barely out of her teenage years herself when she wrote the first version of the story (in epistolary form). I think the plot actually suffers a bit from a meandering “third act,” perhaps indicative of a younger Austen who wasn’t in complete charge of her story craft. Yet it’s hard to mind the meandering when the prose is so elegant, the observations of human nature so razor-sharp, and the wit so endearing.
When she meanders, she does so in the service of characterizations, and I think comes up with some of her best here. I love how she “speaks through” Elinor’s calm and reasonable voice to gently poke a bit of fun at Marianne’s gothic sensibilities (“It’s not everyone who has your passion for dead leaves,” she says drily to her sister at one point.) And yet the great love that the two sisters have for one another, despite their open frustrations with one another’s temperament, is never in doubt. Indeed, you know that Marianne is sincerely worried about her sister’s inability to feel deeply, and Elinor is truly concerned that Marianne’s emotions will lead her to breach propriety and perhaps even lead her into ridicule and moral folly. Austen helps the reader to uncover that each sister is right about the other…but only to a certain extent (even sisters can sometimes have mistaken impressions, and not just suitors!) as there is more to each woman than immediately meets the eye, and both are still growing and changing.
Austen also absolutely skewers some of the minor characters, delivering up witty and pointed portraits of gold-diggers, social climbers, and well-meaning busy bodies. The characters of Fanny and Lucy Steele are wonderfully drawn, but so are some of the even more minor characters, including Sir John Middleton, Mrs. Jennings, Anne Steele and Robert Ferrars. The background cast is one of the best.
The slow pace may bother some, especially as the plot wends toward the end, but the dialogue and the depth of the character studies more than make up for any sluggishness, at least for this Austen fan. It’s a beautiful book. If you have any sense (or any sensibility, for that matter) you’ll enjoy it!
The textbook, Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen, available in Paperback. Published by: Cengage Learning. Edition: . ISBN10: 0618084835. ISBN1...More at Textbooks.com
In 1811, Jane Austens first published work, Sense and Sensibility, marked the debut of Englands premier novelist of manners. Believing that \3 to 4 fa...More at Christianbook.com
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