Sense and Sensibility
Ratings533
Average rating3.8
Biggest takeaway: Jane Austen is not a fan of children.
This is basically a rough draft of Pride and Prejudice. Inferior in most ways but can see how it would've been popular at release.
Found it weirdly judgemental, like Jane Austen hadn't yet learned to add nuance to her judgements, characters motives and actions are spelled out rather than shown.
Elinor is the one of the most fleshed out one dimensional character I've ever read. She's perfect and her only issues are dealing with a world that isn't ready for her perfection.
Loved every passage about a bachelor over 35 being tragically, desperately, over the hill.
Reading this book for English class and understanding that it was an Austen novel, I had pretty high hopes for S&S. However, I found the novel incredibly boring and mundane. There is little to no plot, which made the book drag for me. I thought the symbolism present was interesting to analyze, but I despised reading this book. My teacher tried her best, really tried, to make our class love the book, but I just couldn't. As a result, I skimmed the last ten chapters - I couldn't put myself through reading it, sorry!
Not a story I was interested in, but the prose Austen uses kept me engaged.
Final Rating: 3.5
Una pequeña gran decepción de libro; en general, muy largo y demasiado aleccionador.
A destacar:
Se critica muy duramente a Marianne por ser una persona más impulsiva y apasionada pero poco se habla de Elinor y Edward que tienen el mismo rango de emociones que una seta. (Aunque desconozco si la flema inglesa es lo que se supone que está representando).
Por no hablar que la construcción de los romances principales brillan por su ausencia, te los tienes que creer por dos líneas de texto.
Se queda en tres estrellas por los diálogos y la construcción de los personajes secundarios; y también por que hay fragmentos que realmente te tienen atrapada, pero me ha dado mucha pena que una de las grandes obras de Austen me deje tan indiferente.
Al año que viene leeré Mansfield Park, cuando se me pase la tristeza y ya me habré leído la obra completa de la autora.
Contains spoilers
Overall an enjoyable read. The Austen wittiness is there, but I feel as though the characters lack depth. Mr. Robert Ferrars became my favourite character by the end solely because anytime he'd appear, I was sure to laugh at him.
The ending itself is, in my opinion, so ridiculous and so out of nowhere, I've really no words for it.
Summary: Two sisters, one logical and self-controlled and the other lively and free-speaking, each believe themselves to have fallen in love. They will soon learn, however, that there are surprising obstacles to their relationships with the men upon whom they have bestowed their affections.
I loved Pride and Prejudice which was witty, characterful and dramatic. This is like a draft version of that book: the protagonists are almost identical, the plot points are similar, but unfortunately it's shorn of all of the humour and lightness of P&P. As an unexpected Austen fan, this has been a disappointment.
I read this entire book within a day without at all intending to do so initially. That is the power of Jane Austen's writing - she manages to make unputdownable page turners from the most (seemingly) flat stories about mundane and dull human interactions.
I just needed to know what happens next and was immensely satisfied with each scene of a conversation in a sitting room or a slow walk in a garden.
As always with this author, each character was vivid and distinct. Always on the edge of being a caricature but never crossing the line.
The writing style of Jane Austen is superb to anything anyone will ever be able to achieve and I will die on this hill.
The only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars is because I didn't like the ending. As with every romance, you build an expectation who the main protagonist will end up with, and I had build a thoroughly different expectation of who would be Elinor's match. This was dictated by their continuous partnership throughout the narrative, along with their conversations and compatibility.
And instead of him, she ended up with a man whom we barely saw at all (much less saw any sort of connection between the two of them), and who has proven to be more than a little senseless.
Regardless, I still leave this book with fond feelings and an even more solidified love for the author.
After reading Pride and Prejudice, I was quite underwhelmed by the story, and I didn't like the main characters.
To start, I definitely see why this is a classic. The story is timeless, and the writing is wonderful. With that being said, this is just not the story for me. I have never liked stories strictly focused on romance, or stories about the trials and tribulations of socialite life- and that is exactly what this book is about. Even though I don't like these kinds of stories, this is still the best one I've ever read.
We listened to this in The Jane Austen Collection in full today and plan to catch a Britbox drama later. Will update my review/thoughts when Goodreads starts behaving again. Thanks to Jim Hart of Bethany House for providing a copy for review.[bc:Sense and Sensibility 20960708 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1393893711l/20960708.SY75.jpg 2809709]
This book didn't feel very romantic!
Elinor, the older sister, was in love with Edward, who turned out to be engaged to someone else the entire time.
Marianne, the younger, falls in love with Willoughby, who decides to get engaged and married to someone else who has a lot more money instead.
Also there's Colonel Brandon - he's madly in love with Marianne, but she's not interested because she's still in love with Willoughby and he's nearly double her age.
Elinor and the Colonel are quite friendly to each other though.
Then at the last minute, it's revealed that Edward can marry Elinor, and they do.
The Colonel and Marianne also get married, although their developing romance all happens in the last 20 pages of the book as all the loose ends are wrapped up.
To me it was disappointing because there didn't really seem to be any build-up of romance, like there was in Pride and Prejudice. If anything, the fact that Elinor and the Colonel got on so well made me think that those two should have gotten together.
I don't know if I want to go as far as giving this book 3 stars, though! Some of the characters are quite funny to read (like the gossipy Mrs Jennings, and the sisters' stingy brother John who gives in to whatever his wife suggests).
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
I completely forgot I was reading this! It was so boring. I've never had this strong of an urge to slap fictional characters. So much crying.
Why did everybody tell all their problems to Eleanor? Leave the poor girl alone. Just because she's too polite to refuse doesn't mean she wants to listen to your shit.
Also, Willoughby was 100% an ass, confirmed. But I didn't like Edward all that better either. If a man gave me that much headache, I'd dump his ass
There's nothing actually wrong with this for me to only give three stars. The story is good (the 2008 miniseries is one of my go-to comfort watches), I just found it a bit of a slog to get through. I'm glad to have read it.
“I have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly.”
Jane Austen's first published novel is loved, widely loved. Yet, in the absence of a dashing figure like Darcy, it is a tiny fraction less adored than Pride and Prejudice. Let's face it, we are a little superficial at heart, it's natural, understandable and unavoidable. But for me, the power of Sense and Sensibility lies in the wonderful duality and antithesis that characterizes the work of our beloved Jane Austen, an antithesis that is found in the characters and the themes of her marvellous stories.
The unbreakable and intense relationships between sensibility, emotion, sympathy and passion, and sense, wisdom, clear thinking and moderation. Enthusiastic love and the hurtful decision to suppress your pain for the sake of your family. Two sisters, two worlds. So different, so alike. The beautiful, serene and yet tumultuous universe of Jane Austen.
P.S. Skip the awful 1995 film adaptation, indulge in the beautiful 2008 BBC version.
An Australian critic called Sense and Sensibility ‘'frivolous''. Why is there so much stupidity in this world and what can we do about it?
“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”
“Do not let the behaviour of others destroy your inner peace.”
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
One sentence synopsis... Through their parallel searches for love, two sisters learn to balance personal happiness with the rules that govern their society.
Read it if you like... “Little Women”. Both feature a similar de-romanticizing of what marriage represented to women of the time.
Dream casting... just watch Emma Thompson's version. It's honestly better.
It's always interesting revisiting classics, books we've read in our younger incarnations. Our new perception of them reminds us of how we've changed, how classics are classics for a reason, they don't remain static, they speak to every era even when the mores and language have changed. Listening to [a:Rosamund Pike 4244528 Rosamund Pike https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png]'s most excellent narration was the perfect way to go back to [a:Jane Austen 1265 Jane Austen https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1588941810p2/1265.jpg]'s first published novel. Finding Marianne annoying wasn't a surprise, she's a self-involved teen after all, it's expected, what was clear to me was the resemblance between the Dashwood sisters and the Schlegel sisters, Margaret & Helen, from [b:Howards End 38374795 Howards End E.M. Forster https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518837828l/38374795.SX50.jpg 1902726]. I'm sure they were more than a template for [a:E.M. Forster 86404 E.M. Forster https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1402057803p2/86404.jpg]. Also Emma Thompson being in movie adaptations of both isn't a coincidence.
I just don't think this one was for me. Volume 2 just felt so long and boring which is upsetting since I enjoyed the beginning.
I'm familiar with many Jane Austen stories, but this is the first time I've successfully read one of her novels. Years ago, surely eight or nine years now, I made a very lackluster attempt to read Mansfield Park, but I gave up within a mere ten pages. My heart just wasn't in it at the time. More so than that of many of her contemporaries, the language Austen uses can be a chore to get through and I struggled to understand what I was reading (and why). The time has come, however, to give Austen another try.
Judging by the stories that have survived and remain in our hearts—from Shakespeare to Austen to Dickens to...—there really wasn't much difference in British drama for three hundreds years. Through the quirky interactions of memorable characters, these authors provide entertaining romps through sentimentality with a satirical edge. And yet, I would argue that Austen's stories were more realistic than those of her contemporaries. Certainly, Austen dwelt a bit heavily on the “woes” of the higher class, but the characters' wants and needs transcend status. Unlike many of the two-dimensional characters in the stories of the time, Austen's primary characters are individuals with ever-changing perspectives (secondary characters, not so much). Of course realism from a much more humble point-of-view was just a generation away with authors such as Anne Bronte being born in this era, but clearly Austen had her finger on the pulse of humanity.
And yet these stories lack realism. How anyone can be so oblivious is beyond me. Can two people carry on a conversation for so long without realizing they're talking about two very different things? Sure, it's humorous, but it's not believable. So are these stories meant to be believable, or not? Does love ever come so easily in the end? How is it that the destitute daughters of these tales always find the one descent human in the aristocracy? I think that's the magic of Austen and it certainly works well in Sense and Sensibility. These are characters that are human and though their situations may be very different from our own, they are very much like us. Through struggles and the embrace of all that is “good” and “right,” they enter the fairy tale that so many of us envy. These are the stories that capture the heart of the romantic.
Sense and Sensibility is double the romance. The characters are engaging. The wit is on point. The story is entertaining. And it's all so clever—there's an excellent word for the work of Jane Austen: clever.
I really enjoyed this - not quite as much as Pride & Prejudice - but it's a close second. Like the annotated P&P - the annotations in this book are a wonderful addition. The left page is the story - the right page contains annotations and illustrations that help define word usage, period customs, historical tidbits, and reminders for what transpired earlier in the story. I think what really strikes me about this book as well as P&P is how believable the characters are even though the stories are 200 years old. It's easy to understand how these stories can be used as a framework for a film that takes place in a more modern era. This story involves a couple of sisters - the older sister who takes a calmer and more logical approach to issues that arise, and the younger sister who takes a rather impractical romantic approach to everything (a cultural affectation of the time - and something Austin is quietly mocking in the book). The book's annotations do a nice job of explaining this juxtaposition of both sister's differing approaches to resolving issues.
As to the condition of my brand new paperback when I finished reading it - the book is over 700 pages and a tad unwieldy - and I had the unfortunate luck of buying an edition with inadequate glue in the spine: I'm afraid I had to chuck the disintegrating fluttering mess into the trash.