Book 1,084: Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

As I entered my 2025 re-read of Jane Austen’s works for her 250th birthday I decided to read them in the order she wrote them this time. And yes I know she heavily edited Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, AND I know there’s some discussion on the actual order she wrote them, but I found a list that seemed to make sense to me so I’m following it (I’ve since lost it sorry!).

First thing I’ll say is that I didn’t imagine things while reading Sense and Second-Degree Murder, Margaret, the third Dashwood sister is barely present in the original text. I can’t tell y’all how confused I was when reading Price’s adaptation. The whole time I was like “I know I haven’t read this one much, but that’s a huge detail to have overlooked.” Especially, because I had similar thoughts as I read Trollope’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility too!

Second thing is that I found Drabble’s introduction a lot more profound this time (and spoiler alert, that’s the case with all of the novels since I’m back posting these responses. In particular, I found these two quotes to be incredibly apt at putting the novel in its historical context and contemporary authorship:

This novel is full of insincerities, but they are of a much more calculated kind. It is a novel in which some of the characters are, even by Jane Austen’s standards, obsessed by money, and the financial map of the plot is extremely complicated. It must take most readers several attempts to unravel the complex family and legal relationships of the first chapter, but even as we struggle to take them in, we cannot help noticing that the principal issue governing family destiny is money. (viii, Introduction by Margaret Drabble)

[Sense and Sensibility] lacks the near-perfect poise of its companion volumes [Clarissa by Samuel Richardson and Middlemarch by George Eliot/Mary Evans], but offers insights into emotional depths unique in the author’s oeuvre, and suggests powers that she perhaps deliberately chose not to pursue. (xix, Introduction by Margaret Drabble)

More so than any other time I’ve read this (and any of Austen’s work) I really took in just how young her protagonists are. I’m approaching 41 which is the age Austen died and looking at her characters from this perspective has made me really re-think their behaviors and attitudes. I can’t wait to read these at one of the next big anniversaries and see what’s changed then:

‘It would be impossible, I know,’ replied Elinor, ‘to convince you that a woman of seven and twenty could feel for a man of thirty-five anything near enough to love to make him a desirable companion to her.’ (49)

The conversation between Marianne and Elinor this early in the novel compared to the conversation they have at the end of the novel shows the growth and maturity of the characters and the whole idea of sensibility (which I guess we would call passion or youthful naïveté) and losing it through heartbreak was incredibly profound this go around. Because I was comparing this to a pulp-genre version of it (Price) and a modernized version of it (Trollope) on this re-read, this really stood out.

The only other thing I’ll comment on this time, and Drabble highlights this in the intro, is the absolute asshats that John and Fanny Dashwood have because of their obsession with money, status and privilege. It’s amazing that Edward Ferrars turned out as adjusted as he did given the family he came from—whether this is actually true, you’d need Austen to actually write a sequel. Drabble also doesn’t mince words around the elder Mr. Dashwood and his lack of organization around leaving things for his daughters. This was something that Price really leaned into with her murder mystery, but Austen wasn’t the kindest to him either, but she saved most of her sarcasm for Mrs. Dashwood who—similar to Mrs. Bennet—seems to be more caricature than caring mother, at least on the surface.

Recommendation: Of course I’m going to recommend each of these. They’re worth reading at least once, but I’m really enjoying reading these at different points in my life, it might be nice to pencil them in for the 260th anniversary because I’ll have just turned 50 and if the mileage between 30 and 40 is anything to go by, it’s going to be very different. As one of my least read novels, it was nice to revisit the Dashwood sisters to restart this re-read.

Opening Line: “The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex.”

Closing Line: “Between Barton and Delaford there was that constant communication which strong family affection would naturally dictate; and among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within site of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from Sense and Sensibility
“Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters. To take three thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy would be impoverishing him to the most dreadful degree. She begged him to think again on the subject. How could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too, of so large a sum? And what possible claim could the Miss Dashwoods, who were related to him only by halfblood which she considered as no relationship at all, have on his generosity to so large an amount. It was very well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist between the children of any man by different marriages; and why was he to ruin himself and their poor little Harry by giving away all his money to his half sisters?” (25)

“On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse. In the present case it took up ten minutes to determine whether the boy were most like his father or mother, and in what particular he resembled either, for of course everybody differed, and everybody was astonished at the opinion of the others.” (43-44)

“‘That is an expression, Sir John’ said Marianne warmly, ‘which I particularly dislike. I abhor every commonplace phrase by which wit is intended; and “setting one’s cap at a man,” or “making a conquest,” are the most odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and if their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity.'” (54-55)

“In Mrs. Dashwood’s estimation he was as faultless as in Marianne’s; and Elinor saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity, in which he strongly resembled and peculiarly on every occasion without attention to persons or circumstances. In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other people, in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment of undivided attention where his heart was engaged, he displayed a want of caution which Elinor could not approve in spite of all that he and Marianne could say in its support.” (57)

“Elinor could not be surprised at their attachment. She only wished that it were less openly shown; and once or twice did venture to suggest the propriety of some self-command to Marianne. But Marianne abhorred all concealment where no real disgrace could attend unreserve; and to aim at the restraint of sentiments which were not in themselves illaudable appeared to her not merely an unnecessary effort but a disgraceful subjection of reason to commmonplace and mistaken notions. Willoughby thought the same; and their behavior at all times was an illustration of their opinions.” (61)

” . . . and at length, because there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be the most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have been properly idle ever since.” (99)

“This specimen of the Miss Steeles was enough. The vulgar freedom and folly of the eldest left her no recommendation, and as Elinor was not blinded by the beauty and the shrewd look of the youngest to her want of real elegance and artlessness, she left the house without any wish of knowing them better.” (115)

“What other reason for the disclosure of the affair could there be but that Elinor might be informed by it of Lucy’s superior claim on Edward and be taught to avoid him in future? She had little difficulty in understanding thus much of her rival’s intentions; and while she was firmly resolved to act by her every principle of honour and honesty directed, to combat her own affection for Edward and to see him as little as possible, she could not deny herself the comfort of endeavouring to convince Lucy that her heart was unwounded. And as she could now have nothing more painful to hear on the subject than had already been told, she did not mistrust her own ability of going through a repetition of particulars with composure.” (127-128)

“They arrived in due time at the place of destination and as soon as the string of carriages before them would allow, alighted, ascended the stairs, heard their names announced from one landing-place to another in an audible voice, and entered a room splendidly lit up, quite full of company, and insufferably hot. When they had paid their tribute of politeness by curtseying to the lady of the house, they were permitted to mingle in the crowd and take their share of the heat and inconvenience, to which their arrival must necessarily add.” (154)

“I have known myself to be divided from Edward forever, without hearing one circumstance that could make me less desire the connection. Nothing has proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to me. I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister and the insolence of his mother, and have suffered the punishment of an attachment without enjoying its advantages. And all this has been going on at a time when, as you too well know, it has not been my only unhappiness. If you can think me capable of ever feeling, surely you may suppose that I have suffered now. The composure of of mind with which I have brought myself at present to consider the matter, the consolation that I have been wiling to admit, have been the effect of constant and painful exertion; they did not spring up of themselves; they did not occur to relieve my spirits at first. No, Marianne. Then, if I had not been bound to silence, perhaps nothing could have kept me entirely—not even what I owed to my dearest friends—from openly showing that I was very unhappy.” (222-223)

” . . . Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, how ever it might be avoided by the family in general, so procured herself a book.” (254)

“Marianne’s note, by assuring me that I was still as dear to her as in former days, that in spite of the many, many weeks we had been separated she was as constant in her own feelings and as full of faith in the constancy of mine as ever, awakened all my remorse. I saw awakened because time and London, business and dissipation, had in some measure quieted it; and I had been growing a fine hardened villain, fancying myself indifferent to her, and choosing to fancy that she too must have become indifferent to me; talking to myself of our past attachment as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my shoulders in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach, overcoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, ‘I shall be heartily glad to hear she is well married.’ But this note made me know myself better.” (272)

“Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, untied a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain. Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity, in leading him to evil, had let him likewise to punishment. The attachment from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outward torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature.” (276-277)

“The whole of Lucy’s behavior in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience.” (312)