It is not an employment to which they have been brought up. Willoughby will be incommoded by the attempts of either of my daughters towards what you call catching him. “I do not believe,” said Mrs. Dashwood, with a good humoured smile, “that Mr. Take, for example, the money issue. There is a lot of focus on money and income in volume 1 – on who has what – indicating Austen’s real awareness of the issue, and yet Mrs Dashwood does not focus on husband hunting for her daughters.
Austen is a far more complex writer than that. But there is more to the novel than social history. That’s the historical background to the novel – and forms its social milieu.
(Interestingly, a very similar story is played out at the beginning of Tracey Chevalier’s Remarkable creatures in which she describes the removal of the Philpot sisters from London to Lyme Regis in 1805). I wonder if this novel is her working through this very real experience of grief and insecurity. It wasn’t until the family settled in Chawton in 1809 that Austen, to the best of our knowledge, returned seriously to her writing. This could be because its premise – the sudden drop in wealth for Mrs Dashwood and daughters and their dislocation from their family home, due to the death of their husband/father – mirrors what happened to Jane and her mother and sister after Rev. It feels more serious, less witty – though not as serious as Mansfield Park. The heroines aren’t as sparkly nor the heroes as dashing or heroic as in Austen’s next novel, Pride and prejudice. I have always liked Sense and sensibility, partly because I’m fascinated by the dichotomy Austen sets up between the two sisters: Elinor (sense) and Marianne (sensibility). Also I am not going to write a formal review but just share some of the ideas that have struck me during this slow reading*. I’m going to assume that most readers who come to this post will know the story – and if you don’t, the Wikipedia article provides a good summary. Consequently, in this post I’m going to focus on Volume 1 (chapters 1 to 22) which ends with Lucy Steele’s dramatic announcement to Elinor.īut first, some caveats.
We tried this last year with Mansfield Park and valued the opportunity it presented to delve a little more deeply into the novel – not only the characters and themes, but the writing and structure. To celebrate this, my local Jane Austen group plans to discuss the novel over the next three months, volume by volume. This year is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s first (published) novel, Sense and sensibility. by CE Brock (Presumed Public Domain, via Wikipedia)
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