“…Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it. Beyond a competence, it can afford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned.”
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
3 stars/5 stars
Quick Recap:
The very first chapter opens after the death of Mrs. Dashwood’s husband, who’s entire estate and the majority of his money is to be inherited by his son. There’s some back and forth between him and his wife, but essentially Mrs. Dashwood is the second wife (the previous one passed away) and she has three daughters, none of whom have much claim to the inheritance. Unfair as it may be to modern eyes, that’s how it was at the time and the four women quickly leave to another, much smaller, home.
I just want to take a moment here and actually delve into how ridiculous it is that none of them really have any right to their father’s wealth. Including the wife! Women were completely reliant on the men in their family to do right by them, which is pretty horrifying, but of course this gets passed over pretty quickly because it’s an idyllic Jane Austen novel and there’s matters of the heart to get to.
So, we have the two main characters, one being Marianne, who meets Eligible Bachelor #1. She immediately falls for Willoughby and does all types of “scandalous” things. As in, she’s putting herself in a vulnerable position for gossip, like talking to him alone.
Elinor, the other main character, has a thing with Eligible Bachelor #2, but she’s the sensible one and doesn’t actually communicate with him. This, I find is the most frustrating character trait to come across because the whole time you just want to shake the person and scream “Just do something!!!” Lo and behold, turns out that Edward has already been engaged to another girl for the past four years! Elinor, not being the type for dramatics, pretends to be friends with Edward’s fiancé. There’s lot of heartache, etc. etc. Essentially, a lot of the plot could have been resolved if she just went up to him and had an actual conversation, instead of taking the high road and being nice to everyone else.
So back to Eligible Bachelor #1, he tries to ghost Marianne, but too bad, Marianne is way too invested in the relationship to get the hint. She finally does when he snubs her and sends a letter to her (and all the ones she sent, back).
There’s essentially a lot of holding back tears (Elinor) and sobbing in bed for days (Marianne), and then finally the happy ending(ish?) that everyone wanted.
My Thoughts:
Here’s the thing though. The guys the girls end up with are… meh.
Edward pretty much sucks. Maybe I just didn’t do a deep enough reading of the book, but he never actually made a solid decision. It was Lucy’s maid (Lucy being the ex-fiancé) who spilled the beans. There’s drama and Edward’s mom confronts him and he decides to stick by Lucy because it’s the honorable thing to do. So there’s kind of a backbone there, but he only announced the decision because he was forced to make a choice. Otherwise he would have kept dragging Lucy along. When he finally decides to propose to Elinor, she’s happy, but it’s only because Lucy went and dumped him for his brother. Wow, that’s enough to make a girl feel warm and fuzzy, being second choice?
Marianne, throughout the novel, learns that sense (as in making decisions based on emotions) isn’t always the right decision. While it’s great that she grows up, her “happy ending” was to this older guy she never really liked in the first placed. He’s just the responsible guy to marry, because he’s rich and nice and a solid guy. But her dreams of a happily ever after with a great guy she connects with? Gone. All gone. There’s something really sad about how realistic it was. Hot Guy is bad (the kind of icky bad that you warn your friends about, not hot bad boy who has a heart of gold), Good Guy that was there the whole time is, well, good. Except of course, said Good Guy is also almost 20 years older than her. He’s like 35 and she’s 17? 18? Not exactly the escapist fantasy I was hoping for.
“Brandon is just the kind of man,” said Willoughby one day, when they were talking of him together, “whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to.”
~ Hot Guy talking about Good Guy. Marianne agrees with it, Elinor too, though the latter tells them to stop saying it because he’s respected. I guess I just need to stop looking at this book through a romance novel lens, when it’s very clearly NOT that.
It is an interesting twist that while Elinor is the sensible one, she ends up marrying for love (even if he’s a poopy guy). Meanwhile Marianne makes the financially smart decision to marry Colonel Brandan who has buckets of money he doesn’t know what to do with.
Money, money, money, must be funny, in the rich man’s world ~ABBA
Let’s return to the fundamental importance of money in Sense and Sensibility. While Elinor and Marianne would like to believe that money isn’t the be-all, end-all, it is for other characters. Lucy and Willoughby are driven by the need to acquire more money and marry the best possible candidate for it. While they’re not honest about it, I think it highlights the privileged life that the main characters are living.
Elinor and Marianne spend the whole novel socializing with people. It got to be pretty boring at certain parts because they waited around, got invited somewhere, had people to talk to, and then waited around some more. They claim they’re not super wealthy. But they’re able to afford servants and don’t think much of it.
“Her wisdom too limited the number of their servants to three; two maids and a man, with whom they were speedily provided from amongst those who had formed their establishment at Norland.”
Said servants have maybe three whole speaking lines in the whole novel. Their work is never mentioned, nor are they every discussed.
Final Thoughts: TL;DR
Ella’s making the expression for how I feel about the guys
Ultimately, I think this book had some interesting points about money and life to make, but it was just so long to get through, and I didn’t find any of the characters all that likeable. All the other older women in the novel seemed to be talking about guys for the most part, and they all seemed very interchangeable. The romance was disappointing.
mittens' reads 