My Weekly Book

An interesting article in The Telegraph today, spinning off from the BBC’s seasonal adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.

Now, it just so happens that I read this book within the last month or so, although I didn’t watch the adaptation. And I was struck by the points being made:

Sense and Sensibility or pain and prejudice?

Yet I can never read Sense and Sensibility without it sending a shiver down my spine. I don’t recognise this as a “wonderfully entertaining tale of flirtation and folly”, as one edition bills it.

Instead absent fathers, inadequate mothers, ambitious women on the make, financial insecurity, near-fatal illness and abandonment stalk this book. It should be taken only with a large glass of whisky on a stormy night, when Dostoevsky seems too much of a giggle.

Of course, Sense and Sensibility can be very funny: Marianne’s conviction that her would-be suitor Col Brandon, a flannel- waistcoat-wearing 35-year-old, is ancient and decrepit skewers the workings of the 17-year-old mind exactly - Austen began a version of this novel in 1795, at just 20. But from the beginning, poverty, desertion and grief lurk darkly at the edges. Read full article here - includes major plot points.

I think that the argument being put forward makes even more sense if you stop trying to compare Sense and Sensibility to Pride and Prejudice or Emma and instead look at it in terms of the darker Austen works - Mansfield Park and Persuasion. A worthwhile and thought-provoking read, I found, and a good argument as to why Austen and her world view are a lot less trivial than is sometimes alleged.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 7:26 pm and is filed under 2008 - Ephemera. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.