“Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen

Austen’s first novel is certainly a romantic page-turner. The love triangles, furtive glances, hinted-at engagements, and reversals of affairs of the heart abound. Of the three eligible Dashwood daughters, Elinor is considered the most sensible. ““I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes,” said Elinor, “in a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why, or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.””

Austen is at her best with her sly asides on the character of her characters, especially when they are found wanting. The three Miss Dashwoods’ half-brother and sole heir to the family estate, John, was admittedly somewhat henpecked by his insatiable wife, Fanny, into being less than scrupulous with the financial care of his siblings. At times, he almost felt bad about it, “He had just compunction enough for having done nothing for his sisters himself, to be exceedingly anxious that everybody else should do a great deal; and an offer from Colonel Brandon, or a legacy from Mrs. Jennings, was the easiest means of atoning for his own neglect.”

However, it is through the character of Elenor that the most biting and insightful comments judging moral rectitude shine forth, “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, united 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 led him likewise to punishment. The attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought.”