Review: Sense and Sensibility is Better Than the Movie (Spoilers)

I don’t know about you, but Sense and Sensibility is extremely underrated. It is one of Jane Austen’s greatest works that is second only to Pride and Prejudice (which remains my favorite Jane Austen novel). While Pride and Prejudice focused more on the psychological aspects of love and attraction, Sense and Sensibility shows two extremes in a more realistic manner as it focuses more on real-life problems faced by the women of the time. It’s a story that has plenty of intrigue, plot twists, some comedy, and interestingly has elements of contemporary works that Austen would commonly satirize.

#1: Marianne and Elinor

Though this book is more about the practical issues of women looking to get married in the 19th century, we can still see Jane Austen leaning into her main forte, which is psychology when introduced to the sisters, Marianne and Elinor. Elinor is the eldest and represents sense. She’s strong and capable, able to hide her emotions regarding certain things for the good of others (for example, she hides her strong feelings of rejection and disappointment when it’s revealed that Lucy is engaged to Edward, Elinor’s love interest). Though her actions aren’t always realistic (at times, she seems too virtuous to be a real person), they serve to endear her to the reader and highlight where other characters act out of propriety or are just untrustworthy.

Marianne, on the other hand, represents sensibility, or strong feeling. Having fallen in with Romanticism, she relies mainly on emotion, not reason, to form her strong judgements. She’s quick to form strong judgements about things and people based off of those emotions, quick to love and to grieve, and often acts impulsively. Some examples of this behavior are when she declares that she will never stop mourning her father, will always love Willoughby (which she later realizes is impossible since he sucks), scorns Mrs. Jennings though she’s been nothing but kind to her and goes on a walk when the weather seems to be turning for the worse. However, that doesn’t mean that she’s a bad person. She is sensitive and inexperienced, but later gives way to the reasoning of her older sister and is greatly affected by her self-control.

#2: The Plot Twists

As I said earlier, there are a lot of plot twists in this story, some of them pretty believable, some of them not so much. The three biggest plot twists in the story are:

1). Willoughby deserting Marianne for Ms. Grey so he could have money to pay off his debts and afford his luxurious lifestyle.

2). Colonel Brandon falling in love with Marianne and revealing that Willoughby had seduced his adopted daughter.

3). Elinor finding out that Edward has not married Lucy since she left him for his much richer brother, Robert.

Willoughby’s leaving Marianne and the misunderstanding between Edward and Elinor are both realistic plot twists that still resonate with readers today since it’s something that is still common today (though there may be a few changes here and there). However, the reveal that Willoughby seduced and then left Colonel Brandon’s daughter is less realistic, something that readers of Sense and Sensibility have noticed over the years, finding it to be out of place since Jane Austen was famously critical of the Romantic movement. But, though it’s not super realistic, it still pushes the story forward and highlights Colonel Brandon’s goodness as compared to Willoughby even more. It also helps to paint Brandon in the light of a hero with a tragic backstory, which better endears him to Marianne. Every plot twist in this book helps to show different aspects of different characters, making them all very three-dimensional.

#3: Mrs. Jennings

Mrs. Jennings is primarily there for comedic relief, especially in Volume 1. However, she’s also there to provide some backstory about what characters are doing and later, when Marianne gets sick, she shows herself to be very motherly and caring, making her character more interesting than she has previously been. She’s a prime example of how Jane Austen was greatly skilled at setup and payoff. Mrs. Jennings helps propel the plot forward but grows with the characters due to the circumstances she’s in, which makes her an interesting character.

#4: The Love Stories

Sense and Sensibility swings between two love triangles, and though I hate love triangles with a passion, Jane Austen did a wonderful job of making them make sense and not be totally vapid (why we can’t have more of that today, I don’t know). In each love triangle, there’s the person of interest (Marianne and Edward are the persons of interest in their triangles respectively), the secondary person of interest who the person of interest loves (Willoughby and Elinor), and then there’s the third wheel, the person who has also fallen for the person of interest, but he/she doesn’t like the third wheel and they’re left in an awkward predicament where they can either let it go or continue to simp (Colonel Brandon and Lucy). It’s this third wheel that can either make or break how well-written a love triangle is. If they go after the person of interest and he/she is forced to pick one or the other, it can become very vapid, especially if there’s not much of a spark between any of them. Having the other person leave is usually preferrable, especially when it’s done out of genuine affection and not just, “I give up.”

We see this done in Marianne’s love triangle between herself, Willoughby, and Colonel Brandon when Colonel Brandon distances himself somewhat when he believes Marianne and Willoughby to be engaged because he loves her, and when he comes back to tell Willoughby’s backstory, he tells it to Elinor instead of Marianne so she can gently deliver it to her. Why does he do this? He does it out of love to provide some meagre comfort to Marianne, basically letting her know that she dodged a bullet. He also helps to take care of her while she’s sick, knowing that he’s probably not going to end up with her. All of this makes his marriage to her at the end of the book that much sweeter since he genuinely loved her.

Elinor’s love triangle, on the other hand, is still sweet and makes sense, but isn’t as great as Marianne’s in the sense that Edward, though noble in his original intent to stay with Lucy and honor their engagement, isn’t as constant as Colonel Brandon. To some degree, he emotionally cheats on Lucy instead of breaking off the engagement (though some forgiveness can be given to him since back then, if the man broke off an engagement, it was considered dishonorable) and, if he had followed through with the marriage, would’ve doomed her to an unhappy marriage. However, because Lucy sucks and they end up breaking up anyway after he’s disowned by his mom, the love triangle works when he finally marries Elinor.

Why can’t we have more romances like this?

Until next time,

M.J.