So I’ve never really read the ‘classics’. I think the only exceptions are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Shakespeare. I’ve read a lot of Shakespeare. Other than that I don’t really know. And Frankenstein was a prescribed text in high school. I probably wouldn’t have read it or bought it if it wasn’t for that. I also stayed away from the classics because I hated the whole ‘oh, you read and you’re a female? Then you have to read these novels, if not, you don’t really love reading or women’ kinda bull. I didn’t care about those kinds of stories either, also really disliked the movie adaptations because I didn’t like that genre to begin with. I grew up reading mostly fantasy. But when I started actually studying writing, there was still that stigma of ‘oh my god how haven’t you read these’ and such but at the same time, I realised that I really needed to read them. Not because I cared about the shallow looks I got when I would say ‘dunno who that is’ or ‘never read it’ but to better my understanding of writing and refine my skill. And so I bought about eight of the Penguins Classics to start me off and the first one I started was Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

This book has really changed the way I look at classics and ‘feminine writing’. They’re classics for a reason and just because they were written that long ago and are to have romance as a solid theme, doesn’t mean they’re going to be about that female protagonist I hate so much. I’m not a big fan of the romantic genre and it’s not because I have a lack of love or bad experiences (I’ve been with the one partner since high school) but I also made the mistake of generalising love stories. I just assumed that they would all be as sappy as the last and as boring.

When I first started reading the book, I was a little muddled by the language and read it out loud for a while. I usually don’t have much trouble with texts written in such a style but there was so much in every sentence I often found myself looking at the words but not actually reading them (I also find it difficult to focus my eyes on the meaning of words rather than the letters, having to re-read paragraphs to actually understand them. This started happening after I left high school. I don’t actually know why). After the first several chapters I got a good feel for the style. It was the fastest I’ve read a book since high school. The beginning of the novel at first felt abundant in backstory but it wasn’t, much of the novel is either told by the day or in a large detailed chunk of time. There was just so much there that it felt like a huge prelude or that the story was going to be told like that. It’s mostly due to the lengthy style of writing.

I came to really like Elinor. And only Elinor really. I found everyone else in the novel insufferable, but I think that was the point. Everyone in novel showed the same shallowness, ignorance and cruelty that’s still prominent in people today and I found it quite interesting. Of course, I didn’t doubt people were as disagreeable back then as they are now but I was still surprised about it. I think it was because I actually enjoyed it rather than dropping the book because they’re the type of people I can’t stand. I also continued reading for Elinor. The entire novel I just want her to get a win. I was even convinced at the end that the book was going to end without her being happy. I think it still would have been a great novel but I also would have been deprived the ecstasy of relief in the last few chapters. I literally ‘fangirled’. I think I almost even cried. I’ve never cried over a novel.

I think the biggest success of the novel, for me, is Elinor. I found fault with everyone throughout the entire novel, save Colonel Brandon, but Elinor, despite how human she still was, I never at one point disliked. She was the central source of goodness for the novel. And this doesn’t mean that I found the other characters lacking in development, oh no, they were finely created and did their part. I just really, really, didn’t like them. Even Marianne and Mrs Dashwood. The only characters I tilted my head about, deliberating on how much I still disliked them from events of the novel, were Edward Ferrars and Mrs Jennings. I don’t think there was one page where I wasn’t miffed by a character, either how they behaved towards the other characters or specifically to Elinor. I didn’t like Willoughby from the beginning, and it wasn’t even because I thought he was going to be the way he was but mostly because it was too ‘spring is here’ ‘classic romance’ and too in Elinor’s face. He and Marianne also behaved like brats together. His audacity to reappear at the end of the novel puzzled me a little and I couldn’t understand why Austen would choose to include such a scene (although a writer’s motives are their own, I’m not going to presume to completely understand anything about the writing of the novel) but I do think it gave some sort of closure to that particular situation and gave Marianne a lesser blow.

Halfway through the novel I wondered if the ‘feminist obsession’ it was associated with was because all men were trash, but, whilst most men were trash, the women were worse. There was a good balance of disagreeable female and male characters and so the worry that it was just going to perpetuate that ‘men are trash’ and ‘women are victims’ was abolished. Instead, it showed an intelligent and immovable young woman who strived to persevere despite others crumbling and becoming nasty under the same circumstances. She’s set in her ways and yet she adapts politely to most circumstances in order to ‘keep the peace’, whether it’s covering for her sister or being polite to people who outright insult her. She’s a mature, clever and kind young woman without completely surrendering to the unideal world she’s living in. Personally, I think she deserved better than Edward but other than Colonel Brandon there was no one else I was willing to hand her over to (like I have any say in the matter).

Overall the novel was amazing. Like most written in that old style, it was a little overbearing with detail but at the same time gave a lot of great descriptions of the landscapes. The characters were great and even though I disliked the majority of them, it worked greatly to the advantage of the story. If you’re like me and you’ve avoided Sense and Sensibility because you’ve passed it off as some sappy romance novel with distasteful feminism (I have strong views about feminism in terms of how some ‘feminists’ conduct themselves. I believe in empowerment and equality, and not the battering of the male sex, the expectation of double standards and the control of how women behave, ironically, by other women), then think again. I’ve grown up excited by fantasy, thriller and magnificent journies. I pushed away novels from the romance genre (I don’t dislike it completely. I love a good love story but it has to be a good love story. Not recycled and cliche and not kind of dangerous to impressionable people e.g. the bad boy that treats you like crap but protected you in one scenario, the girl that cheats on you but you’re so in love with her it’s okay. You know, that kind of weird crap… not that I’ve never read that kind of writing).

I’m definitely going to read the rest of Austen’s work.