Book Review for Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen

★★★★★ & ★★★★★

The reason I’m doing this as a bundle is because I have already somewhat reviewed both of these when I first started reading them. They were more reflective and discussion like, but they carry a lot of my review thoughts in there. You can find these here: I finished Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility ~ Jane Austen.

What I thought it would be going in:

To be honest, I went in thinking I would hate these novels. I resisted the romance genre (and still do), but even for someone like me who detests some of the tropes and the way they affect people (check out my post on it: My Relationship with the Romance Genre) thought I needed to at least read the classics because it was relevant to me as a writer (even though I also disliked that whole notion of you must read the classics to write well—but that’s another thing I’ve worked through and talked about).

My initial impressions:

The start of both novels are great for quickly un-knotting the preconceived expectations I had of the novels. I do like historical writing, and so it was only too easy for Austen to trap me with that, but more than that, the tone wasn’t at all like I expected it to be, and the bitter cake of “women write mushy and silly romances” that society had been feeding me was coughed out and forgotten. It was one of those moments where I realised just how misogynistic the roots of our values can be because of how society sees fit to raise us.

Noticeably, for both of them, the main characters were not at all the stereotype of a ditsy and naive madame in distress would be. They were the empowered (due to their own efforts) women who had to look out for that stereotype because it was usually one of their cousins or younger sisters, and I was down for that.

The romance wasn’t incredibly sudden, either. I believe in sudden attraction, but I don’t really believe in sudden love. And I know that they do it in movies and books to pick up the pace, but I get really frustrated when people take from it that two weeks will let you know if your partner is your soul mate.

My final impressions:

I loved both of them and have gathered more of Austen’s work to read. I think it might be best for you to check out the fine details of my thoughts in the above links, because I wrote those a lot closer to when I reading them. Overall, I had my mind changed about the romance genre (as a whole, I still dislike parts of it) and was happy to find novels that felt empowering.

What I liked most:

The main characters. I felt sympathy for them, and they rarely did anything that I thought was outright foolish or didn’t make sense. Often, in romance, people do weird things, and though I get that humans are complicated and everyone has a right to their flaws, Elinor and Elizabeth were characters that I felt I could root for. Not everything was rosy and perfect (in fact I thought they weren’t going to get a “happy ending” at all) and I appreciated that. A beautiful concoction of satire and smacks of drama. Even the sass of the characters had me. There were times when the nastiness of the other characters had me fuming, but that just binds you to the main character even more.

What I disliked most:

Probably the hints of those things I don’t like about romance, but that’s inevitable. And by that I mean I couldn’t stand Elinor’s sister and despised Mr Bingley’s sister. But, I appreciated that this novel seemed to be empowering for women and yet shared the villainy and daftness amongst the sexes.