Book Review: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Karen B kish
14 min readMar 17, 2023

Introduction of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Although “Sense and Sensibility” is Jane Austen’s first novel, their writing skills are quite skilled. Every plot in the story, though the author’s ingenious conception, the apparent cause and effect relationship, and the essential cause hidden behind the scenes are natural and reasonable. The heroine makes reasonable speculations and judgments based on superficial phenomena.

Although attentive readers have various doubts from time to time, their thoughts will naturally develop with good observation. When the final result appears, it is completely different from the superficial phenomenon, causing unexpected results. Unexpected comedic effect. If you read it in reverse, you will find that the factors that lead to the inevitable result have long been seen between the lines.

The plot of the novel revolves around the mate selection activities of the two heroines and strives to reveal that in the British social trend at that time, marriage was used as a bad habit for women to seek economic security and improve their economic status, and the ugly fashion of focusing on the family regardless of women’s feelings and rights as a human being.

The heroines in the novel all pursue equal communication and communication with men’s thoughts and feelings, require equal rights in social status, and insist on the freedom of independent observation, analysis, and selection of men. In Britain at the time, it was almost a cry of resistance.

As reflected in the title of the book, the story focuses on the conflict between “reason” and “emotion”. The characters represented by Marianne lack reason but have excess emotion; the characters represented by John Dashwood and his wife have excess reason but lack emotion, and the characters represented by Willoughby are very hypocritical in emotion.

He seems very emotional, but in fact, he is indifferent and downright selfish. In the story, the author praised those who cherished their feelings. Although he also satirized these people’s lack of reason from time to time, he showed contempt for those who were only rational or hypocritical in their feelings.

The author ultimately admires the heroine Eleanor, because she is both emotional and rational. This shows the author’s ideal on this issue, that is, people cannot be without emotion, but emotion should be restricted by reason.

On this Content

  • Book: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  • About Sense and Sensibility Author
  • Quotes from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  • Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen Summary
  • When love is impossible, are you Eleanor? Marianne? Or Brandon?
  • Book Review of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  • Female love dominated by patriarchy
  • From Marianne to Eleanor’s transformation
  • No wonder Marianne questioned her sister strangely:
  • The Conflict Facing the Perfect View of Happiness
  • Reading Notes: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Book: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Book Review: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

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About Sense and Sensibility Author

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon, near Basingstoke, the seventh child of the rector of the parish. She lived with her family at Steventon until they moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801. after his death in 1805, she moved around with her mother, in 1809 they settled in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire.

Here she remained, except for a few visits to London, until May 1817, when she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor. There she died on 18 July 1817.

Jane Austen was extremely modest about her own genius, describing her work to her nephew, Edward, as ‘the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory, on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labor. As a girl, she wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances.

Her works were published only after much revision, four novels being published in her lifetime. These are Sense and Sensibility(1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were published posthumously in 1818 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen, the first formal announcement of her authorship.

Persuasion was written in a race against failing health in 1815–16. She also left two earlier compositions, a short epistolary novel, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons.

At the time of her death, she was working on a new novel, Sanditon, a fragmentary draft of which survives.

She wrote most of the novel is which took the daily life of the middle class in towns and villages as the theme, and reflected the style of British society in the late 18th and early 19th centuries through conflicts in love and marriage.

The works often ridicule people’s stupidity, selfishness, snobbery, blind self-confidence, and other despicable and ridiculous weaknesses through comic scenes.

Austen’s novels appeared at the beginning of the 19th century, swept away the trend of false romanticism, inherited and developed the excellent British realism tradition in the 18th century, prepared for the climax of realist novels in the 19th century, and played a link between the past and the next important.

Quotes from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

“A woman of seven and twenty,” said Marianne, after pausing a moment, “can never hope to feel or inspire affection again, and if her home is uncomfortable, or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse, for the sake of the provision and security of a wife. In his marrying such a woman therefore there would be nothing unsuitable. It would be a compact of convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes, it would be no marriage at all, but that would be nothing. To me, it would seem only a commercial exchange, in which each wished to be benefited at the expense of the other.” — — quoted on page 28

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen Summary

When love is impossible, are you Eleanor? Marianne? Or Brandon?

For those who suffer from love, reading this book is enough.

Not to mention how elegant and soothing Jane Austen’s writing is, and not to mention that Jane Austen brings a consistent gentleman and lady demeanor, I would say that this work, for those who suffer from love and endure suffering, is a redemption.

Although the original title of the book was “Eleanor and Marion”, the two sisters’ very different personalities also fit the title “Sense and Sensibility”, but Jane Austen’s feeling in this work is not only It’s enough to describe the different responses of people with different personalities when faced with a lovelorn,

but through comparison, let us learn from Eleanor and Brandon about reason and restraint, forgiveness and understanding, those virtues are victory The weapon of selfish lust is difficult to learn, but necessary.

Many readers will like Marianne’s candidness, and will feel that Eleanor is repressed to the point of repression — while enduring the pain of lovelorn, she has to put on another face to comfort Marianne’s hysteria. This kind of character is too tattooed. Silk is not messy, too detached from human nature.

This pair of sisters showed completely different personalities when they first fell in love. Eleanor was quiet and wise, thoughtful and thoughtful about problems, and Marianne escaped self-will and showed unconcealed candor in her feelings. Men find Eleanor respectable and Marianne lovely.

But is Eleanor’s rationality really too realistic a personality? If, as Marianne said, Howard has so many disappointments, Eleanor should not choose Howard because he is too rational. He has a sister who dislikes Eleanor.

He relies on his mother for support, and he is unemployed and unwilling to make progress. Eleanor’s virtue was always defending Howard, until one day Lucy told Howard that he was engaged to her.

The boundless pain, in Eleanor’s case, did not turn into bitterness, did not turn into a grudge, for Howard, and for Lucy.

You might say that she’s not as straightforward as Marianne, she seems a little hypocritical, but after reading the whole work, Eleanor has not hurt anyone, whether or not someone brought her misfortune.

Facing Willoughby’s abandonment and her notoriety being revealed, Marianne was never as strong as Eleanor. She slowly collapsed and collapsed. If it weren’t for Eleanor and Brandon, I think Marianne will never get out of trouble so easily.

Facing the loss of love, Marianne is a weak person. She either makes her relatives and friends worry or hurts herself, while Eleanor is a veritable strong person who knows how to not pass the pain on to others when she is in pain. Eleanor didn’t hurt anyone, and she didn’t hurt herself either.

If it is said that unrequited love is a disease, it is really a disease that only one can cure. On the other hand, the party who was tortured and could not respond, always thought that the panacea was in the other’s hands. In fact, maybe the etiology of the disease is not initiated by people, and the situation is different.

Maybe it is because of the habit of not being able to eat and sleep without the things that you like from childhood. She just likes the troubled taste of lovesickness and enjoys the pain of being abused; it may also be that for some people, no matter who the object is, love is only a stage of the disease that is used to recur like arthritis.

There are so many different kinds of emotions, in fact, indulging in unreachable emotions is a kind of disease, and none of them is shameful, but none of them are noble. When the disease comes, it needs only treatment.

But if those who can free themselves to follow Eleanor’s path of self-healing and healing others, and those who harbor her compassion and compassion, may become noble, because of their impossibility, they are noble.

Otherwise, when A falls in love with B, B falls in love with C, and C falls in love with D, in such a strange cycle, if every character is Marianne, if there is no more pain like Eleanor and Brandon He who heals others, then who is left to save himself?

I have never been a very rational person, and I also developed a habit like Marianne when I was a child and has continued to this day, selfish, willful, indulging in something and ignoring the surroundings, reading “Sense and Sensibility”, seeing Eleanor and Brandon Only then did we know that reason is not without emotion, but with compassionate consideration and redemption with one heart.

Those who suffer from love can learn from Eleanor and Brandon’s minds, or read Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility”.

Love that doesn’t know how to help is just taking.

Love with additional redemption is compassion.

Jane Austen has built a stage for those who are trapped in love, so that every past, present, and future struggling on both sides of the boundary between reason and sensibility finds their current position and should play a good role.

Book Review of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Jane Austen lived in the English countryside at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. Most of her novels revolve around the marriage and love of decent people in the countryside. On the surface, this is a small pastoral world.

The small world that Steen is very familiar with shows us the subtle emotional world of women. Her novels have endured rounds of “interesting revolutions” in the UK because her writing can not only illuminate women but also reach the depths of universal humanity.

Austen’s first published work, “Sense and Sensibility” also pinned Austen’s femininity and ideals of love. This work mainly tells the story of the marriage and love of two sisters, Eleanor and Marianne.

Born in an English country squire family, the two sisters had to live with their mother on a frugal diet because their inheritance belonged to their half-brother after the death of their father. Due to the financial setback, Eleanor had to break up with like-minded lover Edward, and Marianne was also abandoned by Willoughby due to various changes.

When faced with emotional blows, the two sisters had very different character reactions. Sister Eleanor was good at controlling her emotions with reason, while Marianne was emotional and allowed her emotions to spread. Fortunately, after a painful experience, Austin ended with a “big reunion”, so that the two sisters finally have a perfect marriage.

The storyline of this work is simple and easy to read, and the language style is also plain and simple, which does not seem to give us a tremor reading effect. However, the female consciousness and concern for women behind the characters it portrays have triggered a series of thoughts for me.

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