Marianne Dashwood is passionate and impetuous and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her older sister Elinor’s warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their experiences of love the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.
Reviewed by Pauline Melville in Slightly Foxed Issue 62.
Ire and Irritability
PAULINE MELVILLE
I am having another stab at Jane Austen. Friends beg me to keep trying, anxious for me not to miss what they tell me is an unrivalled view of a luminous literary landscape. I have made efforts on and off over the years and never found her to my taste. Somewhere along the line at school I passed through Northanger Abbey without retaining much impression of it. But now I have made a pledge with a friend who works at the Royal Society of Literature. I must endeavour to read some Austen and my friend will attempt to read Wuthering Heights, a book she has heretofore avoided. She suggested I start with Sense and Sensibility, so I did . . .
Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 62, Summer 2019
Ire and Irritability
I am having another stab at Jane Austen. Friends beg me to keep trying, anxious for me not to miss what they tell me is an unrivalled view of a luminous literary landscape. I have made efforts on and...
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