Sense and Sensibility

Rating:
Summary: From the Editor
Review: "Sense and Sensibility," Jane Austen's first published novel (1811), tells the intertwined stories of two contrasting sisters, the lively, passionate, impulsive Marianne and the reserved, self-disciplined, dutiful Elinor. Both experience love, heartache, and eventual happiness in marriage, and both have their beliefs and value systems tested. A host of memorable, comic minor characters combine with the principal heroines and heroes to develop a tale that is both lively and thought provoking, humorous and psychologically astute. Anyone who has ever struggled with conflicts between spontaneity and caution, heart and head, can identify with the central characters of this novel.
This edition of "Sense and Sensibility" includes a number of helpful supplementary materials that enhance the reader's understanding and appreciation of the novel. Excerpts from contemporary texts clarify the historical context of the terms "sense" and "sensibility." Among the works included are selections from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther," a classic example of the novel of sensibility, and Maria Edgeworth's "Letters of Julia and Caroline," an earlier novel of contrasting female characters, in this case two friends, one of whom is sensible and the other romantic and impractical. The edition also includes the whole of Jane Austen's "Love and Freindship" (sic), a hilarious parody of sentimental fiction written when Austen was fourteen. Besides background materials, the volume includes four essays from recent critics that represent a range of different interpretations of the novel.
Finally, the introduction provides useful biographical and historical information and outlines a variety of critical approaches to the novel: some critics believe Elinor is clearly the favored sister and the sense she embodies the preferred value system; some critics by contrast believe the novel either consciously or unconsciously betrays sympathy for Marianne and the sensibility she represents; and other critics believe the novel advocates a middle ground between sense and sensibility, according to which both sisters need to abandon aspects of their initial beliefs and adopt attitudes and behaviors associated with the other sibling. "Sense and Sensibility" has sometimes been criticized for being too didactic and formulaic, but those who read the novel along with the various background, critical, and introductory essays in this volume should discover a work that is richly complex, ambiguous, and many-sided in its exploration of the competing values of emotion and reason, spontaneity and restraint, and personal fulfillment versus duty to others.

Rating:
Summary: From the Editor
Review: "Sense and Sensibility," Jane Austen's first published novel (1811), tells the intertwined stories of two contrasting sisters, the lively, passionate, impulsive Marianne and the reserved, self-disciplined, dutiful Elinor. Both experience love, heartache, and eventual happiness in marriage, and both have their beliefs and value systems tested. A host of memorable, comic minor characters combine with the principal heroines and heroes to develop a tale that is both lively and thought provoking, humorous and psychologically astute. Anyone who has ever struggled with conflicts between spontaneity and caution, heart and head, can identify with the central characters of this novel.
This edition of "Sense and Sensibility" includes a number of helpful supplementary materials that enhance the reader's understanding and appreciation of the novel. Excerpts from contemporary texts clarify the historical context of the terms "sense" and "sensibility." Among the works included are selections from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther," a classic example of the novel of sensibility, and Maria Edgeworth's "Letters of Julia and Caroline," an earlier novel of contrasting female characters, in this case two friends, one of whom is sensible and the other romantic and impractical. The edition also includes the whole of Jane Austen's "Love and Freindship" (sic), a hilarious parody of sentimental fiction written when Austen was fourteen. Besides background materials, the volume includes four essays from recent critics that represent a range of different interpretations of the novel.
Finally, the introduction provides useful biographical and historical information and outlines a variety of critical approaches to the novel: some critics believe Elinor is clearly the favored sister and the sense she embodies the preferred value system; some critics by contrast believe the novel either consciously or unconsciously betrays sympathy for Marianne and the sensibility she represents; and other critics believe the novel advocates a middle ground between sense and sensibility, according to which both sisters need to abandon aspects of their initial beliefs and adopt attitudes and behaviors associated with the other sibling. "Sense and Sensibility" has sometimes been criticized for being too didactic and formulaic, but those who read the novel along with the various background, critical, and introductory essays in this volume should discover a work that is richly complex, ambiguous, and many-sided in its exploration of the competing values of emotion and reason, spontaneity and restraint, and personal fulfillment versus duty to others.