I really want to love Jane Austen. I do. Perhaps not with the fervor of uber-dedicated "Janeites," if only because I'm summarily opposed to fangirl behavior of any kind. And it's not excusable just because you're in the realm of "fine literature." I don't care if it's Fitzwilliam Darcy or Edward Cullen that makes your heart race, ladies; raving obsession just doesn't become you. (With that said, though, I think we can all take a minute to queue up Colin Firth's
pond-diving scene from the
Pride & Prej BBC miniseries. Brooding never looked so good.)
If nothing else, the Austen oeuvre is not a lot to get through. The sum total of her life's work is a very manageable six books, so it would be sort of shameful to aspire to the ranks of the literati without having plodded through them. And yet.
It just seems to take such... effort.
Including the novel I just finished today, I've read a grand total of two Austen books. I made my way through Pride and Prejudice in eighth grade, and although I frequently quote (and/or mock) the more famous lines (I don't know about you, but I can name several single men in possession of a good fortune who are ~not in want of a wife), I'm pretty sure I don't remember many of the details. Now, with Sense and Sensibility likewise under my belt, I may have discovered the reason why: Austen's characters, at least by 21st-century standards, are hopelessly unrelatable.
Like P&P, Sense and Sensibility derives its title from the defining characteristics of two main characters: sisters Elinor (the sense) and Marianne (the sensibility). Elinor, with all the considerable sagacity of her 18 or so years of life, has the unenviable task of keeping her mother and sisters from floating away in a sea of their own hysteria. Everything she does and says is governed by logic, propriety, and politeness, right down to her choice of beau: the dignified, if somewhat lackluster, Edward Ferrars.
Predictably, Marianne presents a constant foil: whereas Elinor is calm and collected, her sister is impetuous and passionate. In Marianne's mind every event is either infused with the wildest joy or steeped in the deepest despair - and for the most part, it is her would-be lover Willoughby who supplies fuel for both. (Needless to say, neither sister fully supports the other's choice in man candy. Elinor thinks Willoughby flakey and insubstantial, and Edward's reserve is too off-putting to spunky Marianne.)
There's also a third sister, Margaret, who is apparently too lame to attract a man or merit virtually any mention after page 5. And since Elinor and Marianne spend 90% of their time dealing with boy drama and the remaining 10% reading, dickin' around on the pianoforte, and pwning each other in games of whist, it's difficult to imagine where such pitiable normalcy leaves Margaret. I like to imagine that while the elder girls are scheming and swooning around the English countryside, Margaret is holed up in a room somewhere developing advanced mathematical theorems before sneaking out at night to assemble clandestine meetings of Britain's first powderpuff football league, "The Genteel Juggernauts." But probably not.
Anyway, I wanted to expand on why Elinor and Marianne drive me batshit crazy. I'll start by saying that as a storytelling device, I get it. Contrasting people on two ends of a personality spectrum is an obvious way to plumb the depths of human experience and examine how different our worldviews can be. The problem isn't that the sisters are opposites in a lot of ways - it's just that in real life, nobody cares.
My friend Diane and I have terms for the two main types of girls we can't stand: overenthusiastic "woo girls" (you've heard the sound, I promise. Think Girls Gone Wild. "I'm essentially blackmailing myself against any credible future employment! WOOOOO!"), and insufferably mild-tempered "basic bitches." A basic bitch is the girl you knew in high school who married her first boyfriend and now fills your Facebook newsfeed with nothing but ruminations on the bliss of a low-key life in a podunk hometown. A woo girl wants desperately to be interesting, but gets lost in a crowd of nondescript, boozy skanks. A basic bitch doesn't even know what interesting is.
It would do Elinor and Marianne a disservice to lump them into these categories without considering a few of their merits - both sisters are, at least, eloquent, well-read, compassionate, and moderately accomplished in a hobby (Marianne plays piano and Elinor draws). And to be fair, they're middle-class women coming of age in the early 1800s. It's not like they have a plethora of options. If these suitors fall through, they're back to darning socks with Margaret. Shit is bleak.
But... I'm gonna go ahead and judge. Elinor, with her nonchalant affection towards a generically boring dude, is committing a crime worse than settling down too early: she's just settling. And when said boring dude inexplicably jumps ship and she learns he's been secretly engaged to the Austen universe's equivalent of Regina George, Elinor shrugs and takes it all in stride. "No use crying over a spilled fiance" seems to be her motto, and I just don't find it plausible. Her stoicism comes in handy when a similar fate befalls woo-girl Marianne, who suffers the indignity of discovering that the rascally Willoughby has not only toyed with her affections, but is also the baby-daddy in some hushed-up pastoral scandal. Weeks of hysterical despair turn into months of grief, and Marianne threatens to waste away on more than one occasion, tended primarily by her steadfast sister.
Elinor, at least, deserves commendation for her accurate douche radar. She secretly predicts that Willoughby will pull a dick move long before it happens, even while Marianne and the girls' mother are busy fawning over him. Elinor mounts a small-scale investigation into the character of the man who would be her brother-in-law, sniffing out the intelligence afforded by mutual friends. She finds nothing to confirm her suspicions, at first, and is invariably described as "pleased" at the lack of dirt. This was the point, in my reading, when I first had to call bullshit. People just don't think like that. There's no doubt that Elinor loves her sister and wants the best for her, but if anything, her failure to dig up scuttlebutt on Willoughby should be met with grudging acceptance. People like to trust their hunches, especially when they're negative; there's a thirst to prove yourself right, even if it'll mean raining on someone else's parade. In a way, it would be more satisfying for Elinor to show her love by dissuading Marianne from making a bad match, than it would be to accept a flawed suitor into their family just because everybody else thinks he's awesome.
The jig is up when Willoughby's wanton ways are revealed, and everyone gets to join in the badmouthing. Again, though, Elinor misses even the smallest opportunities to gloat. There is, of course, no need to rub it in when your sister's in pain, but given that the book is written in omniscient third-person, it would be easy enough for Austen to throw in a line or two about any secret "I told you so" thoughts that may be dancing through Elinor's mind. Their complete absence, as well as Elinor's resolute determination not to augment Marianne's distress by mentioning her own problems with Edward, smacks of too much saintly restraint. Show me a mild, selfless teenager and I'll show you a lobotomy patient.
The finale of Sense and Sensibility avoids complete triteness only because (spoiler alert) Willoughby doesn't come back. Or at least, he doesn't come back after the tell-all conversation with Elinor, wherein he moves himself practically to tears over how much of an assclown he was to his laundry list of hos and sighingly resigns himself to a marital future that will forever be compared to the theoretical happiness of life with Marianne. (Even this strikes me as false. Does everyone have to be redeemed? Can't a villain remain a villain? Sometimes I worry that Austen wants us to love everyone, and takes too many pains to show that the bad guys are really good guys, underneath - although it does provide some satisfaction to see Willoughby reaping what he's sown.) Elinor, presumably as a reward for having the emotional range of a hamster, lures Edward back against all odds and enters into a blissfull covenant of what is probably very boring married sex.
But wait! Marianne gets a lovely consolation prize in the form of Colonel Brandon, a middle aged friend of the family who never had a chance while the dashing Willoughby was around, and who, in fact, has an adopted daughter Marianne's age, which makes the whole attraction more than a little pervy. As an honorable, even-tempered man who bumbles around in the background of the entire book, the Colonel is clearly primed for some sort of triumph, and it might as well be the newly single Marianne (though Lord knows that Margaret is still hanging around in the library or something, so even if the "hot" sister doesn't want him there's still another underage girl to marry off). Colonel Brandon is a genuinely warmhearted character, though, and it's considerate of Austen to at least leave us with a cliche we can stomach: nice guys don't always finish last.
