Project Austen - January - Sense and Sensibility

Title: Sense and Sensibility

Author: Jane Austen

Genre: Classic, Romance

General Thoughts: Lovely-dovey!

Rating: 5/5 stars.

First Lines

The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner, as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance.

Sense and Sensibility is the story of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, two sisters that find love in different ways. Marianne, eccentric and extroverted. Elinor, quiet and reserved. We see how each's personalities influences the love they expect, and how each suffer's through.

Jane Austen continues to be my favorites author. End of discussion.

This book blew me. It centered around the two north and south poles that were Marianne and Elinor and how each duels on the events that are happening. I'm a person who loves character development, and this was definitely the book for me.

We first have Elinor, whom I can relate the most to. I'm the type of person who's quiet and not keen on putting my feelings out there. I tend to think before I act a lot and tend to lean towards somebody else's happiness instead of mine. And that's exactly what Elinor is. She never did anything in the book that wasn't based on not hurting her mom and sister's feelings. Even if she was incredibly saddened or happy she wouldn't say anything about if she though it could inconvenience somebody else. And every time Marianne did the exact opposite, she would cringe and mentally criticize her. And to have someone that I can relate to so accurately was pretty amazing. There were some things she did that I don't agree with, but most of her behavior was me in a nutshell.

Then we have beautiful Marianne. She's loud and impertinent and she never keeps her thoughts to herself. If she's suffering, the rest of the world suffers with her. You see, as much as she's the complete opposite of me, I found myself agreeing with her so much. And I could relate to her as well. There were things she did that I just had to nod and smile.

Then we have the rest of the characters like their imbecile brother or her ogre of a wife. And the sweet lady who took them under her wing, or she thought she did (can't remember her name, oops). All those characters added the perfect bittersweet feelings when needed.

The overall idea of the story is pretty amazing. Of course, it being a classic and such an old one, the language was kind of difficult for me to keep up at times, specially because English is not my mother language. But once you get hook in it, you read way faster.

I do have to point that around the second part of the book (it's divided in three) it got a little tedious and I found some parts to be unnecessary. But once you get back on the third part it's amazing all over again.

Of course, super in love with Edward (not the sparkly one). Even though he can be quite the idiot for being so slow and such a gentleman, I still forgive him.

Overall, great, amazing, incredible classic by the wonderful Jane Austen who never disappoints me. I really love her stories and the way she writes. Sometimes, I think it's out of this world.

I would recommend this books as much as Pride and Prejudice. You can't just read one Jane Austen and move on. Jane Austen delivers amazingness all over the place.

I can't say that this is over Pride and Prejudice on my favorites, but it's pretty close to it. And I will reread it someday. Not right away, but in the near future.

Sense and Sesibility (1995)

I've already watched this movie before but found myself remembering little about it. Nonetheless, this was super sweet and funny to watch again. I remember now why I started liking this movies so much. It's so fun and sweet and kind of innocent but old-ish. I think that this is my favorite adaptation and that the actors were amazing in it.

Sense and Sensibility (2008)

This was a first for me, never before I've watched this version. It's a three-episodes series and at first I thought it was going to be incredibly boring because no way in hell this was going to be made longer and not boring, but it actually was interesting in most parts. They did they're own interpretation of a few unsaid events or feelings which I thought was an amazing touch of them to do. I loved this version and I'd re-watch it again a few more times, with my mom even. And I'm happy to have found out about it.

This was my Sense and Sensibility overall review. I'm in love with this story in all the representations of it and I think it is in the top five. I recommend you watching and reading all of the mentioned above and I hope you find it as pleasant as I did.