Caz’s Classics Corner: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility - LandorNarrated by Rosalyn Landor

I confess that when it comes to Jane Austen’s novels, I have an A team and a B team. The A team consists of Emma, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, and the B team of Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey. Mansfield Park kind of hovers between the two – it’s a wonderful book but the heroine is difficult to like and understand for much of it, which can make it a bit problematic.

While I own at least one version of my Austen A team books in audio, I don’t have any of the B team ones, so when I saw that Rosalyn Landor had recently recorded Sense and Sensibility (and also Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion), it was the perfect opportunity for me to try an audiobook of S&S. The book tells the story of the two Dashwood sisters, Elinor (the Sense) and Marianne (the Sensibility), who, at the beginning of the story, have just suffered the loss of their father. Trusting his son John to provide for his mother and sisters, Mr Dashwood senior left no will – and had reckoned without the grasping nature of John’s wife, Fanny, who very easily talks her somewhat spineless husband into believing that his mother and siblings will be able to happily exist on little more than a pittance. Following the funeral, the ladies continue to reside at Norland Park, although the new mistress of the place makes it clear in no uncertain terms that she expects them to remove themselves in the very near future. Realising this, Mrs Dashwood senior wants to leave immediately, but the ever sensible and pragmatic Elinor persuades her to wait until they can find somewhere else to live that is within their means. This is no easy task given the small sum their brother is allowing them, and it’s during these last weeks at Norland that Elinor makes the acquaintance of Fanny’s brother, Edward, a quiet, somewhat reserved young man, and falls in love with him.

Fanny is not at all pleased by this, believing that Elinor is far beneath her brother in consequence, and takes steps to part them. Not long after this, the ladies receive an offer of accommodation from a distant relative, and shortly afterwards, remove themselves to Barton Cottage.

It’s here that the family makes the acquaintance of the steady, gentlemanly Colonel Brandon, who almost immediately falls in love with Marianne, although he is twice her age. But Marianne falls head over heels in love with the dashing Mr Willoughby, who is staying with a relative at a nearby estate. He gives every sign of being as smitten with her as she with him, although it’s very clear that he is not an especially worthy young man by the way the author has him often bringing out the worst in Marianne and encouraging her to behave with less propriety than is expected of a young lady of good family. When Willoughby departs unexpectedly for London without declaring himself, Marianne is heartbroken and, in what I am sure is the author’s not-so-fond poke at the highly emotional heroines so often to be found in contemporary literature, has her drooping, moping and wallowing in her misery.

While Marianne is experiencing the dizzy highs and crashing lows of young love, Elinor is keeping her own council about her own, thwarted love affair with Edward Ferrars. The contrast between the ladies is perhaps never greater than here, when Marianne, in her selfish misery accuses her sister of having no feelings and fails to see that she, too, is suffering.

But poor Elinor’s misery isn’t destined to stay confined to concern for her sister or her own broken heart; in London, she is singled out by one Lucy Steele, who wastes no time in informing Elinor of her secret engagement to Edward, made when he was her father’s pupil some years ago. Lucy is clearly a nasty piece of work; having heard of Edward’s affection for another woman, she latches on to Elinor so firmly that to rebuff her would be incredibly rude, so Elinor is stuck listening to Lucy’s endless confidences of how she and Edward have to keep their love secret from his mother, and how much she longs to be his wife.

Both sisters have much to contend with before they find their happiness, but find it they do. Yet the romances in the story aren’t really what draw me to it. Edward is a fairly absentee hero and only appears in a very small proportion of the book, and while Brandon has more page-time, we see him more as a friend to Elinor than as a lover to Marianne. (In fact, I suspect I’m not the only one to think that he’d have been better matched with Elinor.) No, I read Sense and Sensibility for the author’s delicious and deadly wit, from which no-one, not even Elinor and Marianne, are spared. There is also a wonderful set of supporting characters, all of whom provide excellent opportunities for the author to indulge her sense of the ridiculous; the gossipy Mrs Jennings, for instance, and her empty-headed daughter whose interactions with her long-suffering, bored husband always make me grin. And I do enjoy the way in which the parallels are drawn between Marianne’s passionate nature and Elinor’s more restrained one. Even more, I like the way Jane Austen pokes fun at Marianne’s excess of sensibility; she is obviously of the opinion that ‘Sense’ is the way to go, and in that is showing herself to be very much a woman of her time, in which the tenets of the ‘Age of Reason’ propounded in the eighteenth century still prevailed, and the coming of the romanticism embodied by artists such as Byron and Beethoven was still viewed with suspicion.

Narrator Rosalyn Landor is supremely suited to material of this sort, her beautifully modulated tones, flawless pronunciation and precise intonation being the perfect method of conveyance for Jane Austen’s impeccable language and biting wit. Her understanding of the text shines through with every utterance, and she brings all of her considerable skill to bear in her performance, whether she is performing narrative or dialogue. The two heroines are very clearly differentiated, Elinor’s soft, deliberate manner of speech in direct contrast to Marianne’s more fervently emotional style of delivery. Her pacing is spot-on, and each of Jane Austen’s many secondary characters sound more or less exactly as I’ve heard them in my head while reading the book. Sir John is bluff and hearty; Charlotte’s breathless bird-like twittering completely matches her empty-headed pronouncements; Lucy is unpleasantly ingratiating with a tone that suggests falsehood, and Fanny simply drips snobbery and condescension. Ms Landor contrasts the three principal male characters in the story very effectively; even though all three never appear together, it’s still easy to tell who is who.

There are a dozen or so currently available recordings of Sense and Sensibility, from narrators including Juliet Stevenson and Harriet Walter (who played Fanny in the Ang Lee film); and as I’ve said before, if you have a favourite narrator, making a choice isn’t too difficult. If you haven’t however, and want to experience some Jane Austen in audio, I have no hesitation in recommending this edition very highly indeed.

Caz


Genre: Classic Literature

Publisher: Dreamscape Audio

Sense and Sensibility was provided to AudioGals by Dreamscape Audio for a review.

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