0 Sense and Sensibility (1811)

This was the first Jane Austen novel I read (some time ago!) and I guess I'd have to call it a decent start, as I enjoyed it very much and went on to read more. But circling back to her self-published literary debut now shortly after reading a few of the others, it's notably weak—not even close to her best, Pride and Prejudice, which was written in a similar time frame. The two main characters are hampered a little by the allegorical positioning (older sister Elinor as "sense," Marianne as "sensibility," whatever these things mean). Even worse are mechanically staged scenes, based on improbable encounters and coincidence, whose purposes are more didactic than anything—always annoying for me in fiction, any kind of single-purpose "lesson." The last few chapters of Sense and Sensibility are remarkably crowded with this. But it's not bad aside from that, especially given it was essentially written by a 19-year-old. In many ways all Jane Austen's novels are the same, which is true of most great novelists, and here one sees the basic terms most plainly: the thicket of family and friendship ecologies, the mature young woman, the less mature others, the graspers, knaves, and schemers, the foolish and the wise, all of them concerned primarily with marrying one another off in the terms that suit them, whether it's for love and/or respect and/or character or for various types of gain, usually monetary. There are few of the complexities and subtleties of character that make many of Austen's others more interesting. Here pretty much what you see is what you get, except for the calculated surprises at the service of the plot. It may be obvious but it's well constructed. She already knew how to write a novel. So even the plot developments that would have to be called trite—various confessions and deathbed scenes and whatnot—still keep things moving right along. I do find that my patience for her language varies by mood. At times she seems like one of the most lucid writers I know. Other times it seems painfully clotted with heaps of clauses and abstruse references to Mrs. or Miss First / Last Name jumbles or by maddeningly vague relation, "her sister," "his aunt," and such. But that seems to be a random matter of mood mostly. Her language is also really consistent, which contributes to the clarity.

In case it's not at the library.

Detail: Sense and Sensibility (1811)

0 Mansfield Park (1814)

In many ways I find I approach Jane Austen novels much like mystery stories. Where the latter has a murder or other crime, the former will have a marriage. There is always a plucky, handsome, and most sensible heroine—in this case one Fanny Price, an impoverished niece of a "great" family—and one or two or three prospects, at least one of whom will turn into some variety of rat. The pleasure for me is all in the subtleties of character, which Austen is so good at conceiving situations to show. Good people turn out to be something less than good, and bad people can mend their ways, so it's never clear where things are headed, except generally toward the sacred altar of betrothal. The most interesting character for me in this one is a Miss Mary Crawford, who is lively and spirited and seems capable of an interesting development. Unfortunately (and I think unfairly) she turns out to be something of a villain, doing things I don't think fit with her character as I understand it. Now and then the judgments (of the author? the characters?) are blurred and distorted and hard to read—antiquated, I guess. The way "theater" is routinely deplored as corrupting, for example, and indeed shown to be so. That seemed on the wrong side of ridiculous to me, and I particularly thought Miss Crawford's skepticism about religion was sharp, apt, and well-placed. But I think it is also intended to make her villainous. Thus, alas, I run somewhat afoul of what I believe are Miss Austen's own biases and morality. I am altogether just a little cockeyed to her judgments here. But honestly that's part of the engrossing appeal for me of her work. These are generally well made worlds she has left us, and it's fascinating to feel through the moral labyrinths to find how one is aligned. The resolutions reached in Mansfield Park may feel off to me, but I'm sure many find them by and large satisfying. But I don't. I would like to speak up again for Miss Crawford, and gently remonstrate against the felicity of first cousins marrying. But there you have it. Now I'm trying to write like Jane Austen. She casts that strong of a spell. Mansfield Park is not as good as her gold standard Pride and Prejudice but it's plenty fine.

In case it's not at the library.

Detail: Mansfield Park (1814)

0 Emma (1815)

I will likely be testing this theory of mine again soon, but in many ways Jane Austen's novels work for me in ways that are similar to genre novels. If I haven't looked at them in a while they are instantly absorbing, and perfectly charming, and I want to read another right away. But they resemble one another enough that I don't always have the energy to actually finish the next one. I love this world of Jane Austen's that is so single-mindedly focused on achieving happy unions between consenting adults, and all the daunting complexities back of them. There is always a deeply practical woman at the center of it, a few good men and women, and a host of lovable (and one or two not so lovable) recalcitrants to round it all out. Emma concludes on three felicitous—if I may use a Jane Austen word—marriage weddings, a typical if hyper Austen climax. Much of the novel is attempting to figure out who will end up with whom. It does not achieve the dramatic tensions of Pride and Prejudice, but it's a very pleasant journey. There is comfort even in the characters one does not like, partly because they so much resemble people we've known and are thus reassuring of our judgments, and partly by the familiarity. Austen was a uniquely alert observer of people, so even when her plotting begins to go flat or wayward it remains a great pleasure to follow along with her characters. It works at levels that are at once gossipy and profound, and enormously complicated, with fractured families and webs of relations across them, laid against an ever-shifting timeline of seasons and holidays, with events both pedestrian and momentous occurring in a regular rhythm. The language seems to me unusually lucid by 19th-century standards, and the society, while plainly antiquated, nonetheless recognizable. It's people just getting on with their lives, respecting their fundamental needs for human congress, to love and to be loved, and to be accorded respect and dignity too, in a world where both are so very easy to lose.

In case it's not at the library.

Detail: Emma (1815)