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内容简介

A tale of two sisters
Two sisters of opposing temperaments are brought to a closer understanding by their mutual disappointments—and true love finally triumphs when sense gives way to sensibility and sensibility to sense. Austen’s insightful representation of early-nineteenth-century middle-class provincial life makes her novels the enduring works on the mores and manners of her time.

目　　录

INTRODUCTION
CHRONOLOGY OF JANE AUSTEN'S LIFE AND WORK
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF Sense and Sensibility
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
NOTES
INTERPRETIVE NOTES
CRITICAL EXCERPTS
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
SUGGESTIONS FOR THE INTERESTED READER

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　　In its marvelously perceptive portrayal of two young women in love, "Sense and Sensibility" is Austen's insightful representation of early 19th-century middle-class provincial life. This edition features a new Afterword. Revised reissue.

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Sense and Sensibility, the first of those metaphoricalbits of "ivory" on which Jane Austen said she worked with "so finea brush," jackhammers away at the idea that to conjecture is a vainand hopeless reflex of the mind. But I'll venture this much: Ifshe'd done nothing else, we'd still be in awe of her. WutheringHeights alone put Emily Bront? in the pantheon, and her sisterCharlotte and their older contemporary Mary Shelley might as wellhave saved themselves the trouble of writing anything but Jane Eyreand Frankenstein. Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, is atleast as mighty a work as any of these, and smarter than all threeput together. And it would surely impress us even more withoutPride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815)towering just up ahead. Austen wrote its ur-version, Elinor andMarianne, when she was nineteen, a year before First Impressions,which became Pride and Prejudice; she reconceived it as Sense andSensibility when she was twenty-two, and she was thirty-six when itfinally appeared. Like most first novels, it lays out what will beits author's lasting preoccupations: the "three or four families ina country village" (which Austen told her niece, in an often-quotedletter, was "the very thing to work on"). The interlockinganxieties over marriages, estates, and ecclesiastical "livings."The secrets, deceptions, and self-deceptions that take severalhundred pages to straighten out-to the extent that they getstraightened out. The radical skepticism about human knowledge,human communication, and human possibility that informs almostevery scene right up to the sort-of-happy ending. And thedistinctive characters-the negligent or overindulgent parents, thebifurcating siblings (smart sister, beautiful sister; seriousbrother, coxcomb brother), the charming, corrupted younglibertines. Unlike most first novels, though, Sense and Sensibilitydoesn't need our indulgence. It's good to go.

Sense and Sensibility, the first of those metaphorical
bits of "ivory" on which Jane Austen said she worked with "so fine
a brush," jackhammers away at the idea that to conjecture is a vain
and hopeless reflex of the mind. But I'll venture this much: If
she'd done nothing else, we'd still be in awe of her. Wuthering
Heights alone put Emily Bront? in the pantheon, and her sister
Charlotte and their older contemporary Mary Shelley might as well
have saved themselves the trouble of writing anything but Jane Eyre
and Frankenstein. Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, is at
least as mighty a work as any of these, and smarter than all three
put together. And it would surely impress us even more without
Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815)
towering just up ahead. Austen wrote its ur-version, Elinor and
Marianne, when she was nineteen, a year before First Impressions,
which became Pride and Prejudice; she reconceived it as Sense and
Sensibility when she was twenty-two, and she was thirty-six when it
finally appeared. Like most first novels, it lays out what will be
its author's lasting preoccupations: the "three or four families in
a country village" (which Austen told her niece, in an often-quoted
letter, was "the very thing to work on"). The interlocking
anxieties over marriages, estates, and ecclesiastical "livings."
The secrets, deceptions, and self-deceptions that take several
hundred pages to straighten out-to the extent that they get
straightened out. The radical skepticism about human knowledge,
human communication, and human possibility that informs almost
every scene right up to the sort-of-happy ending. And the
distinctive characters-the negligent or overindulgent parents, the
bifurcating siblings (smart sister, beautiful sister; serious
brother, coxcomb brother), the charming, corrupted young
libertines. Unlike most first novels, though, Sense and Sensibility
doesn't need our indulgence. It's good to go. 
  In the novels to come, Elinor Dashwood will morph into Anne
Elliott and Elizabeth Bennet (who will morph into Emma Woodhouse);
Edward Ferrars into Edmund Bertram, Mr. Knightley, Henry Tilney,
and Captain Wentworth; Willoughby into George Wickham and Henry
Crawford. But the characters in Sense and Sensibility stand
convincingly on their own, every bit as memorable as their later
avatars. If Austen doesn't have quite the Caliban-to-Ariel range of
a Shakespeare, she can still conjure up and sympathize with both
Mrs. Jennings-the "rather vulgar" busybody with a
borderline-unwholesome interest in young people's love lives, fits
of refreshing horse sense, and a ruggedly good heart-and Marianne
Dashwood, a wittily observed case study in Romanticism, a
compassionately observed case study in sublimated adolescent
sexuality, and a humorously observed case study in humorlessness.
"I should hardly call her a lively girl," Elinor observes to
Edward, "-she is very earnest, very eager in all she does-sometimes
talks a great deal and always with animation-but she is not often
really merry." Humorlessness, in fact, may be the one thing
Marianne and her eventual lifemate, Colonel Brandon, have in
common. (Sorry to give that plot point away; it won't be the last
one, either. So, fair warning.) The minor characters have the sort
of eidetic specificity you associate with Dickens: from the
gruesomely mismatched Mr. and Mrs. Palmer to Robert Ferrars,
splendidly impenetrable in his microcephalic self-complacency. The
major characters, on the other hand, refuse to stay narrowly "in
character"; they're always recognizably themselves, yet they seem
as many-sided and changeable as people out in the nonfictional
world. 
  Elinor makes as ambivalent a heroine as Mansfield Park's
notoriously hard-to-warm-up-to Fanny Price. She's affectionately
protective of her sister Marianne yet overfond of zinging her: "It
is not every one who has your passion for dead leaves." She's
bemused at Marianne's self-dramatizing, yet she's as smug about
suffering in silence as Marianne (who "would have thought herself
very inexcusable" if she were able to sleep after Willoughby leaves
Devonshire) is proud of suffering in Surround Sound. She can be
treacherously clever, as when Lucy Steele speculates (correctly)
that she may have offended Elinor by staking her claim to Edward: "
'Offended me! How could you suppose so? Believe me,' and Elinor
spoke it with the truest sincerity, 'nothing could be farther from
my intention, than to give you such an idea.' " Yet she can also be
ponderously preachy: "One observation may, I think, be fairly drawn
from the whole of the story-that all Willoughby's difficulties,
have arisen from the first offense against virtue, in his behaviour
to Eliza Williams. That crime has been the origin of every lesser
one, and of all his present discontents." (In the rest of Austen,
only the intentionally preposterous Mary in Pride and Prejudice
strikes just this note: "Unhappy as the event may be for Lydia, we
may draw from it this useful lesson; that loss of virtue in a
female is irretrievable . . ."). Is Elinor simply an intelligent
young woman overtaxed by having to be the grown-up of the family?
Or is she an unconsciously rivalrous sibling, sick of hearing that
her younger, more beautiful sister will marry more advantageously?
Or both? Or what? It's not that Austen doesn't have a clear
conception of her-it's that she doesn't have a simple conception.
Elinor is the character you know the most about, since Austen tells
most of the story from her point of view, and consequently she's
the one you're least able to nail with a couple of adjectives or a
single defining moment. 
  Edward bothers us, too. He's a dreamboat only for a woman of
Elinor's limited expectations: independent-minded yet passive and
depressive, forthright and honorable yet engaged in a book-long
cover-up. (It's a tour de force on Austen's part to present a
character so burdened with a secret that we see his natural
behavior only long after we've gotten used to him.) At his
strongest and most appealing-to Elinor, at least-he's a
clear-your-mind-of-cant kind of guy: "I am not fond of nettles, or
thistles, or heath blossoms. . . . A troop of tidy, happy villagers
please me better than the finest banditti in the world." But he can
also be a Hamlet-like whiner, complaining about his own idleness
and vowing that his sons will be brought up "to be as unlike myself
as possible. In feeling, in action, in condition, in every thing."
For my money, Edward is the least likable of Austen's heroes, while
his opposite number, Willoughby, is the most sympathetic of her
libertines: smarter than Pride and Prejudice's Wickham (a loser who
gets stuck with the "noisy" and virtually portionless Lydia Bennet)
and more warmhearted than Mansfield Park's textbook narcissist
Henry Crawford. Willoughby may strike trendy Wordsworthian poses
with his effusions on cottages ("I consider it as the only form of
building in which happiness is attainable"), but at least he has
enough sense to abhor his own callowness, and enough sexy boldness
to discompose even the rational Elinor. "She felt that his
influence over her mind was heightened by circumstances which ought
not in reason to have weight; by that person of uncommon
attraction, that open, affectionate, and lively manner which it was
no merit to possess . . ." His opening line when he at last
explains to her what he's been up to ("Tell me honestly, do you
think me most a knave or a fool?") is one of those Byronic
flourishes that make him the person in Sense and Sensibility you'd
most want to dine with and least want to trust.

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