Yoshi's August Reads in Progress (Spoiler Free!)

I admit I had a bit of a reader's block this month, and hopefully I'll be able to read and review more books. Some pre-uni reads might also make it into the mix :)

1. Sense and Sensibility

4.2/5, Classics, 409 pages,

A short Austen book to start the month of August, a quick read! I thought. I was tragically wrong, and my expectations (heightened probably with Persuasion, which I read in July) felt unfulfilled. This novel, although short, took me at least a week to finish, the reason for which I can’t exactly pinpoint. The pacing was okay for an Austen novel- albeit the rushed nature of the ending- so I think it was more of the characters and the plot I couldn’t really get myself to enjoy.

The novel centers around two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. They fall in love with men who choose different women over them, and Austen contrasts their reactions and countenance: Elinor attempts to deal with her hidden feelings with subdued musings, shutting many of her close family out, while Marianne becomes mentally and physically ill over her passionate heartache. I just couldn’t fully invest myself in the main characters or their eventual love interests, which I mentioned before, resolves itself quite abruptly towards the end.

Why a 4.2/5 then, and not a 3 or 2? I do think Sense and Sensibility is a good critique on how women are expected to behave in certain ways, regardless of their romantic situation, for a wealth and status-centric society to accept them. A unique part of Austen’s novels, furthermore, is that each supporting character fills a role within the reader’s lives; I kept on recognizing people within the carefully constructed satire and irony. Another possibility for redemption is that I read Marianne and Elinor as two separate characters- and that may have been the error that prevented me from appreciating the novel entirely. Austen had made this novel alone the subject of two women instead of her conventional sole heroine, which she explicitly makes clear when she explains her choice to omit the details of Margaret, the third sister. Perhaps the sisters are to be looked at together, and not with judgments/preference of either one (as their society does!), but with recognition that women have aspects of both Elinor and Marianne inside them. This is a novel worth re-reading, and only then may I be able to give it better justice.

2. Currently Reading: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

?/5, Classics, 938 pages (40% done)