La Panda Rouge

I know we shall be happy.  I know the summer will pass happily away.  I mean never to be later in rising than six, and from that time until dinner I shall divide every moment between music and reading. I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. […] By reading only six hours a-day, I shall gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want.

This was the last book in my attempt to read all Jane Austen has to offer (a slim library, I know, like she had anything else to do).  I’ve enjoyed the project and, at one time or another, professed my new and undying love for any one of her novels.  Seriously though, Persuasion is gorgeous and Northanger Abbey is a treat (until the final act, but you can ignore that in light of the scathing satire the first 75% has to offer you). Don’t bother reading Mansfield Park, watch the movie (first, last and ONLY time I’ll ever write those words) you’ll actually come away liking any of the characters (Jeezie Creezy is Franny Price insufferable in the book, the undiluted worst).

But Sense & Sensibility is why we are gathered here today.  I’ll confess to having seen this movie roughly one hundred times before picking through the pages and I think it may have been my first touch of Austen (though, obviously, my heart belongs to Darcy). So for better or worse the characters that danced in my head as the story played out were acted by Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. 

The story of a mother and her three daughters cast down from their comfortable life into one dependent on the good will of others with very little of their own has always been captivating to me. The two eldest Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne are night and day in their personalities and Austen doesn’t judge either of them for us (until perhaps the end). We as reader are left to see what may be best for women in this time - unfettered emotion or restrained temperament. Neither sister comes away unscathed in relation to the way they interact. Underdogs as they are, it is easy to connect with them and wish their happiness in either case.  Austen’s stories are about the people that inhabit them and this is no exception.  You’ll find any number of weak ninnies, surprising heroes, and unlikeable idiots as you would in any good piece of satire.

We see the world through the eyes of a spinster who sees her in England as a place where women go off into that great beyond of freedom once married (to someone they love).  It’s sweet and sad when you consider all of her writing in this context. If you’ve read any Austen (just one would suffice here) then you know it’s not particularly spoiler-y to figure a ‘good match’ in the end for one or both of them.  But I think the story in this one does a fantastic job of making us understand that love doesn’t always trump everything, where I think in most of her other stories, it does.  I’d love to have read this book not knowing it’s characters beforehand, wondering how it would play out because there is a constant upheaval in its story but c’est la vie, at least I read it picturing Hugh Grant in breeches.

On my newly acquired Austen-Scale I’d rate this story better than Mansfield Park (garbage), Emma (seriously wanting), Lady Susan and Northanger Abbey.  Still, it rates below Persuasion, and Pride & Prejudice (never forget your first real love). Four out of five stars.  Would do business again.