Sense or Sensibility

I love me some Jane Austen-- well, I'm partial to most 19th century English romantic novelists. But Jane is the one I return to time and time again. I suppose living in England brings more of this period of time to life-- especially in light of the recent pomp and circumstance of the Royal Wedding. But whether it's re-reading my already dog-eared novels or watching a BBC (or Hollywood) interpretation, they make me laugh and inevitably make me cry-- both from happiness and also from nostalgia. What is it about these characters that so resonate with me?

Perhaps with Jane (may I call her Jane? Or is Miss Austen more appropriate?) it is because her own history is so often reflected on the pages of her novels, giving her characters soul. If you've studied Austen and know anything of her early life (or if you've seen the "historical" film "Becoming Jane") her personal misfortune (not being able to marry the man she loves because of her station in life and his needing to marry someone of fortune to provide for his extended family) inspired the characters she wrote to always live happily ever after-- regardless of class, money, pride or prejudice. For Jane's characters, love always triumphed. A surprisingly modern notion in such Victorian times.

I've always related to Jane's more sensible characters-- Elizabeth Bennett, Eleanor Dashwood... the slightly stubborn but entirely proper ones where the right thing far outweighed the heart thing. But the older I get, and the more I re-read the novels, I get the impression that there's more depth and dimension to Jane's characters and like real life, things aren't always black and white.

"Sense and Sensibility" is by far my favorite of Jane's oeuvre. The circumstance of the Dashwood family, the women produced through a second marriage being turned out of their luxurious life because the heir-- a son, was product of the first marriage. The proper Eleanor suffering silently at the loss of her beloved Edward while the headstrong and passionate Marianne loves fully and unconditionally for everyone to see and then later suffers painfully outwardly in all of the same glory. The spectrum of the women's lives converge in the novel; Eleanor begins in a place where her head and propriety rules, and Marianne at the opposite end of the spectrum only meet in the middle before diverging again, their roles having switched. Eleanor, now believing that love ultimately wins out and Marianne more sensible and practical, marrying not without love, but without the abandonment that your first, true love brings. It turns out that Eleanor is the Cinderella character-- the stuff of fairy tales. While Marianne is the reality. The more I contemplate this, the more I realize that perhaps there is more Marianne in me than I'd thought. That perhaps the more sensible ones are so because they were formerly all sensibility, and that the sensibility has, in some ways, been beaten out of them... due to bad experiences, disappointments or I guess what we call life in general. I guess that's the trade off for growing wiser-- losing your blissful innocence. But sometimes I do wish I had hearkened the day where you believed there was only good in the world; and that no one would ever hurt you and no one you loved ever got hurt. I suppose that I see myself in both women although I can't help but feel that Eleanor's circumstance was luckier-- that maybe the surprise of love winning out is better than the defeat that it does not always.

Do you have an Austen (or other literary) doppelganger? Who is it?