Common sense. Insensitive. Sensibility. Nonsense. (Non-cents?) Jane Austen’s explores these issues in her first published novel (1811). But, as usual, this is not just a comic romance—it is a scathing condemnation of the ways in which women and girls were dispossessed and marginalized not only by concepts of entail and primogeniture, but by greedy relatives and uncaring and shallow society. It also features the only Austen hero who lies. Sense and Sensibility is sometimes called Austen’s bleakest and harshest novel—but it’s still funny! We’ll enjoy both reading the text (any good, annotated version) as well as discussing the various film versions.
((Allison Thompson - Tuesday - In Person))
