Like South Riding, Anderby Wold is set in Yorkshire and deals with a community struggling with social change.  Mary Robson is a young woman who has married her cousin in order to have the means to pay off the mortgage on her family farm and the skills to keep it running.  Life in Anderby Wold is hard but quiet until David Rossitur, a young handsome social reformer, arrives and begins to shake things up, not least on Mary Robson’s farm.

Anderby Wold is nowhere near as polished and accomplished as South Riding but it is by no means a bad novel; Winifrd Holtby not at her best is still Winifred Holtby after all.  Its focus is narrower, on a few key players rather than each individual in a community, but many of the themes which will be developed and expanded in her later work are present in their nuculaic form here.  There is the same emphasis on the indivdual as part of the community and the differences between individual responsibility and social responsibility.  It’sreally very difficult not to make this sound incredibly dull, but in fact it paints a fascinating picture of a community going through a time of quiet but important change.

One of the things that has impressed me about both Holtby novels that I’ve read so far is her ability to create characters who are neither inherently good nor inherently bad.  Everyone has an opinion that they think is right and good: giving to the poor, workers’ rights and social equality.  It’s difficult to disagree with any of them individually, but each character’s approach towards achieving what is right is somehow at odds with that of the others and therein lies the conflict.  People do bad things, but noone is bad.  There is no villain to boo; instead there is a complicated moral maze which Holtby refuses to guide the reader through.  Instead she happily abandons you there, leaving you to find your own way out, and that for me was the main appeal of Anderby Wold.

Anderby Wold by Winifred Holtby.  Published by Virago, 2011, pp. 278.  Originally published in 1923.

The House in Dormer Forest follows the fortunes of the Darke family and their servants who live and work in Dormer Old House.  It’s difficult for me to summarise the plot so long after reading the book, but I’ve copied the blurb from the back of the book in my initial post concerning the novel.  Suffice to say that it is dark and oppressive and Stella Gibbons can’t have had much work to do in producing a parody, as the writing is so incredibly overwrought it almost feels like a pastiche to begin with.

Occasionally (very occasionally), her writing is intentionally amusing as Webb reveals her characters to the reader:

“I can’t be thwarted!” grandmother suddenly broke out.  She had a theory that, if crossed, she would die.  She was fond of saying: “I’ve got a weak ‘eart, Rachel!” –dropping her “h” not because she could not aspirate it, but because she did not see why, at her age, any letter of the alphabet should be her master.

I think this perfectly encapsulates grandmother Darke’s (the obvious counterpart of Aunt Ada Doom in Cold Comfort Farm) tyrannical desire to control everything and the manipulation ways in which she does so. 

Sometimes, the language is wild and beautiful, if rather over dramatic:

Dormer, in its cup at the bases of the hills, was always full of damp air and the sound of water.  Besieged by this grievous music — and what is there in nature sadder than the lament of falling water? — she felt as if she had opened the door not to the night and the stream, but on to a future full of doubt and dread, veiled in mist.

Yes, it’s a little bit much, but it’s suitably atmospheric and I think it’s quite effective.  I’m partial to the odd Victorian sensation novel so I am more than willing to forgive melodrama under the right circumstances.  Unfortunately, the majority of the time, the language tends towards being florid to the point of being ridiculous:

Who would ever seek in Amber Darke, so still, of so sad-coloured an exterior, the creature of fire and tears that could feed a man’s heart with faery food and call him into Paradise with songs wild as those of hawks on the untrodden snow-fields?

I appreciate that Webb is trying to emphasise how plain Amber is compared to other more attractive, lively women and therefore unlikely to attract her ideal husband, but really, Mary, is this necessary?  Faery food?  Hawks?  Untrodden fields (which seems an odd place for the hawks to be on; I would have assumed they were in the air as birds of prey hopping along the ground are really quite comedic and not at all wild and romantic as I think Webb is trying to suggest).  Jane Eyre has exactly the same thoughts about being plain and therefore unlikely to attract attention, but Bronte manages to express them without recourse to overblown similes about hawks and fairies, in a way which makes the reader sympathise with Jane rather than giggle at her.  Sadly for Amber, I found her impossible to relate to because her inner life is so ridiculous and extravagant rather than believeable.

The best example of this overwrought style comes when Jasper has gone to a track known ominously (everything in this novel happens ominously) as ‘the Beast Walk’ to think about things:

To climb this path harrowed his soul, made is face even at ten years look quite wizened.  But now, in his young manhood, the dark spell was infinitely stronger.  He drank here of a charm thick as black honey made from purple poison flowers by bees in hell.

Intellectually I know that this is supposed to show Jasper brooding and generally being consumed by dark thoughts; in reality I was too busy pondering why there are bees and flowers in hell, if the bees have committed some terrible sin and are therefore condemned to an eternity of making black honey and what this might be supposed to taste like.  Who on earth imagines a hell which features bees and flowers?  On the whole, I have to conclude that metaphors generally work best if the thing to which you are comparing something else actually exists or at the very least makes sense to your readers.  This is just ridiculous.

I can forgive ridiculous writing if a book has something else to recommend it (as in the case of early gothic novels which I also rather enjoy).  However, the plot of The House in Dormer Forest is one of sheer, unrelenting doom in which no one is ever happy and everyone goes on about it at length.  The atmosphere is suffocatingly dark and claustrophobic, and while this may have been the desired effect I think it needed to be accompanied by better writing so  that the reader could at least have had something to enjoy in the novel.  The only grim humour comes in the form of Sarah, a servant who visits retribution on those who displease her by deliberately breaking their china ornaments and gluing the shards together to form a globe.

As always, my views are entirely subjective and it could be that I’ve missed the point of Webb’s novel entirely.  Search for this book on Amazon UK and you will find the same effusive 5 star review posted no less than twenty-two times, which makes me somewhat dubious about it, but this review from a website featuing the Midlands in literature provides an interesting counterpoint to my own opinions which is much more praise-filled.  The general consensus seems to be that this was by no means Webb’s best novel, so I will continue to read the rest of her books and see if I enjoy those more than I did The House in Dormer Forest.

The House in Dormer Forest by Mary Webb.  Published by Virago, 1983, pp. 292.  Originally published in 1920.

Although I find that each of Austen’s novels has a unique appeal which makes it impossible for me to choose between them, Pride and Prejudice is probably the book with which I am the most familiar.  This novel was incredibly clear in my mind when I came to rereading it (and indeed remains so even after waiting a further six months to write the review) even though I haven’t read it for more than six years when I studied the text for A level.  This familiarity is no doubt partially due to the many adaptations of Pride and Prejudice which exist, which means that many people feel as though they know the book even if they have never actually read it: I’ve seen the much-loved BBC adaptation starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, the more divisive Kiera Knightley film version and even a local stage adaptation.  I know there are a whole host more that I haven’t touched.  But it’s also because the Bennet family, Mr Bingley and his two awful sisters, Mr Darcy, the inimitable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the slimy Mr Collins and the roguish Wickham are the sort of characters who stay with you long after the book has finished.  I’d venture to say that the plot is pretty standard fare and even entirely predictable, but it is the characters that Jane Austen peoples the book with who make it so remarkable.  I bet that most people after reading Pride and Prejudice just once would be able to describe how Lady Catherine, Lydia Bennet or Caroline Bingley would react in any given situation, and they aren’t even the main characters (no doubt the reason why this book has spawned so many spin-offs).  It is this wonderfully believable character creation combined with fabulous writing, even more than the image of Mr Darcy in his wet shirt, which has made Pride and Prejudice so much a part of general literary consciousness.

What this latest encounter with Pride and Prejudice revealed to me is how much Jane Austen’s books are made for rereading.  Austen is famed for her irony but I hadn’t realised until now quite how much proleptic irony there is, only obvious to the reader who has the advantage of knowing how things develop as the book progresses.  For example, following Mr Collins’ proposal to Elizabeth, which makes me simultaneously squirm with embarrassment and giggle with laughter, there is this exchange:

It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.

“You are too hasty, Sir,” she cried. “You forget that I have made no answer. Let me do it without farther loss of time. Accept my thanks for the compliment you are paying me, I am very sensible of the honour of your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than decline them.”

“I am not now to learn,” replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the hand, “that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.”

“Upon my word, Sir,” cried Elizabeth, “your hope is rather an extraordinary one after my declaration. I do assure you that I am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal. — You could not make me happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who would make you so, — Nay, were your friend Lady Catherine to know me, I am persuaded she would find me in every respect ill qualified for the situation.”

Mr Collins’ complete refusal to take Elizabeth’s refusal seriously is amusing enough on its own, but an extra layer of humour is there in Elizabeth’s response for those who know what happens later.  Although she insists that “I am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time” this is of course exactly what happens, unintentionally, between Elizabeth and Mr Darcy: she refuses his first proposal, eventually realises that in doing so she has thrown away her chance of happiness and then is given a second chance when he asks again.  Even though Elizabeth is not playing coy games in this latter instance, it provides another chance for the knowing reader to see Elizabeth’s prejudices in action and for Jane Austen to prove her heroine fallible; not only is she wrong about Mr Darcy and Mr Wickham, she is also wrong about herself.

This time around, I also found I was able to read more objectively rather than always siding with Elizabeth Bennet (always tempting with such an entertaining and likeable character).  On the first reading of this book, I followed Elizabeth’s lead exactly as Jane Austen (I think) intended, but on subsequent readings I have more knowledge of exactly how the plot develops than she does, and therefore it is impossible to fall in with her in quite the same way as I am looking out for different things.  Whereas before I found myself carried away with indignant reproach and Mr Darcy’s rejection of Elizabeth, this time I found his attraction towards her far more obvious throughout the book.  Although I loved reading the book and being thoroughly caught up in Elizabeth’s thoughts and feelings, I also enjoyed visiting it again with a greater distance between her opinions and my own and I think it makes Pride and Prejudice a much more humorous, interesting and thoughtful book.  It is testament  Jane Austen’s great skill as a writer that I find all her books work in this way, offering more to me as a reader the more times I return to them.

There are so many things that I haven’t mentioned here: the wonderful comedic characters of Mrs Bennet and Lady Catherine, the sweet romance between Jane and Bingley, the dynamic that exists between the Bennet sisters.  There is so much to appreciate in this wonderful novel that I couldn’t possibly cover it all.  Needless to say, I think it is deserving of its status as both a classic and a popular novel.  I can’t wait to rediscover my next Austen now!

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  Published by Virago, 1989,pp. 299.  Originally published in 1813.

Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a semi-autobiographical account of a year in the life of Elizabeth von Arnim in the garden of her house in Pomerania.  It is a book which is in equal parts an elegiac description of her physical surroundings and a keenly observed, wryly detached depiction of the people who inhabit that world with her, most of whom are apparently rather unwelcome.

At only 207 pages in the edition I read, and that with large type and larger margins, it is a short book but full of excellent content.  Whether she is discussing plants or people, von Arnim’s writing is a delight to read, and my copy of the book is littered with tiny bits of paper marking pages with particularly lovely passages.  Her musings on governesses are typical of her style which is both insightful and often amusing:

I wonder why governesses are so unpleasant.  The Man of Wrath says it is because they are not married.  Without venturing to differ entirely from the opinion of experience, I would add that the strain of continually having to set an example must surely be very great.  It is much easier, and often more pleasant, to be a warning than an example, and governesses are but women, and women are sometimes foolish, and when you want to be foolish it must be annoying to have to be wise. 

One of the things that struck me about this book was the faint air of sadness about it.  I think it came across particularly because of reading Perfume from Provence quite recently, which also has a section on the trials and tribulations of creating a beautiful European garden.  Whereas Winifred Fortescue’s happiness and enthusiasm burst from the page, Elizabeth appears to have a rather unhappy life and to be trying hard to create her own happiness along with her garden, although her attempts are often frustrated.  I initially thought that The Man of Wrath must be a teasing, affectionate name for her husband, but the more she spoke about him, the more apt the name seemed, while Winifred Fortescue and Monsieur are obviously perfectly matched and gloriously content together.  Had Perfume from Provence not been so fresh in my mind, this impression might not have come across so strongly, but as it is the tone felt slightly wistful.

I long more and more for a kindred spirit–it seems so greedy to have so much loveliness to oneself–but kindred spirits are so very, very rare; I might as well cry for the moon.  It is true that my garden is full of friends, only they are dumb.

In spite of this, Elizabeth and Her German Garden is not a sad or depressing book.  Von Arnim has a great sense of comedy and the book is filled with wit and charm.  Thankfully von Arnim seems to have been rather prolific, so I have plenty more of this to look forward to in her other novels.

Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim.  Published by Virago, 1995, pp. 207.  Originally published in 1898.

The Salzburg Tales is a 1930′s take on Chaucer’s famous Canterbury Tales, following the same pattern of a group of strangers meeting (in this case they are all attending the opera at the Salzburg Festival) and deciding to tell stories to pass the time.  A 1930′s take on The Canterbury Tales?  What’s not to love?  Well, quite a bit if I’m honest.

For a start, Stead’s characters are nowhere near as diverse and interesting as Chaucer’s are, and I think that’s partly due to the set up of her frame narrative.  Chaucer has his characters meet at a pub prior to going on pilgrimage.  Boccaccio in his Decameron which follows the same format has his characters fleeing from the black death in Florence.  Religion and death are both great levellers of men, but Austrian opera, strangely enough, is not.  As a result, Stead’s characters are all the sort of middle class people who might attend an opera festival and so, although she has a keen eye for detail, there are none of the great individuals like the Miller or the Wife of Bath who stand out.  Instead, they’re all much of a muchness.  I enjoyed the character portraits when reading them, such as the Banker:

He would risk half his fortune on a throw, turn head-over-heels in the air in an aeroplane, tell anyone in the world to go to Hell, laugh at princes and throw tax-collectors out the door, but he suffered excessively from toothache because he feared the dentist’s chair: and he was convinced that his luck depended on numbers, events, persons, odd things he encountered; his head accountant was forced to wear the same tie for six weeks because it preserved a liberal state of min in the Government in a difficult time: his chauffeur was obliged to carry the same umbrella, rain, hail or shine, because the umbrella depressed the market in a stock he had sold short. (pp. 39-40)

Or the Old Lady:

She wore a long gold chain and a lorgnette and an expensive hat made of satin, feathers, straw and tulle, all mixed and mummified together: no one could imagine what antediluvian stock of unfashionable materials had been drawn upon to make her hat. (p. 43)

They have enough interesting quirks to make them interesting without making them too contrived, and this was by far my favourite part of the book.  However, the character types are all very similar and so even with these little details it becomes impossible to tell them apart, particularly when they do not behave in any manner distinct to their characters after this introduction.

Because the characters are all very similar, so are their stories.  There was none of the variety of tone, dialect, register, interests and agenda which make The Canterbury Tales so great.  In fact, I didn’t believe that any of these stories was being told by anyone other than Christina Stead herself.  They aren’t the stories of the characters described at the beginning, but merely a short story collection stuffed into an unnecessary framework which adds nothing to the reading and understanding of them.  This would have been less of a problem had I found the stories themselves enjoyable, but sadly they really weren’t my cup of tea.  Very few of them were satisfying on a narrative level, often feeling either tedious and drawn out or as though a large chunk of the middle were missing in order to leap to a conclusion which didn’t make much sense.

I found this book a very frustrating read because I wanted it to be so good.  Has anyone else read this one and had a similar experience?  Or have you read it and loved and can explain what I might have missed?  I’m a bit disappointed really, not to mention rather intimidated by the other Stead books I have lurking malevolently on my shelves, most of which are worryingly chunky.  Are they all going to be like this?

The Salzburg Tales by Christina Stead.  Published by Virago, 1986, pp. 498.  Originally published in 1934.

Up the Junction is a slim novella detailing the exploits of a group of young girls working in South London during the 60s.  The characters are not particularly well-defined: they tend to blur into each other and often it is impossible to tell who is doing or saying what in any scene.  The first person narrator is particularly elusive and difficult to pin down and usually this would annoy me no end.  However, this comes across as a deliberate choice and it seems to me that Dunn does not so much tell the story of these people but instead uses her characters to tell the story of a particular time and place in a series of interconnecting vignettes.  The frequent bursts of song which appear throughout the novella help to fix this era in the mind of the reader.  The characters aren’t really characters at all, but are a means of producing statements and situations which reveal the harsh reality of life in 1960s South London, where times are hard and enjoyment is grasped with both hands and relished.   The style reflects this, being bawdy, brash and full of life.  Characters express such sentiments as ‘Why should we think ahead?  What is there to think ahead to but growing old?’ (p. 78) and ‘what you don’t get caught for you’re entitled to do‘ (p.85) and there is the constant feeling of wringing as much as you possibly can out of a life that is far from perfect.

There is a peculiar mix of free, modern attitudes and traditional values exhibited in this novella.  On the one hand, the girls want sex, they want it outside the confines of marriage with whomever they choose and they want to enjoy it, but on the other they accept that they probably won’t enjoy it and would rather suffer an illegal, painful and dangerous abortion than have a baby outside of wedlock, expecting a boy to marry them if they become pregnant.  They drink brown ale, they smoke cigarettes and they tell filthy jokes.  It’s interesting to see the development here: these girls are not yet quite the Sex and the City girls, but they would like to be, and to make up for having to face harsh realities which aren’t a part of glossy, glamorous twenty-first century New York living they are harder, tougher and earthier.

Up the Junction by Nell Dunn.  Published by Virago, 1988, pp. 110.  Originially published in 1963.

Try Anything Twice is a collection of essays about the trials and tribulations of life as an ‘upper-middle-class, lower-middle-aged Englishwoman‘, as Struther herself puts it.  They cover such diverse topics as the pleasures of making lists, the perils of foreign travel and the horrors of arranging for family photographs to be taken.  They read very much like the articles in the Style section of the Sunday Times: they focus on aspects of life which may be a bit frivolous but they do so in a way that is intelligent and witty.  Unsurprising then, they they were first published in journals such as The Spectator, The New Statesman and Punch in the 1920s and 1930s.

What I enjoyed most about this collection of essays was how well they have aged: clearly the life of the upper-middle-class, lower-middle-aged woman from whose perspective Struther writes with such humour hasn’t changed very much in the intervening eighty years.  A lot of the situations are instantly familiar for a modern reader, and Struther is easy to identify with even if the specifics are completely alien because she writes in such a way as to make the concerns that she expresses seem universal.  Her essay ‘Cut Out the Stars’ about economising in the face of hard times as only the privileged can, is one that I found particularly apt given the current financial situation in this country.

Although Struther is usually entertaining, in these essays she never shies away from using her humour to impart tough truths and convey harsh opinions.  I found ‘The Toys of War’ to be a particularly skillful critique of modern violence and inhumanity through imagining a child playing with toys that accurately emulate warfare.  As with all essay collections, I found some better than others, but all the essays (including those which were left out of the Virago edition but can be read here) are definitely worth reading.

Try Anything Twice by Jan Struther.  Published by Virago, 1990, pp. 212.  Originally published in 1938.

South Ridingis set in Yorkshire in the first half of the 1930′s, focusing on the everyday lives of the people who live there.  There is Sarah Burton, the new headmistress of the girls’ school who returns to the area armed with progressive ideas and is determined to make a difference; there is Mrs Beddows, the council’s only female alderman who is torn between her desire for progress and her personal loyalties; and there is Robert Carne, staunch proponent of the old ways, desperately trying to care for his mad wife and fragile daughter while not losing his tenuous hold on his lands.  The book chronicles their struggles, sometimes against each other, sometimes alongside one another for a common cause, and those of a whole host of other characters.

The cast of this novel is huge, with more than a hundred characters (listed handily after the introduction), but it never feels overpopulated or confusing.  In fact, they are what makes South Riding such a great read.  I felt as though I knew each and every one of those characters, even if we only had a nodding acquaintance.  It is testament to Winifred Holtby’s writing skill that she manages to create such a wide variety of characters with equal authenticity; I believe in Midge Carne, who is young, female, highly strung and unthinkingly cruel, just as much as I believe in Castle, who is an elderly, male, gentle salt of the earth type.  I particularly liked the fact that no character is as straightforward as they at first seem, and not in a gimmicky everyone-has-a-dark-secret way, but in a these-are-all-real-people-with depth way.  They aren’t defined by their quirks, but these help to gain a deeper insight into the characters and why they behave the way they do.  Councillor Snaith at home with his cats was a particular favourite of mine.

A wide range of characters means a wide range of relationships, and here too Winifred Holtby excels.  Whether two people are cooperating or at loggerheads they always act in a way that is so appropriate and well described that I experienced everything along with them.  Tom and Lily’s relationship broke my heart time and time again, and they are relatively minor characters (if there can be said to be such a thing in this novel).  Not only does she write scenes tightly focused on one individual or group, she also writes the best, most effective crowd scenes I’ve ever read.  The outside performance put on by Madam Hubbard’s girls, at which cast and audience alike spend more time focusing on their own individual thoughts and agendas than the show, is an absolute masterpiece.  Her writing reveals a wealth of life experience put to very good use.

I also appreciated the fact that, although people struggle and fight with one another, there is no cruel, cackling villain in this book.  The characters go through hard times and experience tragedy, but that is because life is hard rather than because someone is plotting against them.  Harvests fail so people lose their money.  People become sick and, because they are poor, they die.  It’s all very matter-of-fact and realistic.  This may make the novel sound rather bleak, and it’s definitely not without its bleak moments, but there is also a great deal of comedy in this book.  There is stoicism but there is also humour; the people of South Riding endure hardships and they do so with a shrug and a grin.  Despite some of the tragedies that occur, Holtby never allows characters to wallow or the tightly controlled plot to spiral into melodrama, which I find only adds to the pathos.  I’m sad to leave South Riding and it’s definitely a novel that I’ll be rereading in the future.

Unlike The Vet’s Daughter where I thought that the original cover was far superior, in this case I rather prefer the reissued cover.  I had bought myself a copy of the original green edition before Christmas as I was continually hearing good things about this novel and I wanted to have read it before the new BBC adaptation begins later this year, but last week I was surprised to receive a copy of the new edition in the post from the publishers for joining their new book club.  It was this version that I ended up reading, as I was drawn in by the lovely cover art, a reproduction of a Yorkshire Railways poster, which suited the book perfectly.  I also thought that the extra material was better in the newer edition as, while Lettice Cooper’s introduction in the earlier edition is useful, it is mostly a summary of the story and the new preface by Shirley Williams and introduction by Marion Shaw are excellent.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby.  Published by Virago, 2010, pp. 518.  Originally published in 1936.

In my first post at the start of Rachel and Carolyn‘s Virago Reading Week, I mentioned how much I enjoy hunting these lovely green books down in second hand book shops.  There is a particular joy in catching sight of that distinctive spine when it is least expected, and I often find myself emerging from a charity shop having pounced on a Virago bargain, my glee at my new book completely obliterating any feelings of guilt I should probably be experiencing at acquiring yet another book.

On very rare occasions, I am particularly lucky and unknowingly stumble on a book which is not just a bargain but also rather special in a way that a new book, shiny and attractive as it may be, can never hope to achieve.  I was browsing through my Virago stack trying to decide what to read next, when I came across this note fixed inside my copy of Try Anything Twice by Jan Struther:

Happy Christmas 1995 and much love from Robert and Claudia.  Almost every year since 1974 our “Christmas card” for the family has been a home-made pamphlet on some aspect of family history, or a tape, or photographs of paintings etc.  This year I am absolved from producing anything so original, having acquired the publishers’ remaining stock of my mother’s book, “Try Anything Twice”, at a price no greater than that of printing one of my leaflets.  So this is in effect our Christmas card or 1995.  To make the book short enough for their series, Virago Press had omitted two essays from the 1938 edition — “The Curious Phenomenon of the Militarist’s Sister” which Virago thought politically incorrect in 1990, and “Cruel Collinses” which by chance had been included in my 1988 booklet “Just a Family Joke”.  My family did not approve Virago’s choice of cover illustration; but apart from that we hope you will enjoy this book, which I think makes better reading now than her “Mrs Miniver” (1938, reprinted 1989).

I feel as though I own a little piece of Virago history!  I was particularly interested to learn about the omitted essays and, although the 1938 edition seems impossible to get hold of, both essays are available to read for free here, so I’ll definitely be reading them along with the rest of the book.   Without this note I would never even have known about them.  I can’t wait to get reading.

When I noticed that a group read of all of Jane Austen’s novels was proposed for this year on LibraryThing I jumped at the chance to revisit these old friends again, chiefly because it gave me an excuse to buy myself copies of the Virago Modern Classics editions of the books.  Jane Austen isn’t an author that I automatically associate with the Virago Modern Classics imprint, mostly because (rightly or wrongly) I think of it as a press which rescues female authors from obscurity and Miss Austen is the very antithesis of obscurity.  However, on reflection, her work fits perfectly within Virago’s remit: it is intelligent fiction which focuses on the day to day lives of women and, although its subject matter is mundane, the writing transcends that to say far more than the story does.  Although I read this book last week, my review is ready just in time for Rachel and Carolyn‘s Virago Reading Week, and it’s done a marvellous job of reminding me quite how wide Virago’s range of authors is.

Purely by coincidence, I read Sense and Sensibility for the first time when I was the same age as Margaret Dashwood, for the second time when I was Marianne’s age and for the third time when I was Elinor’s age.  Now I’m reading it for the fourth time, and only the impending September nuptials stand prevent me from being an object of pity for being an unmarried spinster past my prime (at the grand old ago of twenty four, that is).  At Margaret’s age, most of the humour and subtlety of Austen’s wonderful writing went way over my head, but I just about grasped the story and thought myself very grown up for doing so.  When I was Marianne’s age I was far more open to Austen’s caustic wit but was unsatisfied with the plot, as the ending seemed a huge disappointment.  I wanted Willoughby to see the error of his ways, for him to beg Marianne to take him back, for Austen to somehow rid him of his inconvenient wife in a way which didn’t implicate him, and for Marianne to end up happily married to him as romance surely required.  At Elinor’s age I was no longer reading the book for pleasure but studying it as part of a required ‘Inventing the Novel’ first year English course at university.  This really brought Jane Austen’s writing skill alive for me and I appreciate having this critical background just as much as I appreciate having read the novel for the first time without it.  This is the context in which I approached my most recent reread of Sense and Sensibility.

 This is definitely the time that I’ve enjoyed the novel most.  It was a relief not to be reading along underlining passages with a pencil going, ”Behold!  Amusing social commentary!” and, “Ooh, irony!” but at the same time I was far more aware of all the different layers and literary devices which work to give the novel its delightful light yet serious tone which is so typically Austen.  Many critics find this much less polished in Sense and Sensibility than in her other novels, but I actually find I quite enjoy this; it is a book about passions, after all, so it seems appropriate that the writing style should be a little less tightly controlled than it might otherwise have been.  In particular, Sense and Sensibility conveys real, raw pain through Marianne, an emotion which I don’t think Jane Austen ever really covers again.  There is sorrow, displeasure, regret and gentle anguish such as Elinor displays, but never the wild outpouring of passion which she shows here.  Yes, it is melodramatic and overdone and yes, it can be seen at least partially a satire of the typical heroine of sensibility, but I have never had any doubt that Marianne’s suffering is real.

Because I was reading for pleasure this time, I was also far more aware of the individual characters, which somehow often fade into the background when studying a novel, odd as that may seem.  This time I thoroughly enjoyed watching Marianne behave like a typical teenager, alternating between being genuinely concerned at her suffering and rolling my eyes at her overblown ways of expressing it.  Her exclamation to Elinor which essentially boils down to,”You couldn’t possibly understand!  No one could ever understand my pain!” in particular had me grinning with recognition.  Although I have always loved Elinor herself, she is far less staid than I remember her.  I don’t think I’ve ever really noticed the incident where Edward appears wearing a ring containing a lock of hair and Elinor somehow convinces herself that the hair is hers, despite knowing intellectually that it can’t be, and I found this wishful thinking incredibly endearing.  The secondary characters were also more pronounced this time around: I greatly enjoyed Mrs Jennings’ unrefined warmth and kindness and found Fanny Dashwood and her weak husband completely odious.

The ending of the novel seemed much more appropriate this time around too.  Previously I had thought that she merely settles for Colonel Brandon and so I didn’t really believe in her happiness, and while I still think that she settles, it made sense to me this time.  Marianne spends much of the novel talking about how she doesn’t believe in second marriages and romances, so it seems logical that she wouldn’t hold out for another love match after her experiences with Willoughby.  Instead she vows to spend the rest of her life devoting herself to her family, and the thing most likely to make them happy is to do what they think best for her and to marry Colonel Brandon.  Because Marianne isn’t a character to do anything by halves, it similarly makes sense that her regard for her husband should eventually turn into love and that she should be happy with him.  It is not a spectacular romance, but that would have been at odds with the way the novel develops and indeed with Marianne’s character.

Ask any reader of Jane Austen what their favourite of her novels is and it’s unlikely that the answer will be Sense and Sensibility.  I know it’s not my favourite, but that doesn’t stop me from loving it and from finding something new to appreciate in it each time I revisit it.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.  Published by Virago, 1989, pp. 279.  Originally published in 1811.