Jane Austen Thursday: Sensibility

UPDATE: rereading this on June 9, 2011, I realize there is a major flaw here. Contrary to what I wrote below, Jane Austen does write variations on the same story over and over again she just does it much better than John Irving. I'll leave the post here but I don't think this was one of my better days.

Sensibility is a virtue. Sense is also a virtue. Pride and prejudice are both vices.

I mention this because many of the people who don't warm to Sense and Sensibility seem to come to it with the expectation that it will be a lot like Pride and Prejudice. But Jane Austen is not like John Irving; she does not write variations on the same story over and over again. This is a very different book from Pride and Prejudice.

So what is sensibility and what is so good about it?

Mr. John Dashwood lacks in sensibility. We learn this when Austen tells us how he responds to his father's request that he look out for his sisters:

Mr. John Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the rest of the family; but he was affected by a recommendation of such a nature at such a time, and he promised to do everything in his power to make them comfortable.

And he means to do so but, because he doesn't have strong feelings, his desire to do something is easily overwhelmed by his wife's selfish manipulations. We might even say, he never had much of a passion to do anything at all.

That is not the case with his mother and, more importantly for us, with his half sisters Elinor and Marianne.