Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Jane Austen creates really really really satisfying negative characters, they absolutely drive me insane with frustration. In this novel, characters like Lucy Steele, Fanny and John Dashwood and the Middletons made me want to just punch them in the face to shut them up. I think I like the positive characters in this novel more than in any other Austen novel; I feel like I relate a lot to Marianne, but I love Elinor's sense of humour. Marianne is somewhat exasperating in her complete lack of a sense of humour, but Elinor is even more exasperating in her often unbearable propriety. I wouldn't want to be friends with a person who is continually telling everyone off, the way Elinor is. I think what really bothered me about this novel was the way everyone treats Marianne like a child (talking to her condescendingly, trying to 'train' her into better behaviour, responding indulgently to her emotions), while at the same time expecting her to marry. It just doesn't feel right to me that if she is so young and ignorant, she should be expected to make a choice of a romantic partner for life. I felt like the way she ends up with Colonel Brandon is a sort of betrayal of her real inclinations, and couldn't really result in a happy marriage. The wonderful 90s adaptation, by casting Alan Rickman in the role, did away with any objections like that (with that voice, who could ever be unhappy?), but the age difference and Marianne's initial dislike of him make the match seem really creepy and worrisome in the book. For some reason I also kept noticing how incredibly pointless the lives of the female characters are; they are confined to such a narrow round of activities, and it just feels like their lives are being thrown away, unable to put their clearly considerable intelligence and cleverness to any use except bitter reflections about the people around them and hand crafts. It felt really stifling and claustrophobic to me, the way the women just have to wait for things to happen all the time, while the men are out there having real lives, which only tangentially connect with those of the women.