The Annotated Sense and Sensibility

Enjoying a Jane Austen classic is par for the course, but an annotated version full of graphics, maps, side notes and extended research is like a deep dive into the very bedrock of the story. I’ve had this David Shapard version on my shelf for a while and finally took it down and was fully immersed in Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility world.

The format is an introduction full of background and Shapard’s key points that he plans on tugging loose from the novel like Romanticism which was a way of thinking that drove so much of life in this period. Then it proceeds with the novel on the left page with the notes and graphics mostly on the right side with corresponding footnote numbers in the body of the piece to show precisely what is being noted. In the end, there is a timeline of the story, resources that are happily sorted by topic, and the maps.

Within those notes are definitions for words that had a different or obscure meaning back then, references to social practices, custom, philosophy, religion, economics, current/contemporary events that would play a role in the novel, references to notes on the book from other Austen sources, and so much more.

Sense & Sensibility is the story of the Dashwood sisters coming of age, losing their home and previous income/status, first throes of love and starting over, and making their way along a new path after their romantic adventures are settled. There are two sisters who are central, but it is the oldest whose perspective is most utilized.

Many folks are drawn toward one or the other sister and it is Shapard’s argument that he and Austen most esteem Elinor’s sense. I can appreciate why he comes to that conclusion, but personally, I’ve always thought the point was not to go toward either extreme, but to find balance between all sense or all sensibility.

I’ve also found the surrounding characters a split between comedic and dramatic. Some characters fall into both camps. I detest Fanny Dashwood, but I got a real kick out of that scene when she discovers the truth about the simpering, flatterer Lucy Steele. And, that moment when Edward shows up to visit with Elinor in London and comes on Lucy Steele cracks me up almost as much as Mrs. Jennings- my favoritest of S&S characters.

I pick up something new each time I read this book and I can thank David Shapard for pointing out this times how Elinor was almost too perfect. She’s nineteen and has the wisdom and grounding of a woman far beyond her years. I think back to myself at nineteen and I know for a fact that if I had a mother and sisters up in alt like that and a girl like Lucy Steele rubbing my face in it over her secret engagement to the guy I’m half in love with, trust me, I would have had a few moments of losing my cool and not just internally. I’ve always cut Marianne some slack because of her age, but never considered how improbable Elinor’s behavior was for a woman of her age.
And, speaking of Marianne, Shapard points out and rightly so that Willoughby and Edward Ferrars both were not honorable toward these women for more reasons than I understood. Just by conducting themselves so that impressionable and vulnerable ladies allowed themselves to become attached was doing them the injustice of sabotaging their chances of marriage- when they needed the stability of that- with other honorable gentlemen. These guys weren’t just wounding the gals’ hearts and lying to them, but they were making their chances of future comfort that marriage could give them harder than ever.

So, it was a fascinating and instructive read of the annotations, but another wonderful perusal of a fabulous classic.

Still the best story’s ever.