The year of celebrating Sense & Sensibility at the blog My Jane Austen Book Club continues this month with my post on “Secrets in Sense & Sensibility”:
“Come, come, let’s have no secrets among friends.”
[Image: Vintage Classics cover]
Mrs. Jennings may request “no secrets among friends,” and Marianne may “abhor all concealment” (p. 53), but Sense and Sensibility is chock full of both – many secrets, much concealed – within each character, between characters, and between the author and the reader.
P. D. James, in her essay “Emma Considered as a Detective Story,” defines the detective story as one “requiring a mystery, facts which are hidden from the reader but which he or she should be able to discover by logical deduction from clues inserted in the novel with deceptive cunning but essential fairness. It is about evaluating evidence…it is concerned with bringing order out of disorder and restoring peace and tranquility to a world temporarily disrupted by the intrusions of alien influences” (James, p. 243-44)
Such is Emma, truly a mystery, where Jane Austen gives us clues and puzzles and hints along the way, whereby we the reader can solve the underlying mystery right along with Mr. Knightley, who gets awfully close, but not quite close enough, to the solution….
… Continue reading at My Jane Austen Book Club
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The Giveaway: You can comment either here or on Maria Grazia’s blog to be entered into the giveaway:
The monthly S&S posts on Maria’s blog can be viewed here:
1. January: Jennifer Becton Men, Marriage and Money in Sense and Sensibility
2. February: Alexa Adams Sense and Sensibility on Film
3. March: C. Allyn Pierson Property and Inheritance Law in S &S
4. April: Beth Pattillo Lost in Sense and Sensibility
5. May: Jane Odiwe Willoughby: a rogue on trial
6. June: Deb @JASNA Vermont Secrets in Sense and Sensibility
7. July: Laurie Viera Rigler Interview with Lucy Steele
8. August: Regina Jeffers Settling for the Compromise Marriage
9. September: Lynn Shepherd The origins of S&S: Richardson, Jane Austen, Elinore & Marianne
10. October: Meredith @Austenesque Reviews Sense and Sensibility fanfiction
11. November: Vic @Jane Austen’s World Minor characters in Sense and Sensibility
12. December: Laurel Ann @Austenprose Marianne Dashwood: A passion for dead Leaves and other Sensibilities
[Copyright @2011 by Deb Barnum of Jane Austen in Vermont]
Jane Austen in Vermont 
I read Sense and Sensibility just after reading Pride and Prejudice, right about the time of the 1995 movie. I found the book of the screenplay and Emma Thompson’s notes about making the movie. I then read everything she wrote. 16 years later and I can’t get enough of Jane Austen and her time period.
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Thanks for commenting Karen – will add you to the random drawing…
Yes, it is a grand obsession with Austen, isn’t it?! What were your thoughts about S&S after reading [and seeing!] P&P?
Deb
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I first watched the 1995 Sense and Sensibility before I read the novel. I then decided to read the book and I was shocked when I read that Willoughby came to the Palmer’s home when Marianne was ill. I guess that wasn’t a secret but it totally took me by surprise!!
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Yes, Kelli, that is a surprise for those who start out seeing the movie! [it is in the other adaptations] – Emma Thompson chose to leave the scene out [she explains it in her S&S Diaries – at least she unlike the other movies gave Margaret a role in the movie!] – a number of writers have addressed this Willoughby confession as seeming not to be an Austen scene at all – I think it is much more a Bronte-like scenario! – and it is a secret really – certainly Elinor was surprised to find him there – just one of the many surprises in the book..
Thank you for stopping by!
Deb
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