Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Zero to Well-Read

Hosts Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Shinsky dive into Jane Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, examining its transition from epistolary drafts to prose and its role in establishing literary

Key takeaways

• Sense and Sensibility was originally drafted as an epistolary novel before Austen revised it into prose to better capture Eleanor Dashwood's interiority and narrative voice.
• Regency publishing operated on a commission model where authors often paid for unsold print runs, making early sales critical for financial survival despite small 500-750 copy first editions.

Main topics

• Plot and character dynamics of the Dashwood sisters
• Regency-era publishing economics and anonymous authorship

Notable quotes

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love."

Conclusion

The episode positions Sense and Sensibility as a foundational but transitional work in Austen's canon, rewarding

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This episode of Zero to Well-Read is sponsored by thriftbooks.com today. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. I don't know what to say about Jane Austen right here that we won't say in the show. But one thing that's great about Jane Austen is you can get a complete matching set and it's pretty wieldy. And because it's in the public domain, there are all... kinds to choose from. I'm looking at a bunch on thriftbooks.com where it's 40, 50 bucks new. And if you want to go used, you can find something else that is, you know, a little bit more affordable. The one I'm looking at is the Macmillan Collectors Library. All hardcover, really beautiful little books that can fit on your shelf really. nicely. But you can also find something that's got a little bit more color, something that's got flowers, or something that feels a little bit more serious with black bindings or penguin or some other kind of collection like that. But the one I'm looking at is the Macmillan Collector's Library. But you can find whatever you want at thriftbooks.com. Time for the show. Speaker 1 (1:08) Welcome to Zero to Well-Read, a podcast about the books you wish you read. I am Jeff O'Neill. Speaker 2 (1:12) And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. This week, we're diving into our first Jane Austen novel. First on the show, not our first ever. As Sense and Sensibility is heading back to theaters with a new adaptation starring Daisy Edgar Jones. Big day for us to finally get to Austen. I know a lot of folks were expecting it in the first season. Speaker 1 (1:30) Yeah, I mean, listen, you're going to hear it. I saw your notes. You're going to hear it, mine, too. This is not The Signal Austin. This is her first novel. I do not have a lot of personal affection for this book. It doesn't sound like this is going to make the all-time reads for you, but we're going to get into the Austin of it. But it is her first published novel. She published it when she was very young, either 19 or 21, because of reasons which we'll get into. So it's worth taking on on its own terms. Should you start with Pride and Prejudice? Maybe. Is it interesting to start with this one, which is a transitional document in a lot of ways, and we have that adaptation coming out at the same time, which is always a good time to return to these things here. So it'll be really cool. I mean, Austen, to me, she's one of my favorite writers and super important in the canon and the well-reading of it all really matters. And I think you do get some extra zero to well-read points, you know, going back to the end of ours, for having read Sense and Sensibility, which most even of the Austen fans do not consider. among the first rank of Austin. I think that's usually Persuasion and, of course, Emma and Pride and Prejudice. And then you're getting down to sort of personal picks and Sense and Sensibilities a little bit lower. But an interesting book, of course, to talk about. Austin herself is worth doing many shows about. If you want more from us, you can join our Patreon to get access to guided read-alongs, early ad-free episodes, and other bonus content. Go to patreon.com slash zero. to well read. We're getting some nice emails from people who are working through their back episodes, or I just wanted to email you this story about this. I love these. We're doing a mailbag episode very soon. These are always going to be candidates, Rebecca, for inclusion into our mailbag, our emails. Speaker 2 (3:10) Yeah, always fun to hear from folks. And just a quick reminder that you can rate and review the show wherever you're listening. It does us a huge favor by bumping us up in the algorithm. It helps your friends who are looking for new podcasts find their way to us. And when we hit 1,000 ratings on Apple Podcasts, which we are getting close to. Close, Speaker 1 (3:29) 927 this morning, I think. Speaker 2 (3:30) Yes, and by the time this show airs, who knows, we'll be close to 1,000. We'll be doing a Listener's Choice episode where y'all will get to vote. on the book that we cover. And I know that you have some ideas about what you'd like us to be talking about. Yeah, Speaker 1 (3:45) it's which James Michener novel do they want us to cover? It's going to be real. No, we're going to be fun. It'll be fun. Stuff Speaker 2 (3:53) that, Speaker 1 (3:53) yeah, that I think think a little bit more in the Twilight zone of picks rather than the Jane Austen or Shakespeare or, you know, Toni Morrison kind of zone. Speaker 2 (4:02) Yes. Speaker 1 (4:04) You know, syllable, syllable, syllableable. Syllabalable. Yeah, that's not a thing. Syllabiable. Syllabiable. Syllabic. That's Speaker 2 (4:14) a Speaker 1 (4:14) different word. Completely. We're doing well. Speaker 2 (4:16) Speaking Speaker 1 (4:16) of that. It's going great. Speaker 2 (4:17) It is good. You're on a caffeine rocket ship this morning. I'm happy for you. We've been syllabized. A friend of ours who teaches a college class let us know this week that her students are practicing some things around doing literary criticism in real time. They're going to be listening to some episodes of Zero to Well-Read. I'm going to be going to speak to the class. And one of their assignments is to pick a book from their class reading and create a Zero to Well-Read style episode about it. We know there are other English teachers and professors listening. If you want to have us zoom into your class, we would be delighted. So you can email us zero to well read at bookriot.com. So happy to have been syllabized and to know that we can use that as Speaker 1 (5:01) a Speaker 2 (5:01) word now. Speaker 1 (5:02) Nice transition, by the way. I wonder if we were recommending a book for a high school or college class to do, try their hand at making one of these pancakes. Speaker 1 (5:14) I mean, the ones we've done, we've done. I would say... Pick something shortish. I mean, that maybe is obvious. And probably something, if you can, that you have some pre-existing relationship to. It's pretty hard to go in cold. It's so helpful if you've, and I'm not even saying you've read it before. Maybe you've seen the movie. Maybe you've read one of the other books. Maybe it's your teacher's favorite books or your boyfriend or girlfriend's Speaker 2 (5:38) or Speaker 1 (5:38) paramour's or whatever. But like, go with some relationship into it. And then my biggest piece of advice is try to have some fun with it. Right. You're making it. This is edutainment to Rebecca. That's what we're trying to do. Speaker 2 (5:49) Pick something that you think you will have a good time talking about. Since you're pairing up, at least in this class, they're pairing up with someone else. Like it might be interesting if you have different takes or different background experiences with the novel. We've had a lot of fun doing books that we both love. You know, we had a great time on Gilead. But it's really interesting when we're bringing different perspectives and different levels of exposure and experience to a title. And I do think pick something that's a man. And that you can read like at least one time fresh as you're prepping, maybe a second time if you're coming back to it later in the semester. But I just that was just so cool. Very Speaker 1 (6:25) cool. Speaker 2 (6:26) One of it's deeply nerdy. It's Speaker 1 (6:28) an Speaker 2 (6:28) achievement that I never knew I wanted, but I'm going to make myself a little syllabized merit badge. Go about my merry way. Speaker 1 (6:35) I'm sure Lumberjanes had a merit badge for being syllabide. Lumberjanes would be a wonderful zero to well-read episode. Do not look down upon genre or comics or other things. A lot of fun to do. Okay, one of the things you have to do if you're going to do that is try to wrangle the plot of a, let's just call it messy and unwieldy plotted book, as Sense and Sensibility is. Rebecca is as good as this as anyone I know. Rebecca, take it away. What is Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen about? Speaker 2 (7:04) Thank you so much for that intro, because this was a hard one to try to capture in a couple paragraphs. But here's the deal. When their father dies and leaves his estate to his son from his first marriage, the Dashwood women, Eleanor, Marianne, Margaret, and their mother are forced to leave the only home they've ever known. They move to a small cottage in another village. Eleanor and Marianne are both of marriageable age by regency standards. Marianne is 17. Eleanor is a few years older than that. They could not be more different, but they have one thing in common. They both want a husband. Eleanor, classic eldest daughter. She's practical, logical. She's her mother's right-hand woman. Marianne is the opposite. She's emotional and idealistic and easily swept up. And she is her mother's mirror image. So already some complex mother-daughter and sisterhood stuff is happening. Eleanor is sense-embodied. Marianne is sensibility. It's important to know going into this that the definitions of sensibility, well, sense is kind of obvious, but sensibility stands in for like art and emotion and sensitivity and taste. All the Speaker 1 (8:10) feels, I think it would have been called all the feels back in the day. All Speaker 2 (8:13) the Speaker 1 (8:13) feels, Speaker 2 (8:13) that's right. So as Eleanor and Marianne fall in love, they... with obviously two different men. It's not that kind of book. They suffer parallel heartbreaks. They're navigating meddling mothers, like not just their own, but like everybody's mom is meddling. Tough Speaker 1 (8:30) book for moms. Speaker 2 (8:31) Yeah, tough one. Nosy neighbors. And Eleanor is trying to handle all of this in silence. Marianne does it with this swoony, dramatic flair. And Austin spends most of the book and they're... The differences between these sisters, using those to complicate this false dichotomy between reason and romance, between sense and sensibility. And she just skewers every character in her path along the way. Speaker 1 (8:54) Yeah. If that sounds not unlike Pride and Prejudice to you, there's a reason for that. I'm not going to do this the whole show, but I couldn't I could not shake Pride and Prejudice both because I think it's a it is a more it's later. It's not that much later in Austen's writing life. But a lot of what she does in Sensibility, she returns to in Pride and Prejudice and just does it better, kind of every step of the way. I'm not sure there's one thing that's not improved upon in Pride and Prejudice than in Sense and Sensibility. But this book is important for the reasons I was kind of outlining above. This is Austen's first published book. And importantly, it does well enough for her to do others, right? I think the structure of publishing of the day matters at this moment. I guess just as I'm thinking about it, I want to jump it up here. We'll do Austin's biography in a moment. But why it's important here is that this gets published and it does well enough that she's going to publish a mother. She doesn't make a boatload of money. She is still dependent on her family largely, certainly to support her mother and sisters after her father dies a little bit later in her life. But she returns to publishing and gets a little bit enough money that gives her. Some pocket money, some a little bit of ballast against the whims of the world, which is mostly what Austen's books are about. Women trying to figure a way to buffet themselves against the patriarchy. And then she sort of keeps writing. She dies young. We'll get to that in a minute. But the structure of publishing is important here, too, because most novels, which were considered a lesser art form at this point. were published on commission, which means the publisher would pay to have the book published. You wouldn't get an advance. This idea of the advance where you get a pile of money ahead of time didn't exist. And you would only get paid out after they recruit all their expenses. So if you did not sell enough of your print run, which at this time was only like 500 to 750 copies, you were on the hook for the difference. So it's not quite self-publishing, Rebecca, but it's not not self-publishing. It's Speaker 2 (10:53) like a hybrid model, kind of. We talked about it with Dickens when we talked about A Christmas Carol, because he famously made the first edition so fancy that the publisher lost money on them. And the publisher went into debt and then went bankrupt. And Dickens had to pay for the rest of those expenses out of his. his own pocket, did not profit on A Christmas Carol for a very long time. And Austen, much like Joe March, sort of in this situation of wants to be a writer, wants to get her stories told. She's born in 1775. She starts writing this in 1795. And it gets published anonymously first in 1811. Published by a lady was the author. was the author tag. So she was 36 when it first came out, but the earliest drafts are from when she was about 20. And the book was originally published in three volumes. This was pretty common at that time. Little Women was a similar story. If you've picked up like a Penguin Classics paperback of Little Women, you see that it's divided into multiple books, but Sense and Sensibility. I think you bought Speaker 1 (12:00) them all at one time. I meant to go look at this. If anyone's a publisher... publishing scholar, I don't know why it was three volumes. Was it the page count? Was it so you could carry them around? You know, you could go on a walk. I don't know why it was three because this isn't a huge book. This is not an 800 page monster. Yeah, no, it's like 350 Speaker 2 (12:18) pages total. So each volume... Speaker 1 (12:21) Regular novel length, yeah. Right. Speaker 2 (12:22) Each volume clocks in around... And maybe because novels in this form were relatively new still at the time. Maybe it was just standard for a novel to be 100, 150 pages. Right. That's what poetry Speaker 1 (12:35) books are. Let's just make three of them. It's kind of weird to see it this way. Make it Speaker 2 (12:38) easy. But she sold out the first print runs, as you noted. Those were pretty small by today's standards, 750, maybe 1,000 copies. Early reviews praised the book for having naturally drawn characters and a realistic plot. Kind of interestingly, it was perceived as providing lessons on social conduct, like how to behave and not behave. I'm not sure that Austen intended that, but it was fascinating to see that in the early reviews. Speaker 1 (13:07) Yeah. Also, it's Speaker 2 (13:10) a Speaker 1 (13:10) social critique, right? Like Austen is moving from one transition. She's a transitional figure, and this is a transitional book for a transitional figure. So that has some messiness in it, makes a lot of sense in hindsight. But the popular novels that the world that Austen was writing into, the popular of the day, we did The Wuthering Heights. So these big sort of sentimental books. And then Samuel Richardson's Pamela was also one of these where there's dramatic action and big feelings and the moors and pain and weeping and whatever. Austen herself is not interested in that for a variety of reasons. that we can only kind of speculate at because we don't know much about her, which we'll get to in a minute. This is moving into the world of psychological and literary realism. These are people's quote-unquote actual lives. These are relatively small lives, Rebecca. These are not the kings and queens of the age, nor the princes, nor the outcasts. These are middle-ish class, upper middle class women. They are on the cusp of having to work. And that's the line they're troubling is, Speaker 2 (14:12) do we have to go be a governess? Speaker 1 (14:15) There's not a lot of great options, especially for women. Men can go to clergy or Navy or work with their hands, but women, you're governesses or servants, right? And that is the line they're troubling. And Austin, I think both for personal reasons, because she herself was around this line, but also it adds drama to love stories, quote unquote love stories. for the stakes to be not of the heart, but of the purse and of the house and of your life, where a modern romantic comedy, if it doesn't work out, you could still be the baker in that shop that you were running when you meet you, right? Especially for women are a lot different. Now the patriarch, I'm not saying the patriarch doesn't exist, it totally does. And that's not what I'm saying. But the stakes are quite different. And the part of the ecosystem that Austin is interested in. puts them perilously close. They can move up a great deal and move down a great deal. Speaker 2 (15:09) Yeah, it's really interesting to see that contrast between reviewers at the time receiving the book as being about how to behave socially. And then within about 100 years, early 20th century scholars start reading this as a feminist critique and a real analysis of patriarchal systems of controlling women. Much like in Wuthering Heights, everything is actually about real estate. Speaker 1 (15:37) And Speaker 2 (15:38) it's overt that marriage is a financial... arrangement, that it's a financial transaction, that it's about the real estate. It's about who has the money. It's about securing multiple families' futures. And they talk so openly about it, like that's just the system that they're all inside. And Austin has some things to say about what it feels like to live inside that system. She also has a lot to say about people who aren't interested in being interesting. Like a lot of this is skewering the people, especially women who are just sitting around gossiping about what's going on in everybody else's lives. Women didn't have a lot of options, as you were saying. They couldn't be out in the world mixing it up quite as much. There wasn't as much to do to occupy their time. But they had the choice of pursuing the arts and reading novels or being busybodies. And there are characters who take both paths in this book. And the ones who are the busybodies don't fare very well. And that is pretty satisfying. Speaker 1 (16:38) Yeah. So as you might expect, as you probably know listening to this, if you're listening to this show, you probably have some sense of the Austin. industrial complex because there's a scholarly one, but there's also the commercial one. More probably than anyone we're ever likely to talk about has both at the same time, where there's Hallmark movies and you can write your dissertation. Well, you can write your dissertation about many different things at this point, but you can get high zero to well-read points, let's put it that way, book nerd, read cred, but also you can go to a fan convention and dress up. And both of those things are part and parcel of the Austin experience, which is remarkable, Rebecca, to think about in this way. It is. Speaker 2 (17:18) And there is even a Hallmark movie about a Jane Austen scholar going to one of those fan conventions. I Speaker 1 (17:25) mean, that's the highest level of being in the monoculture. You can't do any more than that. Speaker 2 (17:30) Yeah, it's pretty amazing. The Hallmark Channel did a run of like four or five Austin-inspired movies a couple of years ago that I watched all of them for content for the site. As Hallmark goes, it's a pretty good time. But a fan convention for anything is a scene. And it was a fun and clever idea for somebody to drop in a film there. I would watch a documentary about what's going on after hours at the Jane Austen fan convention in a heartbeat. Speaker 1 (17:59) Very nice microcosm blurb you dropped here. I did it on e-book, so I don't have an edition to look at. But you have this Ferrante blurb, which is fascinating in itself. And we'll talk about that maybe more when we do the connection. But it says, pay attention for the lightness conceals pitiless depths. That pitiless is doing a lot of work there. And we'll talk about one of my straight thoughts is how I don't want to be perceived by Austin. Oh, no. But there is a lot more going on here than I think. people thought at the time. And certainly, if you were a certain kind of reader who... is more ready to dismiss Austin because it's about love stories and, you know, women trying not to be governesses, you're missing the point. You're missing the subterranean. And I think sometimes not really subterranean. I think it's pretty on the surface. It's pretty Speaker 2 (18:48) textual. Yeah. Speaker 1 (18:49) Austin doesn't have the word patriarchy and she's not doing a lot of boy, it sucks. But there is some like, it does kind of suck to be subject to this, these systems and these paradigms. But. Maybe even more powerfully, it is woven into the texts, how people have to navigate these, what happens to them if they misstep, and what the consequences really are. So something like literary realism, and then the long history of the novel that comes after it, I don't have enough of a scholarly background to say this more strongly, but I do think Austen is maybe a catalyst for... the novel being taken more seriously because it takes the world more seriously, but also find seriousness in things that, you know, maybe people wouldn't think as being the subject of important intellectual artistic representation in wrestling with. So, you know, this idea that write what you know, right, kind of comes out of Austen writing around her social world and the kinds of characters and people she knows. A Speaker 2 (19:54) really terrific example of show don't tell. Because she is just kind of almost documenting the lives of these women, the moments that they're in with each other, what they're concerned about, why it is mostly that they're concerned about who they're going to marry. Speaker 2 (20:12) Even if she doesn't want it to be true that that's what you have to take super seriously in these women's lives, that is the thing they have to take super seriously because the way that you have a house to live in is you get married to the right fella. And even if you do that, as Eleanor and Marianne's mother did, he can disinherit you after he dies and leave the whole place to his son, which just like talk about a system. Speaker 1 (20:34) Yeah, that really stinks. Speaker 2 (20:36) Yeah, there's something really potent about the fact that she's not writing. about overtly like patriarchal systems are bad and here's a heroine navigating a patriarchal system. But that's obviously what these heroines are doing. And I have to believe that even at the time, women, and it was mostly women reading these novels at the time, would recognize the struggles that they had felt and would recognize the challenges of those systems they exist inside. And there's something really to letting us see the characters in those moments rather than just saying the thing, which. Anytime an author just says the point of a book is the thing that you and I both bump up against. Speaker 1 (21:16) Right. Yeah, that's true. And I would encourage people, and maybe this is a straw person for people listening to this show, and I'd be happy if that's true. But if you find yourself like, I can't care about the stakes here because it's just a bunch of women or it's not life and death or whatever, but you can, for say, the brother of Kara Motsov or Marcus Aurelius or the Odyssey, transport yourself and take those stakes seriously. I think that might be a good... moment to look in the mirror about why one versus the other is something you can sort of imagine yourself into these worlds and take it seriously and understand the sakes and read along with. You're never going to be these people. We cannot in situ go back in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure ourselves into these places and read them from their eyes. But I think if you can... Sort of frame it as, OK, what