Her near-fatal collapse is caused by an asthma attack, whereas Austen's self-obsessed, hysterical, highly emotional heroine suffers a horrific mental and physical breakdown brought on by her excessive sensibility: Austen was making serious points about the relationship between 19th-century sensibility and depression, including self-harm, which has striking parallels with modern-day mental illness, particularly among teenage girls. This seemed like a lost opportunity. Nowhere else in Austen's novels do we see a heroine in the grip of an ill-fated erotic passion.
- Life is short. Read fast.;
- Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope, review!
- Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope – review!
- Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus.
- UN TROP BEAU REVE (French Edition).
- Adults Only;
Marianne's anguish is real, protracted and painful to read. M doesn't reach the complexity and emotional depth of Marianne, a girl who is rude not for the sake of rudeness but because she wants to slice through her era's stultifying social mores and hypocrisy: That said, Trollope's strength as a writer has always been her sharply observed characters and authentic dialogue.
Like Austen, she is especially good on the way women behave badly to other women. Her Fanny Dashwood is a tour de force of nastiness and selfishness, and she brings the vague Mrs Dashwood Belle to life. Austen's rather sketchy depiction of Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon a deliberate ruse to make the gorgeous Willoughby even more alluring?
If the Austen Project intends to bring new young readers to Jane Austen, I have no doubt that it will succeed.
Sense & Sensibility (The Austen Project, #1) by Joanna Trollope
Taken forward two hundred years and as a reader I had no such sympathy. It was again reasonable for Edward to have been taken in but as a twenty-first century man it was within his power to free himself — he did not have to willfully choose to marry a woman he did not love. He becomes therefore a weak-willed wimp and I felt that Elinor could have done a lot better. Many of the endearments his Regency equivalent lavished on Marianne simply do not translate so Trollope allows Marianne and Wills to progress to the bedroom. In allowing Wills to sleep with Marianne, this paradox is lost.
Austen is not exactly known for her wild physical love scenes so script-writers have to take what they can find. Unfortunately, to our modern eyes this is just not enough. So Trollope stirs in some drug addiction as well to add shock factor but even so — if it was drugs that Willoughby introduced Eliza to rather than sex, to a modern reader it was still her choice.
We may not yet have achieved full gender equality but reading Sense and Sensibility one realises quite how much more agency women have now than they did then. Wider options allow women to support themselves respectably without relying on the men in their lives. The original Dashwood girls and their real-life contemporaries had only their charms to recommend them to a husband or else to face a long spinsterhood eking out an existence on the charity of others.
Somehow Trollope is never quite able to conjure up the contrast. Her eventual humiliation naturally ends up on Youtube where by contrast Elinor is determined to maintain a poker face. It is interesting as a human drama but it is not a comedy of manners in the way that its namesake was. I laughed out loud as Austen listed all of the different responses to the question of whether Harry Dashwood or Johnny Middleton were taller. The equivalent scene did not have the same impact at all. While Sense and Sensibility addressed the contemporary rise of Romanticism, it strikes no such chord today.
Perhaps if Trollope had set her novel in the Sixties, allowing Marianne to be a hippy or similar then it might have worked better. Aus As one of the reviewers before me have asked: Austen's universe of elegance, ballrooms, heroines and heroes are such a comforting world to escape into once in a while.
I can easily understand Austen's popularity and the perpetual fascination of her novels. I am a part of the Austen craze myself. In general I have low expectations for Austen fanfiction; I simply expect to be entertained. After watching "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" and "Emma Approved" on YouTube, I know how well Austen's stories can be translated into a contemporary setting; adding something new to the plotline without losing Austen's beautiful structure and storytelling.
This is why, Trollope's version of "Sense and Sensibility" was such a huge disappointment. She doesn't adapt the story to a modern society; she simply tell us a story we already know, and adds an awkward sprinkle of modern technology. Her only new addition is the occasional mention of text messages and Facebook stalking. The story remains the same, and while I do think integrity is a good thing, the story falls apart because of it. Why, why, why would a family be so deprived of everything with the loss of a house?
Dashwood and Marianne just get a job? Why does Edward's mother focus so much on an advantageous marriage, when clearly her family has money enough? Why is the inheritance of property such a huge question? It doesn't seem reasonable in a modern frame. Neither does Marianne's constant swooning, and Willoughby's seemingly deep connection to a newly built cottage. There's no reason in this. The novel isn't really modernized or reinvented - it is simply a write-off.
While I can only imagine how daunting a task it must be to rewrite an Austen novel, too much integrity is the easiest choice. If I wanted to read a tale exactly similar to "Sense and Sensibility", I would simply choose to read Austen herself. After all, there is no one better. Deluje kao pisano na brzinu pod prisilom. I think Trollope did a fantastic job of staying true to the Austen novel, but maybe a little TOO true to the source. I felt at times that the only thing that changed was the mention of an iPad to remind me that this was in "modern times" I mean, I imagined it going a little deeper than that you know?
Is that the point of The Austen Project and I missed it? Despite that, I would still recommend this to any Austen fan.
The Dashwoods do 'Made in Chelsea’ in an unhappy Austen update
Ah, give me hope, Joanna! Nov 24, Ellie rated it did not like it. It is possibly true to say that I was never going to read Joanna Trollope's Sense and Sensibility with a totally clear mind. It annoys me that, rather than encouraging people to read and appreciate the wit, the beautiful prose, of Austen's novels, and to learn of and understand the social mores that existed, and which still influence some prejudices these days, it has been considered appropriate to dumb down the classics to the status of chick lit. And dumbing down is certainly what Trollope has It is possibly true to say that I was never going to read Joanna Trollope's Sense and Sensibility with a totally clear mind.
And dumbing down is certainly what Trollope has done, with this book apparently aimed at viewers of scripted reality shows like Made In Chelsea and The Only Way is Essex. But these are not the important elements of a book. For me to enjoy a book, it must have a good story, and good characters.
Austen had both of these in abundance. Trollope has taken the basic plot, but left out the wit and social commentary that help to make Austen' work a classic, while, to quote The Guradian's John Crace "Joanna Trollope has achieved the near impossible by making every Jane Austen character appear shallow and unlikable".
Perhaps an admirable undertaking, given how little Austen required of them. But perhaps there was reason for that. Austen called upon them only when necessary for the plot; Trollope reels them out unnecessarily several times, but I can see no benefit, they add nothing. Trollope's Margaret's only purpose seems to be to remind us that this is a 'modern' version, by constant references to social media and other modern phenomena.
Meanwhile, Edward, never a character I could really take to, is here made a complete wishy-washy wimp, with no purpose or aim until his potential in charity work is picked up by Brandon. Austen's Edward made it difficult for me to understand what Elinor saw in him. Trollope's left me totally unable to understand. The worst crime, however, is left to Trollope's interpretation of Marianne. Austen's Marianne is a girl who can appear rude, not for the sake of being rude, but to break through the social mores and the hypocrisy of the time in which she lives.
She suffers a deep depression, and knows that it is only her own sensibiliy that lead the illness that almost took her life; as she says "had I died, it would have been sef-destruction".
Sense & Sensibility
In Trollope's novel, Marianne becomes M, a horrible, whiny creature, rude for rudeness sake, with no redeeming features. How anyone could fall in love with M is beyond me. Worse, by making asthma to blame for her near-death, Trollope totally removes the function of depression and self-harm in Marianne's condition. Ultimatlely, M is nothing but a pretty face, an airhead, whereas "the least interesting thing about Marianne is her beauty; what matters are her sense intelligence , her sensitivity sensibility and her brooding intensity" If the aim of this book was to demonstrate that Austen is relevant in the modern world, it has failed miserably.
Reading this would make people think the exact opposite. But Austen's themes are relevant. Unfortunately, Trollope chose the wrong elements to update, and completely overlooked the key messages. Oct 29, Dayna Mccormick rated it did not like it. It gets one star just because it got published, which is something I have never done, so hooray for you. But this was just a complete pile of crap. Just don't touch Jane Austen, go stick a fork in an outlet next time you have the urge.
Nov 02, Michelle rated it did not like it. Most of the problems I have with it can be summed up in four points. Weird mixture of unnecessary slang and old-fashioned expressions that are completely inauthentic for the time period. One of the many instances where the language is completely inauthentic and jarring is the first appearance of Mr Willoughby or Wills. In the lead-up to Marianne being rescued by Willoughby Marianne is running along in the rain. When Margaret stumbles upon Willougby: The old-fashioned expressions are jarring and the slang feels incredibly contrived.
Put together the it all feels bizarre and false. Mentions of technology that felt forced and added nothing to the plot, just so the author could prove to us we were in Many of these references to technology are completely unnecessary.
Margaret also grumpily listens to her iPod for most of the book. The actual modernization was lacking, the author followed the book too closely and as a result the characters were unlikeable and many plot points were far-fetched. Marianne and Mrs Dashwood being oblivious to practicalities in the original was not unbelievable. Women did not generally have to think of such things during that time. In this modern era their obliviousness is grating and unrealistic. The Dashwood girls eventually start a soap business Marianne gets a job doing some sort of admin. There is no real sense of Marianne or Elinor except what we are explicitly told and what anyone who had read the original would know anyway , that there is one sensible, reserved sister and one dramatic, passionate one.
They had always been too big. But even dressed in them, with her hair in damp ropes on her shoulders, and her eyes circled with fatigue, Marianne looked, well, outstanding. Lots of people in this book shout, actually. He is terribly bland. This is not one of them. Feb 14, Deborah Markus rated it really liked it.
Twice upon a time, there were three Dashwood sisters, though no one took much notice of the youngest one. Their father died far too young, and they and their mother were forced by their cruel sister-in-law and weak half-brother to leave the home they'd grown up in. I hated it the first time through. And she very nearly made it come true. Now that I've read it more times than I've bothered to count, it's one of my favorite books in the world.
Which sounds like some kind of literary Stockholm Syndrome, but really it's just a matter of my finally developing the kind of muscles and perspective it took for me to enjoy Austen's genius. I wanted to see what she'd do with the story. She'd transplant it directly to 21st-century England, is what she'd do. She'd keep all the names and major plot events exactly the same, on the theory that a story worth telling once is worth hearing twice. Part of me was eaten up by envy. It never occurred to me that we were allowed to do that -- to take a book we admire and just write it again.
I kept reading the whole time I was thinking along these lines, and I soon saw just how much subtle genius it takes to get away with a stunt like that. Yes, all the people and places go by the same names as they did in Austen's novel. True, they're living on the cheap, for a genteel family. But it's taken as a given that their supposedly meager funds will stretch to cover not merely food and rent, but several servants and a home big enough to house all of them and a visitor or two besides.
How will a modern reader relate to this sort of "poverty"? What will a modern writer employ as a sympathetic equivalent? And what about the really melodramatic plot points that Austen barely got away with in the early nineteenth-century: Half the fun in reading this book is seeing how Trollope handles these tricky patches; the other half is the soothing delight of a story well told. Romance is certainly important in this novel. But the modern Dashwood sisters must of course have something more going on in their lives than the hopes of a marriage both affectionate and reasonably wealthy.
Trollope paints the story anew with grace, wit, and obvious enjoyment. She does make a few references to how things have changed since Austen's time: You're like those nineteenth-century novels where marriage is the only career option for a middle-class girl.
Long-suffering Elinor is the sister who has to organize, plan, settle, smooth over, and smile when she feels like screaming -- "the price of having your head screwed on the right way," as Mrs. Jennings revisited observes sympathetically. And Elinor's affection for Marianne is made clear early on, in spite of the sisters having so little in common. Elinor actually feels sorry for her tempestuous, overly romantic younger sis: But it takes more than that to create a story worth reading. How is a contemporary reteller going to keep her audience engaged in a story we already know?
How can she bring enough surprises to be interesting without leaving the original tale in tatters? She'll bore her readers if she changes too little, and enrage them if she interferes too much. If you haven't, read this and then go read Austen's novel. View all 5 comments. She is one of my go to authors when I need perking up. The idea of a reworking of an Austen novel always makes me happy, and so this should have ticked all the right boxes.
I enjoyed it, alot, but not completely. Which is stupid as it's a reworking. I know, but even so that was how i felt, flat. I was disappointed that Margaret was little more than a bit part, even though she could have added more, been more than someone with a treehouse desperate to ride in Willoughby's car. I don't know, maybe when I give it time to digest I've just this minute finished it. Or just feel something toward it. Jan 11, Esther rated it did not like it Shelves: Boring as batshit, I couldn't finish it. And what is the point of writing a modern adaptation which is still set in the same British aristocracy-and-military world, with the same issues of inheritances, as the original?
I want to read adaptations that make an old story relatable in today's world, and Marianne playing a Taylor Swift song on the guitar isn't quite what I had in mind. The Austen Project is the ambitious task undertaken by six authors to recreate the works of Jane Austen. With the Austen Project, I was really looking forward to some popular authors recreating her works for a modern audience: According to GoodReads her novels average 3.
He had been an asthmatic, after all! The blue inhalers were as much a part of the Dashwood family as the members of it were. He was never going to make old bones, and he was living in a place and a manner that was entirely dependent on the charity and whim of an old man who liked his fantasies to be daring but his facts, his realities, to be orthodox.
I have only read the original Sense and Sensibility once, and that was several years ago now. I remember at the time struggling to get my head around it, being only my second Austen novel, and stopping to watch the movie before continuing. After that I remember it like this: Professor Snape is after the Titanic lady who nearly dies pining after someone, Hugh Grant likes Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie married an idiot and spends most of his time making fun of her. I wish now that I had reread the original before embarking on the remake in order to have a better understanding of what Trollope has changed and what has been left the same.
The biggest disappointment about the Austen Project for me is the total lack of modernisation. Austen is well known for her style of writing, the big romances and, most importantly for me, the social commentary of the time. Sense and Sensibility is a novel about four young women left destitute by the death of Mr Dashwood, and their reliance on the charity of their friends and strangers to survive until the girls can make fortunate marriages that will secure the future of the family. Belle Dashwood and her daughters Elinor, Marianne and Mags are in a predicament. Their husband and father, Mr Dashwood, has passed away suddenly after a terrible asthma attack.
John Dashwood, being for the most part a spineless prat, has been forced by his wife to ask the women to leave their property. While this is a hurtful and humiliating experience, it is by no means the calamitous disaster that it was two centuries ago. This is where Trollope, her editors, and those behind the creation of The Austen Project have had a monumental fuckup. It is not enough to add the mention of an iPod, a Land Rover, Twitter and Facebook and pat ourselves on the back for writing a modernisation. Here was a chance to throw a well-known story, with a well-known ending, and push these well-established characters by putting them in a new setting and watching them sink or swim.
In fact, I felt disgust. I felt completely dumbfounded that Trollope and her editors could possibly feel it acceptable to give the Dashwood women such a large amount of money and still expect the charity of friends. For four women with laughable earning power, one of whom is still at school, one is unused to work, and one is both physically unfit and as yet unqualified to work.
I cannot respect any parent who is so able to work, even has a qualification, yet does not once think of finding work. Even if there were no current positions as an art teacher, there is not one thing stopping her from being a cleaner, stocking shelves in a grocery, or working in any job that is currently available.
Worse still, Belle believes she is somehow contributing a great deal to the household by not using central heating during the day, and does nothing but criticise the meagre earnings Elinor has been able to gain. Elinor Dashwood, the only member of the family with any sense, is in the last year of her Architecture degree, yet has never held a part time job.
For most students these days, a part time job is not only necessary for money, but also expected for experience — I would certainly never hire a graduate who has not worked a day in their life. Regardless of the need for any kind of job experience, Architecture is a degree that requires a lot of equipment — the materials to build the assignments, the programs required to make the digitised models, and the technical tools all of which would be needed on a regular basis yet who provided for these items?
Yet even so, with Elinor being such a driven, practical woman, how had she not tried before to get work or internships in her chosen field of study? Yet even with these challenges, the crisis would have to be very severe to outweigh the potential social welfare benefits that could have given this family a new chance.
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At least this way, much like the Little House on the Prairie novels, the family could have rallied together to face a winter after the summer crops had not yielded and hope was all they had. As it is, their situation hardly inspires sympathy and the infamous Fanny, meant to be so horribly callous and cruel, is perfectly reasonable in her request that the family pay up or move out, especially when the house requires constant attention and the costs of such an estate can often outweigh the benefits.
In spite of the failure of the premise, this book could still have had some potential had it been well written and with well-developed characters.
In fact, the only character that really shows any semblance of growth is the paltry attempt by Marianne to be slightly less dramatic and self-serving. While Elinor is a fairly likeable character, she is not a strong character and allows herself to be treated poorly by everyone, but most especially her mother, and I was not really able to warm to her to any great degree. None of the characters are given much introduction or description, it appears that Trollope has relied entirely on the assumption that the reader will know who these characters are.
The writing itself seems to be mostly made up of great slabs of dialogue, which are never in depth and do very little to progress the plot. There is nothing overly remarkable about this story, or the story telling, and has none of the depth or meaning of the original text.
This brings me back to my original point: I am so curious to know the motivations and goals behind the Project: Sep 15, Renita D'Silva rated it liked it. Wonderful, witty and fun. So, when I moved to Kuwait, many of my dear books stayed behind, I just had to buy another copy from this book until I could reunite with my previous one.
Aug 01, Tamsen rated it did not like it. I adore the original Sense and Sensibility. It's hard to say if it's my favorite Austen Pride and Prejudice is just, wow but it's a very close second. It's hard to retell Sense and Sensibility in a modern setting, because the whole premise falls apart. Instead, the heir is identified as Uncle John, who verbally p 1. Instead, the heir is identified as Uncle John, who verbally promised to take care of them, and who ultimately reneges on this promise. Obviously, it today's world, we women can be heirs, and not only that, if destitute, we can take jobs and still be considered upper-class.
Everyone becomes unlikeable and you can't pull for women who are just lazy, looking for some mens to take care of them. I won't read the rest of the Austen Project excepting, of course, Curtis Sittenfeld's Pride and Prejudice, because I like her, and the story, and I'm hopeful at least one modern retelling of Austen can actually work. I've been reading a little of the debate over the modernisation of Jane Austen's novel, which ranges from criticism of Trollope's book to readers who won't read it but don't like its existence for their own reasons, to readers who really don't like the idea of any publisher commissioning any writer to do anything that is so blatantly cashing in.