Reading the Classics discussion
Past Group Reads
>
Sense and Sensibility - chapters 1-10
date
newest »
newest »
A will read it soon! Agree, that we shall consider past centuries social rules, living environment and o son in order to understand the characters better.
Melmuse wrote: "Small quibble: Marianne is 20; Eleanor a few years older. John considers Eleanor an old maid, and thinks Marianne will end up the same way."Isn't this the one where she's making fun of someone being 45 and old? Different world then, for sure!
Life expectancy in 1820 was 41 - so they were both middle-aged ;-) You really had to get a move on in those days! No wonder they think of Colonel Brandon as elderly. In his late 30s....
He's near death.
It's true that life expectancy was age 41 in Britain in 1820 - but the deaths of babies and very young children skewed that down. If you had reached age 15 or 20, your life expectancy at that point was much, much greater.So it's not accurate to think of a 20 year old as middle-aged.
Lobstergirl wrote: "It's true that life expectancy was age 41 in Britain in 1820 - but the deaths of babies and very young children skewed that down. If you had reached age 15 or 20, your life expectancy at that poin..."That's right. There were plenty of sixty and seventy and eighty year olds.
Just read a piece on Ben Franklin's sister in the New Yorker, and she lost several children very young. Take four children dying at average age 5 and one Ben Franklin living to 84 and you get a short average lifespan. But as you say, once a person, especially a man (too many women died in childbirth) reached 20 or so, the odds were pretty good for a life not that much shorter than what we look forward today.
In Barton Cottage, Mrs. Dashwood plans on expanding it even though it already has enough room for all four of them....
But then Willoughby extracts a promise from her never to turn it into a McMansion.(Why? Why does he care?)
Lobstergirl wrote: "But then Willoughby extracts a promise from her never to turn it into a McMansion.(Why? Why does he care?)"
Great question!
Apollonia wrote: "In Barton Cottage, Mrs. Dashwood plans on expanding it even though it already has enough room for all four of them...."My speculation is that even though she is now relatively poor, she still wants to see herself as a member of the country set, and that means being able to host guests and hold country house parties. If she isn't able to host several guests, I think she would consider that she had stepped down in status. Also, of course, she needs to be able to invite enough young men to provide opportunity for her girls to meet potential husbands. Buried in the country, how else can they spend enough time with eligible bachelors to find good husbands?
That's what trips to the city are for!Has there ever been an Austen novel (or a novel by one of her contemporaries) where the girls didn't go on a trip to the city, severely chaperoned? Read Evelina for some entertaining scenes of young rakes chasing and pawing after the girls visiting the city.
Lobstergirl wrote: "That's what trips to the city are for!Has there ever been an Austen novel (or a novel by one of her contemporaries) where the girls didn't go on a trip to the city, severely chaperoned? Read Eve..."
Yes, in fact that was the purpose of "the Season" - to allow girls (and I assume young men) from the country a chance to meet & hopefully marry young gentlemen of the 'right sort'.
True, but the Season, according to Debrett's, ran only from April to August (or, if you didn't have a house in town, as Mrs. Dashwood doesn't, as much of that as you could find someone to house and chaperone you.) If you didn't find a husband (or for men a wife, but the women clearly had the harder time) in the crush of everybody pursuing everybody else during the season, you had to retreat back the country for the long, dark winter, and then your only hope, if there weren't eligible men available locally, was to hope your mother could snare a few appropriate houseguests.
Or that an unattached parson was taking up residence at the parsonage.Or the Navy was passing through on leave.
Or someone's wife would die.
Lol, those all sound like a good premise for a book :)
Lobstergirl wrote: "Or that an unattached parson was taking up residence at the parsonage.Or the Navy was passing through on leave.
Or someone's wife would die."
LOL!
so I read chapter one and it was so much info in so few pages. made me sleepy so I read it out loud to my great grandmother (even though I knew she couldnt understand what I was saying). So far I dont like it that much I got half way through P&P and it was a flowing read didnt take long but this I feel is being dense if that makes any sense.
I thought Marianne was 17 (for reasons which would be spoilers here), but according to Wiki, Marianne is 16 when the novel opens. Colonel Brandon is 35 -- Marianne "was reasonable enough to allow that a man of five and thirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling..." (Volume I, Chaper VII).Everyman said:
the Season, according to Debrett's, ran only from April to August
Huh, for some reason I thought the Season was late winter through early summer (kind of a long spring), and that people rich enough fled to the country in the summer heat and generally stayed there through hunting season and the holidays, then started trickling back.
But I suppose London didn't get hot enough for the heat to be oppressive until August; I hate heat and live in the midwest, which apparently has given me a skewed perspective. :p
Life expectancy in 1820 was 41 - so they were both middle-aged ;-) You really had to get a move on in those days!