I finished Sense and Sensibility today. I hadn't read it for a while because it hasn't traditionally been one of my favorite Austen novels. But this time I liked it, especially the depiction of Elinor Dashwood, who, if not a charmer like Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennet, is self-aware and incisive in a way that seems unique among Austen's heroines. Both Emma and Elizabeth deceive themselves; Fanny Price is self-aware but meek; Catherine Norland is a gauche innocent. Elinor, however, is different from all of them. She is no more intelligent than Emma, Elizabeth, or Fanny, but she is wise and discreet, a good manager, a handler of crises. She has a great appeal, far greater than her sister Marianne, who is a twit. Whatever can Colonel Brandon see in her?

One of the weakness of this novel is its wordiness. At her height Austen was so concise that it's rather shocking to watch her sentences run on so flabbily. But her comic eye is wonderful. I think my favorite silly characters are rude Mr. Palmer and his nitwit wife, who invariably laughs when her husband insults her and says, "Mr. Palmer is so droll!"

20 minutes later, an unrelated addendum: I just finished copying out Keats's "Ode on Melancholy," the greatest poem I've ever read about the joys of being depressed. I love it, I love it, I love it.

Ode on Melancholy

            John Keats

  I.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

            Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d

            By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;

Make not your rosary of yew-berries,

            Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be

                        Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;

            For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

                        And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

 

  II.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall

            Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,

            And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

Then glut they sorrow on a morning rose,

            Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,

                        Or on the wealth of globed peonies;

Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

            Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,

                        And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

 

  III.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;

            And Joy whose hand is ever at his lips

Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

            Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

Ay, in the very temple of Delight

            Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,

                        Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;

            His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,

                        And be among her cloudy trophies hung.