There's definitely a contemporary reading of Sense and Sensibility that turns into a MeToo novel, but we are not ready to have that conversation. Lmfao

Like, we tend to read the ending as a happy ending, but to me, part of the magic trick of the novel is that while it's possible to read it with utter sincerity, there's also a reading where it's satirizing love stories.

Like, that's what makes it a comedic novel. Like at the end of the novel, Colonel Brandon ends up with Marianne, who is young and pretty. Because he is rich. And Elinor ends up with a feckless fool of a man. Because he is hot and proximate to wealth, ish.

And in an ideal world, Brandon would end up with Elinor. But neither of them has any sense. They are overcome with desire. So they end up with these two frivolous people.

Like, it's not all lalala, let's marry the teen off to the old man with nary a comment. Elinor literally is like:

Anyway, there is an available contemporary reading that makes Sense and Sensibility about men getting into power dynamics with young women and being sketchy and awful to them. And the whole is a comedic tragedy of manners. But we love the Emma Thompson movie so we ignore that

Like, I used to think, "Oh, haha, those olden days people with their backward mores" and I got all this pleasure from the irony of people thinking it's a love story when it's really not. But like, I do think Jane Austen was being very intentional.

Like, I am not smarter than Jane Austen. She was commenting on the nature of relationships and the way that young women end up as pretty baubles to rich men or used and discarded. The whole book is a cautionary farce about shitty dudes.

Anyway, that's all.

I am not a critic or anything. So what do I know, tbh. I'm just a homosexual who writes austere domestic realism. I am gonna go make hamburgers now.