Sense & Sensibility — Good Writership or Naiveté ?

I just finished  Jane Austen's first novel „Sense and Sensibility”. And I must say, I'm confused. It is a well written novel, no question. But the level of naivete, of narrowness of the characters' outlook of life — and what is more — of admiration of the gentry-mindedness and heroes idleness — keeps me away from writing a positive, or even any longer review. It also overshadows some passages of true irony and good comedy, that, perhaps give the true value to this book !

I'm not literary critic, so my opinion may not be taken too seriously. And I know, that many bright people (like Leo Strauss) admired Jane Austen's prose. Maybe, I could change my mind after reading some other of Austen's novel. But I still have in mind the another book of the genre and of Victorian age — Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Only 30 years between them, while the difference is of enormous proportions in favour of Bronte....

The two (not quite) Victorian novels

It gives me true fun... Not long time ago I finished reading „The French Lieutenant's Woman” by John Fowles and was truly amazed by its depth (as compared to the movie of the same title), and now I'm in the mid of Jane Austen first novel „Sense and Sensibility”. I may seem naive to be a man of 50 and read such a literature as Austen's novels, but I do have true fun. I look from the different angles on the period in human culture called Victorianism (even though Austen formally lived in the preceding period).

Fowles delivers the contemporary account about Victorianism, and it analyses its dark sides at length, while Austen writes from the depths of the culture, believing in the values his heroes believed...

That's just a short note what I have been reading recently. Both reviews will come soon ...