Sense and Sensibility: Volume I, Chapters 1-8

I forgot how quickly this book moves. Not even fifty pages in, and they're already at Barton Cottage. This is my third time reading it though... who knows.

First, I just want to talk a little bit about Marianne and Colonel Brandon. For some reason this time around it really hit me that he how much older he is than her-- eighteen years. Marianne even says herself that he's old enough to be her father. Just seeing the numbers seventeen and thirty-five together in the same sentence made me think "woah." It makes me wonder why I didn't feel the same when I read that Emma and Knightley were sixteen years apart in the last novel. I suppose it only seems crazy because Marianne is still a girl, and Emma, at twenty-one, is a woman. I'm sure, especially with her ideals of a husband, Marianne would much rather marry someone who is twenty-five, which is definitely proven when Willoughby shows up.

Speaking of Marianne's ideals ("I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings: the same books, the same music must charm us both.") I have to admit that I agree with her... to a point. When you're young, I think it's very easy to hold these requirements, but I have found as you grow older they should have a wider birth for exceptions. Loving some of the same things with also the respect of the things the other likes more than you is more realistic and perhaps more desirable. I've been in Marianne's shoes before with a Willoughby-esque situation, so I won't say that I'm glad that she has to go through that, but I am glad that she makes this realization with Brandon.

I love how Marianne says goodbye to Norland: "...And you, ye well-known trees!--but you will continue the same. No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer!--No; you will continue the same; unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade!--But who will remain to enjoy you?"

Okay, enough about Marianne.

I was just thinking about John and Fanny-- was their decision to not give the Dashwood sisters £1,000 each fair? Fanny definitely manipulated her husband a bit. It was very clear, even in the later chapters, that John is a very kind-hearted person and wants to help his half-sisters, but I've been contemplating this one since yesterday. Of course it was reasonable of Fanny to bring up the point that giving his half-sisters that much money would tarnish the financial future of their own son, and they do give them enough so they're not totally poor, but they end up being pretty poor nonetheless, and it has so many repercussions. Willoughby doesn't marry Marianne because his aunt doesn't find it suitable because of the family's wealth, and, despite the fact that Edward is technically engaged to Lucy, I'm sure Elinor would have been married sooner. Gah, I don't know. Anyone have any thoughts about this?