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John Dashwood is the best example of why Austen is praised for sharp satire. His proclamations of “poverty” to his sister make me want to reach through the pages and clobber him. “Oh Elinor, father left your mother all the good linen, so we had to buy new expensive stuff. Thus we have no money.”
“Elinor, you have a rich friend. She will certainly leave you money, and not her daughters, when she dies.”

On second reading, I am more and more struck by how Austen tells us, with such incredible detail and excellent and tender writing, about the small and stifling world of women of her time. Of course Marianne is dramatic but wouldn’t you be given that all you had going for a shot at respectable life was the caprice of petty, petulant men?

Re-reading this again because of all the interest in the new show. And I never knew this was Austen’s first book published. I was impatient the first time I read it. This time, I am delighting in return to an author I have loved for a decade