The Cookbook Collector and Sense and Sensibility

Allegra Goodman is often hailed as a modern Jane Austen; in class, we touched on the comparison between The Cookbook Collector and the writings of Austen.  The class came to the conclusion that both authors’ main characters are inherently good people, though they are flawed.  However, the ways in which characters relate to one another diminish their imperfections, and readers are invited to reconsider their initial judgments.  The main characters end up happy and fulfilled, or, at the very least, content.

            There are especially striking similarities between The Cookbook Collector and Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.  I have not read Sense and Sensibility since my junior year of high school, but upon looking back and reviewing the novel, I noticed numerous powerful parallels.  For example, both novels focus on the lives of two sisters, as well as how the sisters interact with one another and influence each other.  It is easy to see the reflection of Austen’s level-headed, responsible Elinor Dashwood in Emily, as one sees the reflection of the loftier, younger Marianne Dashwood in Jessamine. 

The sisters’ romantic journeys also parallel those of the Dashwood sisters.  In Sense and Sensibility, the practical Elinor falls head-over-heels in love with the charming Edward Ferrars; therefore, she is shattered when she believes that he is engaged to another woman.  While Elinor’s devastation turns out to be the result of a misunderstanding, and she ends up marrying Edward, her initial upset calls to mind Emily’s disillusionment when she realizes that the Jonathan, her charismatic lover, stole Veritech’s idea for electronic fingerprinting.  The love lives of Marianne Dashwood and Jessamine are also similar in several ways. Marianne becomes enchanted by the dashing and idealized Willoughby, only to have her heart broken when she realizes that he does not share her deep affection.  Likewise, for a large portion of The Cookbook Collector, Jessamine is enamored of Leon, a powerful and bewitching man who embodies her dedication to Save the Trees.  However, just as Marianne did with Willoughby, Jessamine is forced to come to terms with the fact that Leon is not the man she made him out to be.  Additionally, Jessamine ends up happily married to George, an older, wiser man who had loved her long before she fell in love with him.  Similarly, at the end of Sense and Sensibility, Marianne marries Colonel Brandon, an older, soft-spoken man who had loved her since the beginning of the book. 

While there are many significant differences between The Cookbook Collector and Sense and Sensibility, such as Goodman’s focus on religion and Austen’s focus on societal norms, the more I reflected on the novels, the more similarities I noticed between them.