At its core, Jane Austen’s first novel ‘Sense and Sensibility’ is a tale of two sisters, so much so that it was almost named ‘Elinor and Marianne’. (Let’s just forget Margaret, but who cares about her, nobody seems to remember she exists half the time.) Their relationship is so central to the story, but while reading, highlighter in hand, I didn’t find myself focused on their relationship, I was marking every passage that Elinor seemed to perfectly fit the, now much meme-ified, eldest daughter trope.

Elinor Dashwood, our main protagonist, is a caring, sensible, and self-possessed young woman of nineteen, taking on the responsibilities of her family after her father dies and leaves them in a precarious social position. She, her mother, and her two sisters are forced to move out of their home, to live in a cottage on a much smaller income – romance and drama ensue, it is an Austen after all. It’s clear from the off that Elinor and Marianne are there to be foils for each other, their differences in attitude and mindset, towards love in particular, are highlighted constantly, and every hardship faced by the family reveals contrasting behaviour between the two girls. Marianne is headstrong, passionate and, at times, selfish, (and to me, just plain insufferable!) whereas Elinor is her opposite. Self-restraint, capability and responsibility are the traits she expresses to the outer world in almost every interaction, and coincidentally, these are the traits or symptoms of ‘the eldest daughter syndrome’. Okay, so I am very aware that this is a book published in 1811, and trying to find parallels to a modern-day psychological phenomenon is kind of stupid, but I have yet to find a more accurate depiction in literature, so here we are!

As the eldest of my siblings, I am no stranger to the memes circulating the internet that joke about the idea of ‘eldest daughter syndrome’. They probably make up at least half of the content I share and laugh about with my friend, Caitlin, a fellow eldest girl, also with two younger brothers. While I share these with a definite tongue in cheek attitude (I should just say, that I had a very happy childhood and have a great relationship with my parents, I promise), it’s not difficult to identify with these patterns in behaviour, and I think a certain Miss Dashwood embodies them incredibly.

‘Eldest Daughter Syndrome’ is explained as the gradual, and often unnoticed, series of ‘symptoms’ given to girls who become an anchor, a reliable peace-maker and sometimes another parent figure within their family. In her article ‘The Eldest Daughter Syndrome’ Letters by L describes this in a much more eloquent way.

“she becomes hyper-aware, hyper-responsible, hyper-capable. She doesn’t ask for help because she’s convinced that needing anything makes her a burden. Instead, she folds herself into something digestible, predictable, helpful, good.”

People pleasing, independent, hyper-composed, taking on emotional labour from a parent, difficulty in expressing her true emotions, self-soothing, would rather anything than be a burden… I mean, is this just a description of Elinor, or what?!

Throughout the novel, Elinor is constantly smoothing over the cracks in her family, often to her own detriment. We see this responsibility right at the beginning of the novel, as it falls on Elinor to rein in her mother, who has unrealistic expectations about their housing situation. It is also Elinor, who must small talk with her awful brother and sister-in-law, and later with Mrs Jennings, while Mrs Dashwood and Marianne are able to give into their grief and make themselves indisposed.

One key symptom attributed to the eldest daughter syndrome is people pleasing, and when out in society, it is always Elinor who must make polite conversation and follow social norms. Marianne is excused from this burden and subconsciously relies on her older sister to keep their acquaintances on good terms. “Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion; and upon Elinor, therefore, the whole task of telling lies when politeness required it always fell”. Imagine if they both acted as Marianne does. It would certainly affect their friendships, their standing in society, and potentially, their future prospects.

When Marianne finally sees Willoughby in London for the first time, is snubbed by him, and almost faints with shock distress, (I mean, it’s happened to us all, right?) Elinor tells her – “Pray, pray be composed, and do not betray what you feel to every body present.” Marianne leads with her emotions, always, with no regard at all for what people may think of her. At a time where restraint and emotional suppression was expected, Elinor cautions her and is very aware that it may lead people to gossip about them.

L describes in her article that the eldest daughter becomes “the family’s unofficial second-in-command, often its moral compass, sometimes even its emotional landfill.” Elinor completely fits into this definition, and it would be too long and boring to list every single occasion she exhibits these traits.

A few choice quotes…

• “Eleanor went to her room where she was free to think and be wretched.” – the only time Elinor lets the façade slip, even just in her own thoughts, is when she is alone.

• “Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.” Even when feeling her worst, Elinor is reliable and can be trusted to keep problems to herself.

• “I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself”. Elinor wishes to appear composed and self-disciplined when seeing Edward, who she expects to have now married Lucy Steele, even though her mother and sister are visibly disturbed and are looking to her for guidance.

The first time we see Elinor truly show how she feels, it is in the last twenty pages of the novel.

“Elinor could sit still no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease.”

At the end of the story, she finally expresses her emotions, breaking the cycle and finding freedom to be herself. I think the 1995 film version of this scene hones in on this feeling even more strongly, with Emma Thompson’s Elinor gasping and visibly expressing the full force of her feelings for Edward for all to see.

Reading Elinor as the OG eldest daughter was a fun takeaway for me, and one I wasn’t expecting. Here are a few other thoughts on Sense and Sensibility as a whole…

The conversations are soooo much fun! The chat between Elinor and Lucy Steele, you know the one, is buzzing with energy and underlying meaning and snark. It is so subtly done and so interesting to see the two women scoping each other out, with Elinor able to act so calmly to Lucy’s thinly veiled jealously and offensive comments.

The way Marianne feels about Willoughby bought back some fun memories of teenage angst. Pining after a guy who love bombed you, then ghosted you and gaslights you into believing he never cared about you in the first place – I don’t know any girls who can’t relate to that! We probably didn’t all almost die of a ‘putrid fever’ because of it though..

Elinor is funny. She has such a dry humour that had me laughing out loud. “It is not everyone,’ said Elinor, ‘who has your passion for dead leaves.” “Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”

Sometimes when we think about women, and mothers in novels like Austen’s, it’s easy to think of their obsessions with marriage and making matches for their daughters as frivolous, (I’m thinking about you, Mrs Bennet!) but the first few chapters of Sense and Sensibility show just how pivotal it really would have been to them. Francesca Segal, who wrote the introduction in my copy of the book, says the novel shows an “acute awareness of the impotence and vulnerability of women”. The Dashwood women have no real way of improving their circumstances, other than by marrying well. Marriage is therefore so incredibly important to women at this time, even those who have been very well-off and comfortable in life, like the Dashwoods.

So many of the parents in Austen’s novels are kind of useless aren’t they? The two Bennets, Anne’s father in Persuasion, Emma’s Father too, they are all a bit hopeless in different ways. Mrs Dashwood, although by no means the worst offender, usually relies on Elinor, and doesn’t seem to take on certain responsibilities. She often prefers to treat Marianne as a friend rather than a protector, and has a very romantic mindset herself.

Sense and Sensibility has been the first in my Austen re-read series and I have enjoyed it immensely. Mansfield Park is the next on my list – I’m going chronologically, but I’ve read Pride and Prejudice so many times, I might skip it.

While I always knew I liked Jane Austen’s work, I had forgotten how easy they are to read, and just how funny the characters and dialogue can be! It’s also interesting how a story written over 200 years ago can still be so easy to identify with, even to the extent of comparing it to a modern day set of memes - sorry for all the memes btw, this is certainly not the most literary commentary you could read about Sense and Sensibility. But maybe I don’t need to apologise - perhaps that’s just my ‘eldest daughter syndrome’ showing.

My brother, his girlfriend, my husband and I have a very loosely organised book club. We take it in turns to pick a book and then every month or so we meet up and chat about it. Ground-breaking book club formula, I know. These meet-ups had a more structured focus at one point, but now they are an excurse to see each other, with a takeaway and a few wines, with a brief 10 minutes spent taking the mick out of the decision maker for their book choice. My first pick – ‘Drive your Plow of the Bones of the Dead’, by Olga Tokarczuk, was the first novel to kick off The Book-ish Club and let’s just say it was not popular! (A bit unfair if you ask me). So, with the threat of being kicked out if I chose another ‘stinker’ I settled on ‘Hamnet’ by Maggie O’Farrell.

I decided that an emotional tear-jerker, centred around relationships might make a nice change for my brother and my husband. I doubt it’s a book they would have picked up themselves. But other than knowing it might make us all cry, I came at ‘Hamnet’ with no plot spoilers. I got to dive into the emotional turbulence headlong.

I read it cover-to-cover in about a week and after I had finished it, I felt almost out of breath, I was that eager to eat up the story. Each chapter jumps forwards and backwards in time, eventually lining up with each other as the tragedy slowly unfolds. It felt like running a race, and the finish line was grief. I thought ‘Hamnet’ was a story full of emotion and beautiful depictions of complicated relationships. Having not read or watched ‘Hamlet’ the play before starting ‘Hamnet’ the book, I had no idea whether the stories would be linked at all, and at the beginning, it didn’t bother me.

Here are a few points I plan to bring up at the next Book-ish Club meeting:

• Did you know Agnes was going to be the main character? (Or at least, she was the main character to me.) I fully expected the story to centre around William Shakespeare, but the fact that his name is never even mentioned in the story was a surprise. I appreciated how Maggie O’Farrell always refers to him as ‘the Latin teacher’, ‘the glover’s son’, ‘the husband’, never by name. I have heard that some readers made it to the end of the novel without knowing it is meant to be Shakespeare at all. If you didn’t read the historical note at the beginning of the book, I could totally get that. I liked this unexpected shift of focus onto Agnes and the rest of their family; it makes the grief and tragedy of their loss all the more real.

• The death of Hamnet still hit me, even though we know full well he is going to die. Like any historically based story, you kind of know ‘what’ is going to happen to some extent, and it’s the author’s job to mesmerize you with the ‘how’ and ‘when’. Well, consider me mesmerized. Agnes’s undefinable powers are developed so strongly throughout the novel, that to slowly realise she can’t save her child was a still a shock to me. Her own trust in her abilities is completely lost aswell, and it shakes her personal identity so much that she is unable to regain the power she once had.

• Okay, cried at the funeral scene. I have two children, and it’s just impossible for me to read about this type of grief and not relate it to my own life and imagine too vividly how the characters might be feeling. The relationship between Agnes and Bartholomew is so subtle and lovely and heart-breaking here in particular. I think with many of sibling relationships, lots can be felt, without much needing to be said.

• I want to get back in my garden again. After a long winter, we’ve had a couple of sunny days this week and my dreams of creating an Agnes-inspired herb garden are running riot. I loved the descriptions of the potager garden she creates at the end of the novel.

  

The book prompted me to read ‘Hamlet’ for the first time.

I don’t think I have really read or seen any productions of Shakespeare since A-Level English Lit (which was longer ago than I’d like to admit tbh). However, ‘Hamnet’ sent me down a rabbit hole. I first wanted to find out whether there were any links between the play and the book. While there weren’t any direct similarities for me, (experts in Shakespeare may have a totally different view though!) grief and loss are huge drivers in both the plot of ‘Hanmet’ the book and ‘Hamlet’ the play. In both works, characters’ responses to tragedy are all so varied and play out in so many unexpected ways. Susanna’s anger and resilience is contrasted to Agnes in ‘Hamnet’, who struggles to cope with the practicalities of life without her son, and in ‘Hamlet’, even before he knows his father has been murdered, Hamlet’s grief is noticeably stronger and more all-consuming than his that of his mother, who has already remarried just 2 months later. How do different people cope with losing someone they love? How do they not cope? What does that grief lead them to do? It seems impossible for me that Shakespeare could have written a play like ‘Hamlet’, without drawing upon the feeling of loosing his child.

Since reading ‘Hamlet’, and ‘Hamlet’, it’s sent me down further rabbit holes. I’ve been reading some of Shakespeare’s other work and becoming acquainted with some of the plays I ‘should’ know. As a person who has a passion for reading, and reading classics in particular, I’ve been feeling a bit embarrassed that it took ‘Hamnet’ to prompt me to ‘get into’ Shakespeare as an adult. To be honest, it made me feel dumb. How could I have got so far in life without reading ‘King Lear’ or ‘Hamlet’? I know it sounds ridiculous, but there you go. I felt that I should have been able to read ‘Hamnet’ with a working knowledge of ‘Hamlet’ already in my mind, able to analyse and pick out key details that could relate to the novel and richly link the two works together. Instead, I got to read the novel with no background info – for pure enjoyment.

To carry on diving deeper down a Shakespeare rabbit hole, I have decided to do a bit of casual reading / watching / enjoyment over the next year, focusing on one play each month.

• March – Hamnet

• April – Macbeth (my personal fave)

• May – Romeo and Juliet

• June – Othello

• July – Midsummer Night’s Dream

• August – As You Like It

• September – King Lear

• October - Henry IV (part 1 and 2)

• November – Anthony and Cleopatra

• December – A Winter’s Tale

I’m trying not to consider this a personal curriculum as such, but just a gentle guide to feel a bit more acquainted with Shakespeare and his work.

Although they’ll definitely kick me out the group I pick one of these as my next Book-ish Club suggestion…

Image taken by The Erasmus Darwin Museum

Last weekend I had a rare kind of a day. The kind of day I maybe have once a year that truly feeds my creativity and inspires me in exciting ways. In my current season of life, with two small children who need a lot from me, and a happy and very busy home, there is understandably not a huge amount of space for this kind of creative alone time, or quiet contemplation. And that is completely fine and normal, it’s 100% where I want to be.

However, last weekend, my husband was away visiting friends, my children had a sleepover at their beloved grandparents house, and I had a whole day to myself where I needed to please nobody but me.

After resisting the urge to just catch up with chores, I decided to spend this unexpected day alone doing something fun. By the way, when I tell you what I got up to it’s going to feel like a huge anti-climax…

I stayed in my local town, took a visit to a small museum that no one else wants to come to with me, I went to every antique market, junk shop and charity shop I could find (and believe me – we have quite a few!) I went to the library. I visited every bookshop and agonised for thirty minutes over my purchases, and then left happily empty handed. I took my time choosing the perfect new notebook in the stationery shop and then went home, did not cook dinner and journaled with a glass of wine and watched some Game of Thrones. This might sound like a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon, but not something crazily out of the ordinary, right?

And yes, you are correct, and yet I woke up the next morning feeling so rejuvenated and creatively fed.

• The visit to the museum allowed me to see some artifacts in a collection that related to the reading I am currently doing for a personal research project on Commonplace Books. I saw this as a bit of a Field Trip.

• While I was at the museum, I unexpectedly happened upon some information that helped me better understand the book I’m reading, ‘The Geomagician’. It put some scientific work in the novel into context and sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole of research. (Check out Anna Howard’s fantastic video on curiosity and rabbit holes if you haven’t already.)

• After sorting through a box of old postcards in an antique shop for an absurdly long time, I found five postcards showing some very old black and white views from a tiny Welsh town I used to visit several times a year when I was a child. You wouldn’t believe the joy I felt when finding these!

The whole experience reminded me of days I used to spend by myself in my twenties, when I lived closer to London. I am the kind of person who enjoys my own company more than most. Sometimes I would get the train in for the day and visit a little museum or wander about an art gallery, find a cool magazine in a specialist art shop that said something a bit different to my usual media, and visit all the fabric stores and markets I could stomach. It used to leave me so inspired for new projects and without anyone else to please, (I am known to be a bit of a people pleaser) I could just do exactly what I wanted and take my time to drink it up.

I was nurturing my creative self, and that’s exactly how I felt after last weekend. I picked up my children from their grandparents with a renewed sense of vigour and a spark, after filling my creative cup up to the brim.

Did I just have an ‘Artist Date’?

Those of you who have read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way will remember the Artist Date as a solo trip taken to open yourself up to insight and inspiration. A block of time set aside to do something that builds up a relationship with your artistic self and cultivate creativity. Although I haven’t read the book in many years, when I started journaling about my little weekend excursion, the idea of The Artist Date suddenly popped into my head, and it really helped explain why I found it so valuable.

While whole weekends like this might be few and far between for me at the moment, I know I can carve out more time here and there to spend doing these sorts of things that I find important. To make an effort to not lose that spark of creativity and joy. To get lost down rabbit holes and find unexpected connections between my different creative interests and revel in that joyful serendipity. To squeal in the middle of a tiny unpopulated museum and spend twenty blissful minutes picking the perfect pocket notebook.

It’s a TN passport if you were wondering.

Putting together a reading plan for myself is a tricky task.

One, I have a TBR list as long as my arm, there are so many things I want to read.

Two, I find it difficult to set realistic expectations for myself. It’s not physically possible for me to read a book a day, who knew!?

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Every day I find a new release or a new recommendation to add to the pile, which feels overwhelming in a self-inflicted kind of way. I’ve recently found myself missing the world of academia, so with the aim of reducing my anxiety and as a fun little reading task, I’ve made myself a proper list of fiction books I want to experience before the end of the year.

I’m going to preface this by saying that these may change throughout the next few months. I am also not precious about sticking with a book if the story just doesn’t do it for me.

So here’s what’s on my reading list for the next few months…

I’ve also just been approved to have an advanced reader copy of two upcoming books that I am really excited about…

As you’ll be able to tell, these beauties all fit nicely into a gothic - mystery - thriller- horror genre, although they span very different historical periods and all have something different to offer. Some light and some more serious. A good mix, I think.

The Secret History, by Donna Tart - A dark-academia classic and one that seems perfect for Autumn. I have deliberately tried not to read too many spoilers or reviews for this book, so that all the surprises stay intact.

Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier - I’ve been wanting to read this for years and this autumn/winter I am determined to do so. Again, I have been avoiding the films and any spin-off stories so that I don’t discover the twists before I reach them.

The Housemaid, by Frieda McFadden - I haven’t read any McFadden books yet, but I have a friend who’s a big fan and has probably read everything she’s ever written, so I thought I’d better give one a go. I believe the film ‘The Housemaid’ is coming out soon and I want to be one of those people who can annoyingly say, ‘Well actually, in the book it happened like this…’

Belladonna, by Adalyn Grace - I fancied adding an easy-to-read gothic romance to my list and Belladonna seems to fit the bill.

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly - I’m almost embarrassed to say I’ve never read this book, and what better time to try it than Halloween?

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson – I love horror stories, and this is one of the ultimate classics that has influenced so much other media since it was published in 1959. I can’t wait to be too scared to sleep.

I have been sent two ARCs to read over the next couple of months and these will probably be the books I am prioritising first.

Ophelia, by SM Namkoong – Sapphic-horror, vampires, 1920’s. Sounds good to me! It has been described as Great Gatsby, meets Carmilla and I am sold with high hopes.

The Geomagician, by Jennifer Mandula – Okay, so with a cover as beautiful as this one, I was always going to sign up to request a copy, but when I read that it combines Victoriana, fantasy and dinosaurs it was a yes from me.

I’ve only just noticed that all these books on my list are all written by women which is kind of nice.

Here’s what I’d also love to add to my list if I had infinite reading time…

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, Hungerstone by Kat Dunn, and The Eyes are the Best Part by Monika Kim.

I also want to re-read Little Women over Christmas, because of course.

(How pretty is my copy?)

I’m starting with the ARCs – beginning with The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula, but I’ll probably also begin a physical book too, because I’m not a huge fan of only reading off a device and I think I’ll want to break things up a bit. I’ll start with Rebecca, as I still need to buy my copies of Frankenstein and The Haunting of Hill House.

I have started being a bit more visible over on goodreads recently if you’d like to follow along over there. But I’m hoping to do a round-up post here on Substack towards the end of the year. We’ll see how over-optimistic I’ve been!

I’d love to hear what’s on your TBR list for the next few months.

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(A shot of a random weekly layout in my Memory Keeper)

Why do I do this, you might ask?

Well, the simple answer is, because I want to remember more about my life - even the parts that often feel too mundane to bother recording. I want to remember more about the people around me and what they have said and done. Basically, I want to remember the small, day-to-day things that my life is built upon and without these little collected memories, the days and weeks blend together until I can no longer remember what year my son lost his first tooth, or where my friend and I had that hilarious night where we danced to Craig David until 2am.

(Clutching some of my prize possessions)

If I write those three little sentences every evening, capturing a few highlights of the day I am trapping that precious moment in amber and then I’m free to view it at my leisure, examine it and confirm it’s still there, intact. ‘Went to the Deli with Mum for lunch – hot chocolate’ brings back the day instantly – I remember the conversation we had, the things I was worried about that afternoon and the pouring rain on the way back to the car. Without these signposts my memory becomes foggy, slushy, stumbling, like feeling for your bedside lamp in the dark. I can almost hear the effort it’s taking to move those cogs in my brain. This is not a fun feeling.

Where did this all begin?

Like most things in my life, there was a ‘before babies’ and an ‘after babies’. I underestimated the effect that tiredness can have on every aspect of life, but lack of sleep and a difficult labour definitely took it’s toll. To say I remember little about the first year of my son’s life, seems very serious when I actually write it down in black and white. It’s not that the memories have gone per se, but it’s hard to recall the important dates and moments, and with no place to refer back to, I find it hard to remember what we bought him for his first Christmas, whether he cried on his first day of nursery, or what annoying toy he was obsessed with. And it’s not just recalling my children’s milestones; I want to remember moments of my own; sweaters I have finished knitting, books I’ve loved reading and meet-ups with my friends. I want to catch them all.

That’s the ‘why’.

When a close friend had her baby last year, one of the gifts I gave her was a beautiful journal from ‘Choosing Keeping’. They do some astonishingly glorious notebooks and she has been using it to record her own memories of her early time with her son.

(Sometimes my archives look more like this. These little planner inserts came from an artist, . She doesn’t make these anymore, but creates lots of brilliant content over on YouTube.)

The Stationery

I’d be lying if I said the hardware didn’t come into the equation. I am a stationery girlie, a planner princess. I love a fountain pen and a journal, and I find immense pleasure in putting them to use in a way that’s so important to me.

Right now, I am using a Travellers Notebook system in the regular, or personal size, with a Free Diary and Weekly + Memo layout (019 if anyone needs to know). It’s a small space to fill, but that suits me perfectly – it’s just enough to cover the most meaningful events of the day. If I want to write anymore, and most days I do, I have a personal journal, also in my Travelers Notebook cover, where I can scribble away to my heart’s content. My journal is for private thoughts and reflections, and I have a little everyday planner for practical organisation, but the Memory Keeper is different. Anyone is welcome to take a look, and I care about the aesthetics more than I do in any other notebook. Sometimes I even get out some stickers or a few different coloured pens. Crazy. Sometimes a whole spread will be in black ink. Sometimes I’ll include a tiny photo too and this is very pleasing to me. It is my sort of fun.

So not only is this practical, and useful, it’s a creative and fun way to spend my time, and something I just honestly enjoy doing. I get that this isn’t for everyone, but for a small proportion of the population who are wired like me, this is the exact right amount of organised, creative fun that does not take a huge amount of time to do. I maybe spend less than 10 minutes a day on this little activity.

I’m not sure if I am going to stay in a Travellers Notebook setup for memory keeping next year (the planner community is already looking ahead to 2026 now, IYKYK), but I know I will be sticking with the practice. It’s become as second nature as taking off my makeup at the end of the day and just as important to me.

Romanticising the everyday

Every time I scroll on Instagram or head to YouTube for my daily fix of Game of Thrones theory, (yes that’s my cup of tea) I hear a lot of influencers telling me to romanticise my life. My current chapter involves a lot of chasing after small children who wake up at ungodly hours, but one thing that does help make the chaos feel a little more romantic is recording those small and lovely moments and being able to look back and remember them.

My Memory Keeper: Three sentences to keep my memories safe.