by Bailey Shoemaker Richards

Created on: September 18, 2009   Last Updated: September 19, 2009

In the tradition of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, another literary mash-up featuring one of Jane Austen's books has been released. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters has hit the shelves, and readers are raving. Although the newest altered Austen was written by a different author, it's clear that the same spirit and humor went into the writing.

While many people claim that this bastardization of the classics is an insult to true literature and that the quality of the writing is diluted immeasurably by the changes made, the evidence for these claims is sorely lacking. The authors of both Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as well as Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters have made a clear and successful effort to not only maintain the same linguistic style Austen employed, but also to ensure that her social and romantic messages remained intact throughout the story.

Plot changes and differences in writing style combine to make a familiar story seem at times wildly different, but the heart of the matter has only been looked at through another set of eyes -and those eyes just happen to see some monsters. The classic story of sisters Marianne and Elinor Dashwood has been turned on its head; the girls have moved to an island beset by seamonsters. Marianne is being courted by an altered Colonel Brandon -in this vesion of the story, he is rather monstrous looking.

Throughout the story, Austen's sharp, witty social commentary mixes and mingles with the horror and adventure of seamonsters. The adventures the Dashwood girls undergo are much more dangerous than in Austen's original tale, but the essential meaning, emotion and fun of her story are all still very present in the writing.

The quality of Sense and Sensibility is not lost through the addition of sea monsters; one of the basic attractions to fantasy and science fiction is that the mettle of human characters is pitted against the horror of something very non-human; by rewriting Austen, Ben H. Winters has given the Dashwood girls an even greater opportunity to showcase their talents and opens the books to an even wider audience.

The new trend of literary mash-ups has not stopped, either; vampires are showing up in Pride and Prejudice now, and zombies have been added to H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. While some literary proponents are always going to be concerned by this dilution of the classics to incorporate pop culture trends, those who have an open mind are quite able to enjoy the absurdity of seeing favorite characters placed into strange new situations.

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