In Sense and Sensibility,
which makes use of shematized heroines drawn from the dictatic tradition
of women's writing, it proved difficult to bring the necessary irony to
bear upon their contrasted roles without 'deserting' the caracters who
play them. Published in 1811, its origins go back to as early as 1795,
and its similarities to Maria Edgeworth's Letters of Julia and Caroline
(1795) and Jane West's A Gossip's Story (1796) are plain. That is title
and its treatment of reason and feeling are directly relevant to contemporary
feminist debate is, perhaps, now generaly accepted.
Sense and Sensibility
opens with the ejection from the family estate of the widowed Mrs Dashwood
and her daughters, and it includes some brilliantly satirical passages
in wich the meaness of their half-brother, who has inherited virtually
everithing, is displayed. Urged on by his totally unscrupulous wife, he
reinterprets the promise given to his dying father to make proper provision
for them, Whittling down his original notion of giving them three thousand
pounds to 'some little present of furniture' when they find, as best they
may, somewhere else to live. Here's Austen's scenario implies a criticism
of that adopted by Richardson in Sir Charles Grandison. The Dashwood sisters
cannot depend upon their brother to secure their rightful place in
the world, and it is in a society where sensitive, intelligent and non-exploitive
women are shown as peculiary vulnerable that Austen sets her story of devoted,
and schematically contrasted, sisters.
Elinor Dashwood,
at nineteen, is the representative of female rationality and prudence.
Marianne, at seventeen, carries, in her response to life and her way of
seeing the world, an essentially poetic sensibility. Elinor's attitudes
and conduct are shown to be more worthly of respect than marianne's, and
in this the novel conforms to the conservative, didactic models on which
is based - but there are important modifications. Both Austen heroines
are allowed enough complexity to prevent them from becoming simple types
of either Sense or Sensibility. In the first chapter we are told of Elinor's
'excellent heart' and 'affectionate disposition', while it is Marianne
who is said to be 'sensible and clever'. Besides being contrasted with
one another, Elinor and Marianne are contrasted with the common run of
less inteligent, less sensitive and less moraly scrupulous characters who
make up the society in which they live; the half-brother who inherits the
Dashwood estate, Sir John Middleton the benevolent but brainless baronet,
and their defective wives - the mean and narrow-minded Mrs John Dashwood,
the silly Lady Middleton. Beside them the superior qualities of both the
Miss Dashwoods stand out, and are further accentuated by the lack of heroes
quite equal to them. Elinor's Man of Sense, Edward Ferrars, cuts rather
a foolish figure for thegreather part of the novel, and Colonel Brandon,
the respectable Man of Feeling whom Marianne eventually accepts, remains
a sightly comic figure, his flannel waist-coat being quite as memorable
as his delicate feelings.
the schematic
design of Sense and Sensibility requires the exposure of Willoughby, the
anti-hero, as corrupt, but it is between Elinor, Marianne and Willoughby
that deeper levels of feeling and more complex moral responses are suggested.
This is well illustrated in chapter 7 of the third volume, where the repentant
Willoughby explains himself to Elinor. the novel closes in a curiously
cool way, whith as much emphasis on the continuance of relationship between
two sisters as on their marriages. Austen has let us hear silences that
speak beyond the 'argument', and beyond the formal comic conclusion of
this novel.*
*Angela Leighton, 'Sense and silences:
Reading Jane Austen Again', in Jane Austen: New Perspectives, p 140.
© Published by: The Penguin History of Literature.
The Romantic Period. Edited by David B.Pirie. Volume V
More articles: [Next] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Página creada
y actualizada por grupo "mmm".
Para cualquier cambio,
sugerencia,etc. contactar con: fores@uv.es
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente
Forés López
Universitat de València
Press
Creada: 22/02/2000
Última Actualización: 11/03/2000