Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility is an epistolary novel written by one of the most significant novelists of the Romantic period, Jane Austen. A third person omniscient narrator tells the story in Sense and Sensibility, using free indirect discourse/speech (free indirect speech technique), which gives readers access to various characters' thoughts, but the central perspectives is Elinor's. Austen privileges Elinor by making the narrative of the novel correspond to her consciousness. In other words, Austen presents much of the action of the novel form Elinor's perspectives, sharing Elinor's thoughts and feelings with the reader. The title alludes to two somewhat opposing ways of governing one's actions and responding to one's world through the head i.e. sense and logic and through the heart i.e. sensibility, emotion, and so on..

The title is not Sense versus Sensibility. The conjunction 'and' suggests that a balance between the two approaches; one hard-headed and the other starry-eyed. In this way, the novel 'Sense and Sensibility' takes a gentle but critical look at the novel of sentiment. The novel takes the very familiar plotline of the parallel, but contrasted, lives and temperaments of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, who at first glance, seem to embody the opposing qualities of reason and emotionalism or sensibility. Both sisters demonstrate mixed and contrary qualities in their behavior. The two leading men in the novel, the dashingly handsome John Willoughby and the shy and dutiful Edward Ferrars, who court Marianne and Elinor respectively, are also similarly contrasted in terms of their behavior.

Austin lived during the Georgian period era (1714-1830). Her life bridged the 18^th century emphasis on logic and reason and the 19^th century rise of Romanticism, a style which emphasized emotion, the experience of the moment, passion and beauty. The title 'Sense and Sensibility' reflects this dichotomy between reason and emotion. A rational, restrained approach to life makes the character Elinor the model of sense. In contrast Marianne is the novel's romantic, guided by sensibility, i.e. strong emotional or aesthetic responses experienced in the moment. [Note:- while today 'Sensibility' is often understood as related to the modern meaning of 'sensible' (prudent), in fact the historical meaning of 'sensible' is 'aware' or 'able to feel']

Sense and Sensibility was projected as an epistolary novel entitled 'Elinor and Marianne' in 1795, at the height of the debates about sensibility and relationship to politically radical ideas. The 1790s was the period when the Jacobin novel of ideas was current and, from 1793 onwards, the beginnings of the anti-Jacobin backlash in Britain. Austin worked on the novel but didn't publish until 1811 as Sense and Sensibility, when debates about sensibility had come rather dated. In the 1970s the topic was certainly in the public consciousness. Austen seems to be influenced by the works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft's 'Vindication of the Rights of woman' (1792) had caused a political sensation because of its author's attitude to the status of women. Moreover, Wollstonecraft's own life was itself sensational. Wollstonecraft's novel 'Maria, or the Wrongs of Women' (1798) added to her notoriety by courageously discusses the issue of female desire. Austin's Marianne Dashwood shares many of Wollstonecraft's ideas and attitudes. It is very tempting to conclude that elements of her character are, to some extent, based on that of Wollstonecraft.

The novel is a satire on the fashionable sensibility of the 1790s, as well as warning about the dangers it could pose if taken too far. As we have seen, by the 1790s sensibility had become radicalized and identified with the democratic politics of the French Revolution and those who supported it in Britain. By looking at certain key themes in the novel we can better see how it relates to the context in which it was produced.

The Romantic period has been characterized as one where nature is given a new sense importance and becomes a key subject for art. Austen also is a writer who deals with nature. But we can see some differences in her work. The managed English country estate or park excites her more than the sublime natural environment of the Lakes or the Swill Alps does. Moreover, Austen is also interested not in the details of nature but the person's response to it. Marianne is identified with an emotional and sentimental view of the natural world, which was one of the hallmarks of sensibility. A preference for the natural over the artificial also indicates a political preference for primitive and un-spoilt humanity, which the philosopher Rousseau had argued is tarnished by society. This issue is very much a part of the debate about the French Revolution.

Marianne is very much the heroin of sensibility. She is individualistic, emotional, impatient, rude, indiscrete, passionate, indulgent and enthusiastic. Like her lover Willoughby, she prefers the natural and unadorned to formal and restrained. When leaving the family home of Norland, Marianne expresses her feeling in an open and excessive way. Later in the novel, after Willoughby' desertion of her, Marianne expresses her melancholy in remembering the autumn at Norland, reminding Elinor of her emotional delight at the falling of autumn leaves there. Marianne argues the landscape must be experienced personally and that one should respond to intuitively, arguing that the 'admiration of landscape' has become formulaic and a matter of fashion and jargon. 

Edward's notion of a 'fine country' is based on the use to which that country is put; he prefers of a well-managed and peopled landscape, with farms and labourers, rejecting picturesque notion of beauty derived from ruins and poverty. His vision here is a social one rather than the individual and emotional response called for by Marianne, for whom the picturesque itself has become formulaic.

If Marianne presents the dangers to which an attachment to the principles of sensibility may lead, Elinor rather demonstrates the importance of restraint and reflection. Elinor is aware of the dangers to excessive emotion and the improprieties it might lead to in a society where women who transgress norms of behavior, however hypocritical, can be ruined. Here is the central role, not least because much of the reader's understanding of the events of the novels comes mediated by her perspective. Elinor, in contrast to Marianne, possesses 'a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment'.  She is not emotionless but is possessed of an 'excellent heart', and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them. Elinor values the order and support of social conventions and knows the importance of abiding by them. €unlike her sister, she understands the necessity of 'telling lies when politeness required it'. For much of the novel Elinor experiences the same inner turmoil as Marianne because the man she loves is bound to another, a deceitful and devious woman, Lucy Steele, who takes delight in psychologically torturing her with details of their engagement in the full knowledge of her feelings. The contrast between her silent suffering and Marianne's indulgence is marked. The strength of Elinor's emotions is shown in the key scene in which she breaks sown and confesses her secret grief to her sister: 'her narration was clear and simple; and though it could not be given without emotion, it was not accompanied by violent agitation, nor impetus grief. –

The novel closes with the double marriage of Elinor and Edward and Marianne and Colonel Brandon, the man she had previously rejected as too old and too dull for her. Many readers find the romance between Marianne and Brandon hard to swallow, and humiliation of Marianne a little hard to take: 'She was born to discover the falsehood or her own opinions, and to counter act, by her conduct, her most favorite maxims'.