Sense and sensibility Flashcards
Serious novel: social satire against patriarchal society, marriage and family, excessive sensibility (6)
- System of property that favours the first son: concentration of land-ownership
- Dismal portrait of married life and family connections
- Satirical view of class – idle gentlemen, who hunt or play billiards, women who sit and humour children
- Habitus – defined by vulgarity and lack of taste
- Shortcomings of women’s education
- Excess of sensibility
mixed nature:
parody + serious novel
Parody of the sentimental novel: literary satire
• ‘Elinor and Marianne’ – such as ‘Love and Freindship’
Focalization:
Elinor is not sure if Edward loves her – we don’t know either
Change from epistolary novel to
third person narrator
Secrets and concealments create a distance between
the private and the public self
Secrets can be a burden
- Elinor suffers from being bound to conceal information she has about Lucy or Brandon
Marianne lets everyone assume
she is engaged to Willoughby in secret
Colonel Brandon, Lucy Steele, Edward Ferrars, and Willoughby have secrets –
only Elinor knows them gradually
Elinor is asked to keep secrets by
Brandon and Lucy Steele
Secret engagements, concealments, silences
– place in the plot
Central themes:
secrets and sickness
Sense and Sensibility – a novel about the importance of
‘knowing’ or ‘not knowing’
Fever as result from
depression, melancholia, sensibility which takes over sense, over reason
Illness as the result of
extreme reaction to events
Elinor and Marianne’s contrasting views
Elinor makes fun of Marianne’s excessive sensibility
CULT OF SENSIBILITY: VOL. 1
Parody of the cult of sensibility - Marianne (4)
- Her taste for books, music – her abhorrence of clichés in language and behaviour
- Reading poetry or playing the piano can only be performed with feeling and sensibility
- She despises Edmund for reading poetry ‘with impenetrable calmness’ and ‘dreadful indifference’ (SS, I, 3)
- She thinks feelings and emotions should not be concealed or disguised – one should always tell the truth
CULT OF SENSIBILITY: VOL. 2
- For Elinor, sensibility has to be controlled by sense and self-command because it is dangerous
- Feelings and emotions ought to be concealed in company if they inflict pain to others
- Sensibility as moral notion, as feeling for others – Elinor reminds Marianne how her actions or words hurt others
- Marianne’s visit to Allenham Court uninvited – lack of concern for Mrs Smith
- Sensibility invoked to disregard decorum
CULT OF SENSIBILITY: VOL. 3
- Marianne’s illness – sensibility taken seriously
- Elinor’s sense gives way to feelings and emotion when Edward proposes
- Neither sense nor sensibility are finally vindicated
Marianne doesn’t believe
second attachments to be possible, to be sincere and true, to lead to happiness
(CONVERSATION BETWEEN BRANDON AND ELINOR)
Sense and Sensibility suggests that second attachments are
possible
Elinor seems to have no problem with
second attachments
Irony - Marianne who didn’t believe in second attachments -
ends up in a marriage in which both partners have had a prior attachment
Marianne herself is the issue of a
‘second attachment’
her mother is the second wife of her father
The theme of second attachments -
‘unromantic’ resolution
Marianne’s thoughts and perception of the world:
- shaped by the language of the sentimental novel and the cult of sensibility
- now transformed by experience (SELF-KNOWLEDGE)
The differences between several couples:
- Mr. and Mrs John Dashwood – the brother of Elinor and Marianne and Edward’s sister get on well because both are selfish, egotistical, and tightfisted. Mrs John Dashwood persuades her husband not to part with any money for the sake of his three half-sisters
- Lucy Steele + Robert Ferrars and Fanny + John Dashwood (Robert’s sister and her husband)
- Contrast with Elinor + Edward and Marianne + Colonel Brandon: no ‘coolness’ between their husbands
- Lucy doesn’t enjoy sisterly affection: between Fanny and her there is ‘jealousies and ill-will’
- her conjugal peace is under the threat of ‘frequent domestic disagreements
Women in the gentry /pseudogentry -
educated at home with governess or at a school (seminary) for young ladies
WOMEN’S ACTIVITIES/EDUCATION
Marianne (plays the piano) Elinor (sketches and paints) Lucy Steele (makes filigree to entertain Lady Middleton’s child)
Elopement =
a crucial theme and plot element in Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice
The Two Elizas:
- Colonel Brandon’s narration about his first attachment – Eliza, forced to married Brandon’s brother
- Colonel Brandon’s sudden leave and cancellation of outing – Eliza’s daughter found in dire circumstances
• Function of these narratives - to show what could have been Marianne’s fate in the hands of Willoughby
Money and family:
the Ferrars, who are closely related to the Dashwood – the least generous
Money and friends:
Sir John Middleton, Mrs Jennings and Colonel Brandon – most generous
A theme which runs through all of Austen’s novels:
The management of the estate
The most hideous ‘improvers’ are
Mr and Mrs John Dashwood
Edward teases Marianne over
books and her passion for the picturesque – if she had a fortune, she would spend it on music and books of poetry.
