Sense and sensibility
Sense and sensibilityEnglish author Jane Austen wrote satirical romances set within the confines of upper-middle-class English society. Her books are known for their sharp attention to the details of everyday life, and her skillful treatments of character and situation has marked Austen as an astute observer of human nature. This is highly evident in her treatment of the complex relationship between sense and sensibility in her novel of the same name. Jane Austen’s Sense and sensibility contrasts two sisters: Marianne, who, with her doctrines of love at first sight and enthusiastic emotions openly expressed, represents “sensibility”, and Elinor, who has much more "sense", but is still not immune from disappointments.
Sense and Sensibility addresses the romantic problems of these two sisters with contrary worldviews. The elder sister, Elinor, the embodiment of "sense," loves a man engaged to an ignorant, manipulative woman; the younger, Marianne, who embodies "sensibility," is infatuated with a man who suddenly without explanation ends their relationship.
Very much a Romantic, sixteen-year-old Marianne is governed by her feelings, not by reason, unlike Elinor. Passionate in her opinions and certain of their morality, Marianne lacks prudence and relies on instinct, typical values of the Romantic Movement. Elinor’s sense, on the other hand, reflects “the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which had advocated a commitment to reason and considered and other source of conviction irrational.”
Marianne, says of love, "To love is to burn.", and Elinor says: "I do not attempt to deny I think very highly of him." However both characters manage to find love in a culture that limits communication to talk of the weather and the roads. A culture in which people are taught to be impersonal.
Late in the novel, a reflective Marianne tells Elinor that she had compared her behaviour "with what it ought to have been; I compare it with yours," and that she found her own behaviour lacking: "I saw ... nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself and want of kindness to others. I saw that my own feelings had prepared my sufferings." Acknowledging her errors, Marianne decides to imitate Elinor's reserve and self-discipline. Whereas Marianne is driven by sensibility, Elinor is governed by " sense", by reasoned perception and independence, evident in her tact and attentiveness. Her response to Robert Ferrar's idiotic jabber reflects her self-control: "Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition."
“Elinor is an admirable...
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