Romanticism Critiqued in Sense and Sensibility
Common Sense Meets Melodrama – and Eventually Wins
Jul 16, 2009
Like Jane Austen’s heroine Anne Eliot in Persuasion, the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, are faced with a crisis at the beginning of Sense and Sensibility. Like Anne, they are being put out of their home and sent into an uncertain future framed by a harsh world.
However, unlike Anne, the sisters have one another, however uncertain their future may be. The eldest sister, Elinor, is full of common sense and does what she has to do to survive. However, she is not of a cold, reserved disposition. She holds in her feelings but still maintains warmth.
Marianne, on the other hand, is all feeling and sensibility, believing this to be the way to conduct her life. She brings herself and others misery and melodrama by the handful, until she faces death through a dreadful illness and, through the careful nursing of her sister, comes to her senses – or rather, her common sense.
The Beginning of the Crisis
- Elinor and Marianne’s father had a son by a previous marriage, and when their father died, the son inherited the family estate, Norland, and his wife wasted no time in “installing herself mistress.”
- “So acutely did Mrs. Dashwood feel this ungracious behaviour, and so earnestly did she despise her daughter-in-law for it, that, on the arrival of the latter, she would have quitted the house for ever…”
- Elinor advised her mother not to create a breach with their half-brother. “Elinor, this eldest daughter whose advice was so effectual, possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother…”
- “Marianne’s (the middle sister, with one younger) abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor’s. She was sensible and clever; but eager in every thing; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting; she was every thing but prudent. The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great.”
So the stage is set for a great drama to begin when Edward Ferrars, the brother-in-law of Elinor and Marianne arrives, and he and Elinor form a fast connection. But Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters cannot stay at Norland, their ancestral home, and are invited to live in a small but respectable home in Devonshire by a relative of Mrs. Dashwood.
The Middle of the Crisis
- Elinor’s feelings grow for Edward Ferrars, but she is crushed when he reveals a previous, unwise attachment, made several years before. Elinor is stalwart in the face of all she has endured:
- “Excuse me,” said she (to her sister Marianne), “and be assured that I meant to offense to you, by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my own feelings. Believe them to be stronger than I have declared…”
- And therein lies the rub. For whilst Elinor has strong feelings, yet holds them in reserve, Marianne lets every passion run wild. She falls in love with a young man named Mr. Willoughby who rescues her when she sprains her ankle, and he is more than happy to toy with her affections for awhile, until he is called to do the duty of his family and make a match with a young woman with an inheritance.
- Meanwhile, Colonel Brandon regards Marianne with deep respect and a growing affection. She, however, overlooks him for the more dashing character of Mr. Willoughby: (Willoughby and Marianne) speedily discovered that their enjoyment of dancing and music was mutual…Their taste was strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each – or if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed.”
- Marianne works herself into a fit when it is known that Willoughby is lost to her, wears herself down, and becomes deathly ill. Patiently nursed by Elinor, both sisters fight for their lives through the long, dark night, though in different ways: “It was a night of almost equal suffering to both. Hour after hour passed away in sleepless pain and delirium on Marianne’s side and in the most cruel anxiety on Elinor’s…”
The Happy Conclusions
- Marianne recovers from her fever, and agrees to marry the ever-loyal, love-struck Colonel Brandon. She comes to her senses; that is, she lets go of some of her wearisome, overdone feelings and accepts that reserve also has its merits. She says to her sister Elinor: “I compare (my behaviour) with what it ought to have been; I compare it with yours.”
- Edward Ferrars’ previous attachment, Lucy, breaks off their engagement and Colonel Brandon gives him the vicar’s living on his estate, so that he and Elinor can finally be together.
- Edward Ferrars overcomes his awkward nature to ask Elinor to marry him. She agrees, and the joy of the family is great: “But Elinor – How are her feelings to be described? From the moment of learning that Lucy was married to another, that Edward was free, to the moment of his justifying the hopes which had so instantly followed, she was everything by turns but tranquil.”
In the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, Edward Ballaster argues that Jane Austen was making a critique on the movement of Romanticism, with the transposition of Marianne’s high feelings and Elinor’s controlled elegance. This does make sense. Jane Austen saw the beginnings of the Romantic Movement, and she felt the need to comment on the violence of feelings that was sometimes displayed in these works.
Jane Austen grew up reading the gothic works of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis, with their hypnotic, dreamy descriptions of dark forests and forbidding tunnels and mysterious characters, and the openness, the full-throttle feelings of Romanticism, was quite different from that to which she was accustomed.
Source: Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen, Penguin Classics, 1811, 1995.
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