Review and Personal Insights on Jane Austen’s Book 'Sense and Sensibility'
We all know someone whose heart rules the head, thought, judgement, logic and rationality. We also all know someone whose reason rules emotions, heart and feelings, instead. In this case, people have told my sister that she is the brains, studying too hard and constantly overthinks things and lacks a sense of empathy, whereas I am the softie, often too emotional and rash in making decisions. Never both. Sense and Sensibility, Sea Monsters and From Prada to Nada all similarly mock its obsession with labelling individuals, demonstrating the parallel between the Regency’s and contemporary society’s culture and value through textual analysis. However, I have chosen to focus on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility as it challenges the notion that an individual is linear and locked into one image, one word, one description and therefore is unable to grow as a person.
Sense and Sensibility defies the stereotypical, Hollywood depiction of a strong women, as phrased by Rachel McCoy’s ‘Strong Female Characters: Jane Austen’s VS The Mashups’ to only be one who is physically strong and violent. Austen and McCoy blur the lines of what it means to be a strong woman and comments that it is rather the ability to grow as a person that essentially makes someone strong. Jane Austen sets a precursor on empowering women, allowing women to be their best selves. Sense and Sensibility explores strong female characters to convey how femininity, portrayed through the notion of sense and sensibility are not related or equal to weakness. Sense and Sensibility was written during Regal England where women were emotionally and socially vulnerable. Austen comments on the lack of range of female temperament reflected in the patriarchal society, ranging only from two groups: those with excessive sensibility and those with too much sense. Women’s fragile positions allow them to become subject to be the extremist end of the spectrum, too emotional or too heartless.
Sense and Sensibility focuses on the tale of two sisters, Marianne and Elinor Dashwood. Marianne is introduced to readers as a “shallow, unfortunately idealistic and self-centred, yet likeable character”. Marianne, like me is emotional and hence speaks spontaneously, almost without thought. This is demonstrated in the lack of clauses in the structure of Marianne’s speech. She often speaks with long, convoluted sentences that ramble on and on, and usually consists of exclamatory language such as in “It is too ridiculous!” to portray her outraged nature. Whereas, on the other hand, Elinor is presented to be someone who is “rational and controlled by continually assisting and guiding her family despite her emotional state.” The cautionary tone Elinor adopts throughout the novel such as in “I am afraid” showcases the stark contrast between Elinor and Marianne. Austen purposefully establishes Marianne and Elinor to be devoid of rationality and emotions, respectively to comment on the absurdity of the lack of complexity women are portrayed to display in Regal England. Even Elinor’s approach to love is linear. “I would not have you suffer on my account; for I assure you I no longer suffer materially myself” ironically demonstrates how Elinor uses rationality and logic to reason her way out of her sorrows of heartbreak.
Similarly, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters purposefully exaggerates Marianne and Elinor’s speech to further execute Austen’s meaning. As mentioned, the original quote “It is too ridiculous” is replaced to “In addition, he has clothes-pin his tentacle to his ears in order to eat; it is perfectly nauseating. When is a man to be safe from such wit, if age and infirmity and the change of him strangling his accuser with his rage-stiffened face-appendages, will not protect him”? The ridiculous tone set throughout the novel allows, in this case for Marianne’s argument to come across as even more extreme. This effectively makes the scene more awkward, which parallels the notion that an individual cannot be just one extreme version of a spectrum. In addition, Elinor’s dramatized emotional departure is also explored, however, once again it is out of place and sounds awkward. The use of truncated sentences in “Yes” confirms the absurdity of the extreme lack of emotion.
Ultimately, in both texts, Marianne’s ability to apply logic to her emotion identities her type of growth as a character, whereas, Elinor’s struggle to set aside her own desires in order to work toward the good of those around her without losing her own feelings and acknowledging of her own emotions and their power is what gives her strength.
When the reader liberates Elinor and Marianne from the dichotomous roles to which they have been constrained, this shared manifestation of Sense and Sensibility becomes evident across two contexts. While the stark differences between two sisters may have been continually been brought to the attention of readers, near the end of the book it is evident that Marianne and Elinor are not so dissimilar as might initially be expected. Similarly, despite my sister and my differences we share a balance of each other’s qualities and grow to be our best selves. Consequently, as a result of undertaking this independent research task, I have been able to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between texts, culture and value to explore the same idea. I have also been able to relate personally to the two texts and build a relationship between a text of the 19th century into the 21st century and how it still remains relevant.
