The Context of Sense and Sensibility



THE CONTEXT OF SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

THE PURPOSE of this essay is to consider Sense and
Sensibility
in the light of Jane Austen’s beginnings in
prose fiction, with due regard to current tendencies in the
feminine novel and to her own early writings. Since we do
not have the early epistolary
Elinor and Marianne, such a
study must be incomplete, for we can never know the exact
nature, or even the exact date, of the revision that made
Elinor and Marianne into Sense and Sensibility. Something
may be learned of Jane Austen’s early period, however, by
putting
Sense and Sensibility as we know it into the literary
setting of the 1790’s.

The title Sense and Sensibility immediately suggests a
stock theme so common that the ordinary patron of a circu-
lating library could easily have inferred the plot. The point
can be illustrated by a brief dialogue in a novel of which
Jane Austen disapproved:

“And yet,” said Clarentine, “without a little romance in
youth, what is life good for?”

“Every rational enjoyment that sober common sense ought
to render valuable to us.”

“But, my dearest Mrs. Denbigh, do you expect me to
have already acquired a sufficient portion of this
sober
common sense
to think so?”

“No, I know you have not; but a little longer residence
with me, I flatter myself, will give it you. There are certain
words with which
sentimentalists by profession nourish their
folly, that I have totally effaced from my vocabulary, and
never permit even my friends to use if I can help it.
Delicacy
(such false delicacy as they mean) is one; refinement is
another;
sensibility is a third; .susceptibility (the most odious
of all) is a fourth;
enthusiasm is a fifth; and lastly comes that
ideal bugbear, constancy, a term of which no woman
ought to know the meaning till after she is either married,
or positively engaged.”1

65



More intriguing information

1. Environmental Regulation, Market Power and Price Discrimination in the Agricultural Chemical Industry
2. A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING SOCIAL WELFARE EFFECTS OF NEW AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY
3. Factores de alteração da composição da Despesa Pública: o caso norte-americano
4. Insecure Property Rights and Growth: The Roles of Appropriation Costs, Wealth Effects, and Heterogeneity
5. Improvements in medical care and technology and reductions in traffic-related fatalities in Great Britain
6. Private tutoring at transition points in the English education system: its nature, extent and purpose
7. Financial Market Volatility and Primary Placements
8. The name is absent
9. Word Sense Disambiguation by Web Mining for Word Co-occurrence Probabilities
10. The duration of fixed exchange rate regimes
11. A model-free approach to delta hedging
12. Segmentación en la era de la globalización: ¿Cómo encontrar un segmento nuevo de mercado?
13. Testing the Information Matrix Equality with Robust Estimators
14. Large-N and Large-T Properties of Panel Data Estimators and the Hausman Test
15. Computational Batik Motif Generation Innovation of Traditi onal Heritage by Fracta l Computation
16. Density Estimation and Combination under Model Ambiguity
17. The name is absent
18. The name is absent
19. Cross border cooperation –promoter of tourism development
20. Optimal Taxation of Capital Income in Models with Endogenous Fertility