t76 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
pendent power, even though Sense and Sensibility is far from
being her greatest achievement. It has been noted that she
grants sense and good taste to Marianne from the beginning.
Cowper seems to have been Marianne’s favorite poet, and
we know that he was one of the Austen family’s favorites also.
Marianne is a devotee of the cult of the picturesque: in one
of his few flashes of wit Edward, after speaking of Mari-
anne’s enthusiasm for ruins and for “Thomson, Cowper,
Scott,” continues, “and she would have every book that tells
her how to admire an old twisted tree.”10 Though Jane Aus-
ten is likely to satirize the cult of the picturesque and of
view-hunting, as in the comments on Barton Cottage,20 she
would agree with the Dashwood sisters and with Cowper in
shuddering at John Dashwood’s “improvements”: “the old
walnut trees” and “the old thorns” are cleared away to make
room for “Fanny’s greenhouse” and a flower-garden.21 Jane
Austen entertains the idea that a lack of appreciation of the
beauties of nature may point to a moral deficiency; this ap-
pears later in the way in which Anne Elliot and Fanny Price
are contrasted with the comparatively insensitive people
about them: Fanny, for example, responds to the beauties
of nature, and Mary Crawford does not.22 On this point Jane
Austen would agree, making all due reservations, with Mrs.
Radcliffe and Byron.23 Again, Marianne is a devotee of “local
attachment”—“dear, dear Norwood”—and Jane Austen’s local
attachments were strong also, like Anne Elliot’s.24 It is clear
that Marianne’s error is not so much in enjoying the content
of current sentimental poetry and fiction, but in indulging,
in Henry Mackenzie’s words, “the sensibility of which young
minds are proud, from which they look down with contempt
on the unfeeling multitude of ordinary men.”23 Marianne’s
change or reform is that she acquires a “new character of can-
dour.”2® Dr. Chapman has called attention to the importance