The Context of Sense and Sensibility

The Context o£ Sense and Sensibility 77
of this term for Jane Austen, and to her own definition of it,
“to be candid without ostentation or design—to take the
good of everybody’s character, and make it still better, and
say nothing of the bad.”²⁷ More broadly, candor in the eight-
eenth-century use means a balanced view of human nature,
justly appraising faults and virtues and giving judgment
accordingly; for Jane Bennet it would mean less tolerance,
for Elizabeth Bennet more tolerance. Elinor Dashwood has
it to such a high degree that she lacks dramatic value. Both
Elizabeth Bennet and Marianne Dashvzood attain candor by
hard and disillusioning experience; Elizabeth’s schooling is
more interesting than Marianne’s because her révisais of
judgment are kept steadily at the center of the book and
completely fused with the family situation and the social
comedy.

Alan D. McKillop

NOTES

References to Jane Austen’s novels are to volume and chapter in
R. W. Chapman’s Oxford Edition.

1. Sarah Harriet Burney, Clarentine (London, 1796), III, 69-70.

2. Mary Balfour Brunton, Self-Control (Edinburgh, 1812), I, 130.

3. Camilla (London, 1796), III, 152.

4. Ibid., Ill, 271.

5. “Elinor and Marianne: A Note on Jane Austen,” Review of Eng-
lish Studies, XVI (1940), 33-43.

6. Camilla, IV, 399.

7. II, 3.

8. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals, ILi.

9. Letters, ed. R. W. Chapman (2nd ed.; London, 1952), p. 331:
September 23, 1813.

10. II, 9.

11. I, 9.

12. I, 3.

13. Minor Works, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1954), p. 93.

14. I, 8.

15. I, 12.

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