Sense and Sensibility

By Jane Austen and Sylvia Hunt

Sense and Sensibility is the novel that introduced Jane Austen to the reading world. Austen was a realist; she liked novels that presented realistic characters in realistic situations. She also had a perceptive sense of humor and loved to satirize people and literature. In this novel, Austen satirizes novels of sensibility, but she also satirizes condemnation of sensibility. The human experience requires a combination of reason and emotion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Universitas Press
• Release date: Jan 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781988963815

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born in 1775 in rural Hampshire, the daughter of an affluent village rector who encouraged her in her artistic pursuits. In novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma she developed her subtle analysis of contemporary life through depictions of the middle-classes in small towns. Her sharp wit and incisive portraits of ordinary people have given her novels enduring popularity. She died in 1817.

Book preview

.

.

NOTE ON THE TEXT

The present text reproduces the second edition of Sense and Sensi- bility (1813). Unlike in other contemporary versions of the novel, the spelling in this edition is uniform: Austen writes both every thing and everything, both dropt and dropped, both ensure and insure, but here the version that is most frequently used today has been preferred. Other peculiarities of style remain unchanged: e.g., Austen writes farther throughout, but puts the version further in the mouth of a servant. Austen’s style, including the punctuation, has remained intact. Typographical errors have been tacitly corrected.

Introduction

Sense and Sensibility is the novel that introduced Jane Austen to the reading world. She began writing it (under the title of Elinor and Marianne) in 1796 when, like Elinor Dashwood, she was nineteen. No manuscript of the novel’s first version exists and little is known about its content except that it was written in the epistolary form. A year later, First Impressions (the first version of Pride and Prejudice) was written[1] and, in 1797, Austen’s father, the Rev. George Austen, offered that manuscript to the London publisher Thomas Cadell. Across the top of Austen’s letter Cadell left a brief note, declined by return of post (Austen-Leigh 95). Despite this rejection, Austen immediately began reworking her two first novels into their current forms as well as writing a third novel, Susan.[2] In 1811, fifteen years after its initial conception, Austen was finally prevailed on by family to send the re- vised manuscript of her first novel, retitled as Sense and Sensibility, to Thomas Egerton for publication at the author’s expense. Austen did not expect the sales to meet the cost of publication and prepared her- self financially for having to repay the expense. Imagine her surprise when reviews were complimentary, with comments like it is well written, the characters . . . naturally drawn and It reflects honour on the writer, who displays much knowledge of characters, and very happily blends a great deal of good sense with the lighter matter of the piece (Critical Review 1812, quoted in Austen-Leigh 168). Buoyed by such positive response, Pride and Prejudice was resubmitted the following year and put into print.

The Critical Review’s comments on Austen’s novel accurately

reflect that author’s views on both life and literature. Any reading of Austen’s letters reveals that she had an obvious satiric humour and enjoyed laughing, in her corner of the world at the foolishness of others (Woolf 17). It is a generous laughter, though; she laughed at human foibles, but was also sympathetic in her understanding that we all have foibles – and that foibles make us human and humane. In a letter to her niece Anna Lefroy, Austen states that pictures of perfection make her sick & wicked (Letters 335). As an avid novel reader and aspiring author, she preferred stories that were grounded in fact, not fantasy, and characters that were realistically fallible yet endearing. As Austen was a protofeminist, her published novels explore issues of female ed- ucation, financial dependency, and marriage. This first novel looks at these issues, but it also engages the popular literature of the time and the eighteenth-century zeitgeist of sensibility.

In order to fully understand this book and Austen as a novelist, it is necessary to discuss the novel as it existed at the turn of the nine- teenth century. In many ways, the transformation of Sense and Sensi- bility into its published form mimics the transformation of the genre as it rapidly gained popularity. The novel as a new genre and the public reactions to this genre are central to Austen’s purpose in writing this work.

The Eighteenth-Century Novel[3]

In the late 1780s when the young Jane Austen began sardonically imitating novels in her juvenilia[4] the genre was still in its proverbial adolescence. The novel was seen largely as a feminine form; since plots tended to deal with domestic life and not heroic actions and virtues of the earlier romances, the novel became associated with the private or domestic sphere, populated largely by women. Because it also explored moral issues indirectly, and with shades of ambiguity, its suitability as apposite reading material for a supposedly impressionable and overly sensitive (and largely female) readership came under heavy scrutiny. According to Garside, contemporary belief held that ‘literature must offer either truth or utility, and the danger of the novel was that it might offer neither" (17). For example, in his famous conduct manual Sermons to Young Women (1766) James Fordyce warned his female readers that we declare the general run of Novels so utterly unfit for you. Instruction they convey not (96). Instead, he recommends more appropriate reading for proper young ladies, namely geography, poetry, history, and biography. All of this is secondary, however, to wom- en’s proper purpose – understanding men. As Fordyce states, your business chiefly is to read men, in order to make yourselves agreeable and useful (52). We will explore this reading of men shortly in our discussion of this novel.

Despite the strong condemnation of novels by both male and fe- male moralists, there was also equally strong support. This support, however, came with a proviso, namely the education that readers re- quired in order to know the difference between reality and fiction. Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, viewed novels as relatively harmless provided the reader was equipped with a sensible education. Most young ladies were given an education based largely on the acquisi- tion of accomplishments (music, dance, non-classical languages, etc.) and, thus, according to Wollstonecraft, these are the women who are amused by the reveries of the stupid novelists, who, knowing little of human nature, work up stale tales, and describe meretricious scenes, all retailed in a sentimental jargon, which equally tend to corrupt the taste, and draw the heart aside from its daily duties (330). Wollstonecraft does not advocate a complete prohibition against novel reading, claiming that any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank (331). Instead of avoiding the entire genre, Wollstonecraft proposes a course of action in the understanding of novels:

The best method, I believe, that can be adopted to correct a fondness for novels is to ridicule them; not indiscriminately, for then it would have little effect; but, if a judicious person, with some turn for humour, would read several to a young girl, and point out both by tones, and apt comparison with pathetic incidents and heroic charac- ters in history, how foolishly and ridiculously they caricatured human nature, just opinions might be substituted instead of romantic senti- ments. (332)

Austen seems to have taken up Wollstonecraft’s challenge and, at a very young age and with obvious turn for humour began to ridicule the conventions of novels. There is no proof that Austen read either of Wollstonecraft’s Vindications, but it is not wild conjecture to sup- pose that she had. She was sixteen when the first, A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790), was published and eighteen when the second appeared. Since Wollstonecraft’s polemics were generally highly acclaimed by critics, it is likely that the Austen family would have at least heard of, if not read, them. Many of the concerns about female education, female exploitation in marriage, economic dependency, and primogeniture outlined in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) find expression in Austen’s novels.

In her letters as well as her novels, Austen often defends the genre over more serious, higher forms of literature, showing clearly where her own inclinations lay when savouring a quiet evening over a good fire in a well-proportioned room (Letters 56). Perhaps the clearest idea we have of her appreciation for the novel comes from a letter writ- ten to her sister Cassandra in late 1798 about a new circulating library that was being started in their neighbourhood. In it, she describes her family as great Novel-readers and not ashamed of being so (Letters 26). When Austen began to write her juvenilia, novels were consumed at great rates in circulating libraries. Since books were expensive, these lending services filled a great need by providing an educated public access to the latest literary productions. This public was largely female and its demands were mainly for the latest sentimental fictions. These fictions were produced in ever-increasing quantity between 1740 and 1790, and the quality declined in inverse proportion to the increase in quantity. According to Litz, faced with an economic situation that fos- tered mediocrity, and hampered by the absence of intelligent critics who could assess and direct the new genre, most late eighteenth-century novelists lacked any sense of a vital and evolving tradition (6). Writers imitated one another and originality was subordinated to stock situations and characters. Characters seemed to obey the laws of fiction rather than probability. Samuel Johnson would have liked to see the novel used to teach morals because they might be of greater use to convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions (Rambler 4: 7). In the present form, however, Johnson felt that they were morally ambiguous works and not to be trusted in the hands of those who could not be expected to draw correct moral inferences from them. According to Johnson:

These books are written chiefly to the young, the ignorant and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introduction into life. They are entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impression; not fixed by principles, and therefore easily following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false and partial account. (Rambler 4:7).

Johnson does not mention women specifically, but the image of young ladies slumped over the latest romantic novel was already familiar.[5] As Margaret Kirkham writes, ignorant young women were not the only readers likely to be unhinged by fiction of doubtful moral import, but it was widely believed that they were peculiarly vulnerable (13).

The Sentimental Novel and the Cult of Sensibility

The eighteenth century saw the development, not just of the nov- el, but of specific types of novels. One of the more popular forms was what came to be known as the sentimental novel, or novel of sensibility. According to Johnson, the term sentimental originally implied quickness of sensation or a quickness of perception and delicacy (Dictionary 371). This emotional overindulgence was meant to give an indication of the person’s humanity; novels of sensibility illustrated the alliance of acute sensibility with true virtue. The hero or heroine adhered to a strict morality, but this morality was also combined with copious feeling and a sympathetic heart. As the period progressed, however, the term became a pejorative for the excess of emotion displayed in re- sponse to another’s tribulations, a lachrymose novel, compounded of sentiment, morality, manners, instruction, sensibility, and adventure (Mudrick 5). Clara Reeve, in her Preface to School for Widows (1791), looks at the rapid degeneration of the term sentimental:

This word, like many others, seems to have degenerated from its

original meaning; and, under this flimsy disguise, it has given rise to a great number of whining, maudlin stories, full of false sen- timent and false delicacy, calculated to excite a kind of morbid sensibility, which is to faint under every ideal distress, and ever fantastical trial; which have a tendency to weaken the mind, and to deprive it of those resources which nature intended it should find within itself. (iv)

The usual focus of such novels is the hero or heroine’s sensibility, sym- pathy and feeling. This self-centred morality placed great emphasis on physical reactions: tears, hysteria, fainting and madness. According to Litz, these reactions became an index of virtue since personal worth and sincerity are judged by the quantity of emotion exhibited (73). Not just the reactions of the hero or heroine were important; the reader was also supposed to exhibit extreme emotions from reading about the tribulations and the outpouring of sympathy.

The early example of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa: or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753) with their acutely sensitive titular characters was soon taken up by so many other writers that the ensuing trend has been called the cult of sensibility. As the novels of sensibility worked through all possible scenarios to elicit sympathy from the reader, they became more ridic- ulous in their plots. For example, in Henry Brooke’s highly influential novel The Fool of Quality (1765), the death of a lion is described. What is unusual (if not ridiculous) is that this lion is imbued with overpowering feelings of sentiment and dies from grief at the loss of his friend, a spaniel. The lachrymose scene is described as follows: For five days he [the lion] thus languished, and gradually declined, without taking any sustenance, or admitting any comfort; till one morning he was found dead, with his head lovingly reclined on the carcass of his little friend. They were both interred together, and their grave plentifully watered by the tears of the keeper and his loudly lamenting family (112). It was this sort of absurdity that marked the decline of the sentimental novel by the late 1790s, leaving it ripe for parody.

The philosophy of sensibility overlapped with the Romantic writers’ creative views on the imagination. The cult of sensibility found no connection between imagination and reason; emotion was simply a human response to the imagination’s creation of pathetic scenarios. The Romantics, however, empowered imagination and emotion, and added the element of reason to the creative process. Sensibility, an un- regulated response, was considered feminine, but with the addition of reason, imagination and emotion became the domain of the mascu- line writer. William Wordsworth, for example describes imagination as Imagination . . . in truth,/Is but another name for absolute strength/ And clearest insight, and amplitude of mind,/And reason in her most exalted mood (Prelude 13. 167-170). Percy Shelley contrasted imagination and reason in his Defence of Poetry, co-ordinating their powers: Reason is to Imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance (783). In short, male writers saw the connection between imagination (a creative power) and emotion (made masculine since it is regulated by reason). This connection is best described by Wordsworth in his preface to Lyrical Ballads (1801): all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: but though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man, who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply (163-164).

Women writers tended to be skeptical about Romantic sensibilities, equating them with dangerous, destructive passions.[6] This view is connected to contemporary discourse on rational education. The imagination should not be allowed to debauch the understanding before it has gained strength, warns Wollstonecraft in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (305). The best books are those which exer- cise the understanding and regulate the imagination (331), not novels which tend to make women the creatures of sensation . . . their character is thus formed in the mould of folly (177).

Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen’s novels define the conflicts that exist in both her society and in contemporary literature, the clashes between reason and feeling, restraint and individual freedom, society and the free spirit. These are the conflicts of the two ages, the Age of Reason and the Romantic Age, which Austen straddles. She extensively read books written in the former period, and participated in the political and philosophical discussions of the latter. As a protofeminist she also attempted to come to terms with women’s place in society, rejecting the passive, sentimental role normally allocated to women. In its place, she created heroines who are rational, moral, and realistic in their foibles and follies.

With respect to this particular novel and its connection to the con- temporary zeitgeist, it is too simplistic to assume that the title refers only to the two Dashwood sisters, with Elinor representing sense and Marianne representing sensibility. It is too basic a reading of the novel to see Marianne as the one who, imbued with sensibility, must be pun- ished, which, ipso facto, means that sensibility is dangerous. Austen is too good a writer to create such a simple reading of her novel. She wants us to evaluate all the characters, male and female, their connection to sensibility or reason, and how extremes of either state can cloud our ability to act appropriately. Characters, and actual people, are only fully human when both the mind and the heart are used. In short, we the readers must figuratively read the characters while we literally read the book.

It is obvious that Marianne, whose sorrows and joys could have no moderation, is associated with sensibility. Elinor is the rational one in the Dashwood family, approaching both household matters and her emotions in a practical, private manner. This reasonableness infuriates Marianne who exclaims Even now her self-command is invariable. When is she dejected or melancholy? When does she try to avoid society, or appear restless and dissatisfied in it? It is not just these two characters who must be associated with sense and sensibility, however; many of the other characters are representations of either state. In mid-eighteenth-century novels, men normally were either the hero (the picture of perfection which Austen so hated) or the villain. Novels like Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality (1765) and Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771) present the sentimental heroes as perfect in their integrity, magnanimity and emotional responsiveness to the distress of others. Sentimental women, however, are seen as weak, endangered or as victims: the prostitute, the abandoned lover, the beggar.

Of particular importance for Austen are the men in this novel.

Austen rejects the binaries of hero or villain, rational or emotional for more nuanced, realistic, and imperfect creations. With respect to this novel, there are three Johns as central characters. Although John was a popular name in England at the time, it cannot be by chance that three of the major male characters have this name. John Dashwood is the first character we meet. This John falls into the sense category in that he is entirely ruled by reason (and by his wife Fanny). It is, however, not a humane reason, since reason would normally indicate that his widowed stepmother and sisters require financial assistance. Despite knowing that these women will be financially insecure, he and Fanny are able to use a form of mathematical logic to validate giving them nothing to alleviate their distress. He feels quite comfortable, if not smug, with his logical decision that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts as his own wife pointed out. This John is the personification of self-interested sense without any humanizing sensibility.

John Dashwood’s cold rationality extends beyond his mother and

sisters to his own community. In an attempt to justify his failure to assist his sisters financially, John describes his current expenditures and estate improvements, telling Elinor that he is in the process of en- closing Norland Common. Contemporary readers would immediately realize what this will mean for the local residents. The village poor will no longer have access to the commons as a means of augmenting their incomes, losing any chance at economic independence.[7]

Sir John Middleton is the second John encountered, and he is the inverse of John Dashwood. He is introduced in a letter offering the Dashwood ladies a home in the true spirit of friendly accommodation, charging only a token rent. In addition, he stocks their pantry with food, gives them use of his carriage, pays their postage, shares his newspaper, and invites them frequently to dine at Barton Park. All of these acts assist the Dashwoods financially and, unlike their grudging brother, the friendliness of his disposition made him happy in accommodating those, whose situation might be considered, in comparison with the past, as unfortunate. Sir John, however, is a stereotypical English squire; with no intellectual resources to amuse himself, he wiles away his time holding parties and picnics. It is immediately obvious that his much younger wife is not a suitable companion for him and they have little in common. His mother-in-law Mrs. Jennings is a better companion since they both share a love of society and gossip. Despite his generous gifts, he uses the Dashwood ladies as a captive audience, to be called to dinners, parties, and London in order to distract and amuse his many idle hours. Although well-intentioned, this John is just as self-seeking as John Dashwood.

Finally, John Willoughby is the third John in the novel. Willoughby’s profligacy contrasts with John Dashwood’s parsimony and, like the other two Johns, he is entirely egocentric, claiming his flirtation with Marianne was no more than a means to pass [his] time pleasantly while in Dorsetshire. Describing himself self-pityingly as a poor, dependant cousin, he is initially neither poor nor dependant. His lack of ample funds is due to the fact that he lived at an expense to which that income could hardly be equal. He seduces Eliza Williams, placing the blame for the seduction on her unregulated passions, then abandons her poor and miserable and pregnant. His marriage to Miss Gray is a marriage of convenience, needed to sort out his financial dif- ficulties. She is just another woman who is used by Willoughby to meet his needs, be they financial or emotional. His indifference to financial responsibility is paralleled by his indifference to personal responsibili- ty and to the fates of the women he seduces.

These three Johns are Austen’s comment on male prerogative and power in that they are versions of John Bull, the political personification of England. These men represent patriarchal privilege in that they posses land, money and power; however, they either misuse or underuse this privilege. They fail to adequately protect the women under their protection and women are unable to do anything to subvert their power. John Willoughby is a seducer of women and even the rational Elinor is not immune to him. After his late-night expiation, Elinor "was excited to a degree of commiseration. She felt that his influence over

her mind was heightened by circumstances which ought not in reason to have weight. With respect to her brother, despite disagreeing with him on various points, Elinor usually remains silent since disagreement is not acceptable discourse for women. When Willoughby’s betrayal of Marianne is made public, Middleton initially denounces him, stating emphatically that ‘he wished him at the devil with all his heart. He would not speak another word to him. Such a deceitful dog!

However, when the two men meet by chance at the Drury Lane theatre, Sir John is so moved by Willoughby’s reaction to the news about Marianne’s illness that he promises him a pointer puppy to cheer him up. Instead of defending the honour of his female relative (as Brandon does with Eliza), Sir John is unable to maintain any spirit of resentment.

Marianne’s excessive sentimentality harms only herself; her illness is self-induced and she admits that her death would have been self-destruction. She worries everyone, but she harms no one. John Willoughby’s excessive indulgences in emotion harm many; he de- stroys the life of Eliza Williams and his bastard child; he could have killed Brandon in the duel; his abandonment of Marianne almost leads to her own death; his indifference to his new wife will probably make her married life miserable.

The other central male figures in the novel are Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon. Analysis of these two characters segue into our discussion about the sentimental reaction many readers have to the end of this novel. Although Edward Ferrars should, technically, be the hero since he marries the heroine Elinor, it is Colonel Brandon who many feel to be the more suitable husband for her. He certainly fits the period’s model of hero; he is a military officer who has been in service in India as part of the East India Company’s private army and is the owner of a large estate with a comfortable income. In many ways, he is the male counterpart to Elinor; from the start he is marked by both sense, in his reserved demeanour, and sensibility, in his generous actions and concern for others. Just as Elinor conceals her distress over Edward’s attachment to Lucy, Brandon conceals his emotional turmoil over Eliza’s disappearance. He reveals it to Elinor only when he thinks knowledge of Willoughby’s character will protect Marianne. He comes to the aid of his beloved Eliza when she is abandoned; he protects her lovechild and fights a duel with Willoughby over her seduction. When Marianne is seriously ill, he fetches Mrs. Dashwood to Cleveland house to be with her. Finally, Brandon gives the living of Delaford to the near-destitute Edward Ferrars, a man he only slightly knows. Brandon is a difficult character to read for both other characters in the novel and for the reader. His taciturn demeanor hides a munificent heart.

This version of Brandon as military and domestic hero is not in accord with the Brandon described by other characters in the novel. Mar- ianne depicts him as an absolute old bachelor in a flannel waistcoat and a flannel waistcoat is invariably connected with the aches, cramps, rheumatisms, and every species of ailment that can afflict the old and the feeble. Even the narrator describes him as silent and grave and with a face not handsome. During the first half of the novel, Brandon is actually busy trying to locate Eliza, relocate her to a cottage so she can have her baby, and fight a duel with Willoughby. These events are only revealed to us later in the novel and we must make rapid reinter- pretations of his character.

As the supposed hero of the novel, Edward Ferrars somehow fails to live up to heroic expectations. We are told early on that he was not recommended to [the Dashwood ladies’] good opinions by any particular graces of person or address. He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. Like Brandon’s initial description, Ferrars is not initially described in heroic terms; he is neither handsome, brave or dashing. However, the Dashwood ladies are immediately disposed in his favour and this preference influences us, the readers. Since Edward is given no direct dialogue until Chapter 16,[8] we are fed opinions about him by the other characters and the narrator. However, Edward is as aimless and self-indulgent as the three Johns. He describes himself as an idle, helpless being; he uses Lucy just as Willoughby uses Marianne, as a foolish, idle inclination . . . and want of employment in order to amuse his time; Edward is also deceptive, explicitly lying to Elinor about the hair ring. Her direct question about the ring would have allowed him to reveal his engagement to Lucy Steele; instead he conceals this information and perpetuates Elinor’s confusion and distress. In many ways, he has been as deceptive to her as Willoughby has been to Marianne. Despite her sense, Elinor believes in Edward’s integrity and both Elinor and the narrator have encouraged the reader to see Edward as a hero.

The ending of this novel was, and is, troubling to readers. Soon af-

ter its publication, Lady Bessborough wrote to Lord Granville Leveson Gower,[9] "Have you read Sense and Sensibility? It is a clever novel. They were full of it at Althorpe, and tho’ it ends stupidly, I was much amused by it" (quoted in Laski 82). Like Pride and Prejudice, arguably Austen’s most popular novel, this novel ends with the double marriage of sisters. Unlike Jane and Elizabeth Bennet’s marriages, however, the Dashwood marriages seem less than satisfying for readers. Edward Ferrars has lied to Elinor and deceived Lucy Steele. Elinor’s life as a parson’s wife will be financially difficult.[10] Colonel Brandon has prov- en himself to be the most honourable man in the entire the novel, but his marriage to Marianne appears to be more a reward for him and a consolation prize for her. Many readers feel that Elinor would be the better match for Brandon. If this book is about common sense over unregulated emotion, then a marriage based on compatible character and economic stability would be the sensible choice. For the first time in the novel, Elinor follows her heart instead of her head. Sensibility has conditioned us to expect certain endings from novels; we want happy endings where the deserving hero and heroine find happiness in companionate marriage. Sense, however, dictates that this does not always happen and we must accept the fact that the worthy Elinor does not marry the admirable Brandon.

Jane Austen was a realist; she liked novels that presented realistic characters in realistic situations. She also had a perceptive sense of humour and loved to satirize people and literature. In this novel, Austen satirizes novels of sensibility, but she also satirizes condemnation of sensibility. The human experience requires a combination of reason and emotion. The Romantic allocation of reason to the male prerog- ative and emotion to the female is rejected by Austen. She sees excessive amounts of either as destructive and both genders are susceptible. Austen created characters who must learn to read people correctly, including themselves; she also forces her readers to rethink characters based on what others have said about them. Our disappointment at the marriages at the end of the novel says as much about us as sentimental- ists as it does about Austen as a novelist. According to Southam, Austen believed that literature is properly a means to truth, and that truth is to be found in the realms of common sense and real life, not in the romantic delusions of sentimentalism (9). However, even in the twen- ty-first century, romantic delusions are just as potent as in Austen’s time. Just as two hundred years ago, Austen’s readers are encouraged to tread the line between the head and the heart, and to practice the civilities, the lesser duties of life, with gentleness and forbearance.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Jane Austen’s Letters. Ed. Deirdre Le Faye. London : Folio Society, 2003.

Brooke, Henry. The Fool of Quality: or The History of Henry the Earl of Moreland. New York: Derby & Jackson, 1860.

Austen-Leigh, William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh. Jane Austen: A Family Record. Revised by Deirdre Le Faye. New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1989.

Fordyce, James. Sermons to Young Women in Two Volumes. London:

T. Cadell, 1771.

Garside, Peter, James Raven, and Rainer Schowerling. The English Novel 1770-1829: A Biographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles. Vol 1. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.

Johnson, Samuel. Dictionary of the English Language. London: T. Tegg & Son, 1837.

_________. The Rambler. Ed. W.J. Bate and Albrecht Strauss. New

Haven: Yale UP, 1969.

Kirkham, Margaret. Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction. Brighton:

Harvester Press, 1983.

Laski, Marghanita. Jane Austen and her World. London: Thames and

Hudson, 1977.

Litz, A. Walton. Jane Austen: A Study of her Artistic Development.

New York: Oxford UP, 1965.

Mudrick, Marvin. Irony as Defense and Discovery. Berkeley: U of California P, 1968.

Reeve, Clara. The Progress of Romance through Times, Countries, and Manners. New York: Garland, 1970.

________. School for Widows. Vol 1. London, 1791.

Shelley, Percy. A Defense of Poetry. Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams et al. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979. 791-794.

Southam, Brian C. Jane Austen’s Literary Manuscripts. A Study of the Novelist’s Development through the Surviving Papers. London and New York: The Athlone Press, 2001.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. D.L. Macdonald & Kathleen Scherf. Peterborough, Ont: Broadview, 1997.

Woolf, Virginia. Jane Austen. Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Ian Watt. Englewood: Prentice-Hall, 1963. 15-24.

Wordsworth, William. Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams et al. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979. 159-175.

________. Prelude. Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed.

M.H. Abrams et al. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979. 231- 312.

Again, Austen’s age of 20 corresponds with her heroine, Elizabeth Bennet. No manuscript exists of this novel either, and it is also believed to have been written as an epistolary novel. This was a popular style in the eighteenth century, with Samuel Richardson establishing the trend with his influential novel Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1740).

Unlike First Impressions, Susan was initially accepted for publication in1803 by publisher Benjamin Crosby, but it was never released, despite Crosby paying Austen £10 for it. In 1816, Austen bought back the manuscript and it was published in December 1817, along with Persuasion, under the title Northanger Abbey, 5 months after her death.

The more commonly used term for the genre in the early eighteenth century was the realistic novel. This term was used in order to differentiate the novel from the romance, the type of fiction from the early-modern period. Although both can be defined as lengthy fictional

prose narratives, the novel’s stories were based on middle-class culture and values and deal imaginatively with realistic human experience. The romance was designed primarily for an aristocratic readership and is defined as a fantastical fiction with morality that is based more on chivalric codes of conduct than on middle-class values.

Austen’s juvenilia consist of twenty-seven short stories, dramatic skits and a history which she copied into three volumes. She regularly returned to these humorous stories throughout her life, making changes to the text, and finding inspiration for her published novels. Most of the pieces make fun of contemporary literature, particularly the sentimental novels that were so popular at the end of the eighteenth century.

Women reading, particularly love letters or novels, was a common subject for art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A good example to refer to would be Bernard d’Agesci’s Lady Reading the Letters of Héloïse and Abélard (c. 1780) in which a young woman, overcome with emotion while reading the letters of the famed medieval lovers, falls into ecstatic, almost orgasmic, rapture. Another example is Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Love Letter (c. 1770) which depicts a young woman in receipt of a bouquet of flowers which conceals a secret love letter. See Jeffrey Nigro’s article The Iconography of Sensibility (Persuasions On-Line. Vol. 32: 1, Winter 2011) for an interesting discussion about art, the cult of sensibility and Sense and Sensibility.

Probably the best example of this skepticism is found in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Both Frankenstein and his monster are ruled by passions that prove destructive to everyone connected to them.

Common grounds were green spaces in villages allocated for common use. Villagers could use the land for grazing livestock or for cultivating produce. Enclosure acts of the eighteenth century greatly reduced these common lands, destroying an agrarian way of life and impoverishing small farmers.

Edward does speak one line in Chapter 5 when he expresses astonishment and disappointment at the Dashwood ladies moving to Devonshire. The 1995 film gives Ferrars more dialogue than he is given in the novel, and attempts to create him as a more romantic hero than the novel

does. See Nora Foster Stovel’s From Page to Screen: Emma Thompson’s Film Adaptation of Sense and Sensibility (Persuasions On-Line Vol. 32:1, Winter 2011) for a discussion on the transformation of Ferrars.

Born Henrietta Spenser (and, thus an ancestor of Lady Diana Spenser), she married the lord of Bessborough. Despite her marriage, she had several lovers, one of whom was Lord Granville Leveson Gower. She was said to claim I can never love a little, a comment suitable for Marianne Dashwood to utter. Her daughter, the infamous Caroline Lamb, was very much like her mother in her obsession with George Gordon, Lord Byron.

See Geoff K. Caplan’s article Colonel Brandon: An Officer and a Gentleman (Persuasions: On Line, Vol. 21: 1, Winter 2000) for his analysis of the finances and restricted lifestyle of Elinor and Edward Ferrars.

VOLUME I

CHAPTER I

The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner, as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old Gentleman’s days were comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive, and the cheerfulness of the