Sense and sensibility Novel Analysis

About Sense and sensibility

Sense and sensibility is the first of Jane Austen’s major novels to be published, and shows that her talent for comedy was already well developed, for this is a very funny account of life within a shrewdly observed circle of well-to-do gentry of her day. The humor is to be found in the familiar exercise of her acerbic wit about human nature, as well as in skillfully developed situations, which are likely to make the reader laugh out loud.

She is a cultivated woman, who teaches her youngest daughter Margaret at home-and presumably did the same with Elinor and Marianne. She is whole-hearted – or immoderate – in her affections, saying that, she can feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love(p.14). Thus she warms at once to her daughter’s admirers – as they do to her. Her “Captivating manners” easily overcome Edward’s reserve on his first, gloomy visit to Barton Cottage because, the narrator explains, “a man could not very well be in love with either of their daughters, without extending the passion to her”(p.79)

Characterization

1. Mrs Dashwood

The mother of the two heroins of sense and sensibility is a woman in her early forties who is widowed at the beginning of the narrative. She is an impulsive and warm-hearted person, who suffers financial disappointment through the greed of her self-serving stepson, and humiliation from his wife. The first she can bear, but the second she finds intolerable: “in her mind there was a sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic” (p.5) that she is disguised by the behavior of Fanny; her impulsiveness is underlined in the first chapter when , but for Elinor’s voice of reason, she would have left Norland at once.

She is a cultivated woman, who teaches her youngest daughter Margaret at home-and presumably did the same with Elinor and Marianne. She is whole-hearted – or immoderate – in her affections, saying that, she can feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love(p.14). Thus she warms at once to her daughter’s admirers – as they do to her. Her “Captivating manners” easily overcome Edward’s reserve on his first, gloomy visit to Barton COttage because, the narrator explains, “a man could not very well be in love with either of their daughters, without extending the passion to her”(p.79)

Mrs Dashwood is not a very practical women: her plans for extending Barton cottage demonstrate the breadth of her imagination rather than her confidence in the plans’ fulfillment. Although her unworldly nature means that she is not always aware of what might be best for her daughters – for instance, her delicacy prevents her from pressing Marianne about the nature of her relationship with Willoughby – she is a fond mother. As the daughters return from London. each with an aching heart, they both look forward to the comfort of her presence, Elinor perhaps less for her own sake than because she knows how much Marianne needs her. By the end of the narrative, Mrs Dashwood has recognized that she has somewhat neglected the self-controlled Elinor for Marianne, the more clamorously emotional daughter who is so much like herself.

2. Elinor Dashwood

Although the novel can be said to have two heroins, Jane Austen makes it clear that Elinor’s is the central role. This is not only because she is at the center of what happens, but because the narrative mode often shifts from omniscient narrator to Elinor’s viewpoint. Much of the reader’s grasp of events in the novel is delivered through both the comments and thoughts of Elinor.

Her sound character is introduced in Chapter 1: Elinor possesses “a strength of understanding and coolness of judgment”(p.6), but this extreme rationality is softened by adding that the nineteen-year-old “had an excellent heart; – her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them” (p.6). It is not until Chapter 10 that we learn that “Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure”(p.41) and is taller than her “still handsomer” sister Marianne. Good looks are never so important for Austen’s heroins as qualities of spirit and understanding.

Unlike her sister Marianne, whose nature is complete contrast, Elinor values the structure and support offered by society and is prepared to play by its rules. She is discreet and not deceitful, but recognizes the social duty of telling white lies when tact and politeness require it. It is her iron self-control that becomes her most striking and perhaps even worrying quality: it is a relief to the reader as well as to herself when she is finally able to reveal the misery she had gone through over Edward’s secret engagement to the devious Lucy Steele and above all, when she breaks down at the end of the novel- although her temporary loss of control is due to joy rather than grief when she discovers that Edward is free at last. She also uncharacteristically, has an unprincipled moment, as she allows herself to wish Willoughby’s wife dead and he free, when his cham temporarily makes her regret his loss to Marianne and the whole family.