Sense and Sensibility

By Jane Austen

Society and the Individual

The interaction between the individual and the other individuals around him or her who make up society is central to all Austen's novels. No other novelist is more emphatic that we are social animals, unable to remain isolated, drawn into relationships with others and forced to take up a position in the social structure. Austen is also emphatic that society will not change itself for the individual; it is for the individual to adapt to society and to conduct him or herself in it in a suitable manner. Elinor naturally accepts this; Marianne is forced to accept it.

Marianne is the embodiment of the Romantic movement in art, literature and thought which was reaching its peak in the early 1800s. The first Romantics - Wordsworth and Coleridge - were Austen's exact contemporaries, while the later generation of Romantics - Keats and Shelley, for example - followed shortly afterwards. Austen shared with the great Romantic poets a belief in the importance of the individual consciousness, but diverged from them in her conviction that the individual matures just as much by social interaction as by private meditation. Marianne puts the self over any other consideration, convinced of the primacy of personal feelings. Her exaltation of nature is truly Romantic. Compare, for instance, her expression of delight at being outside on a fine, blustery day with Wordsworth's ecstasy over the view from Westminster Bridge:

"They gaily ascended the downs, rejoicing in their own penetration at every glimpse of blue sky; and when they caught in their faces the animating gales of an high south- westerly wind, they pitied the fears which had prevented their mother and Elinor from sharing such delightful sensations.

'Is there a felicity in the world,' said Marianne, 'superior to this? Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours.'

Margaret agreed, and they pursued their way against the wind, resisting it with laughing delight... " (p. 74)

"Earth hath not anything to show more fair.
Dull of soul would he be who could pass by
sight so touching in its majesty."

Marianne's hyperbole is equal to Wordsworth's, but, of course, her expedition ends in torrential rain and a sprained ankle. Austen brings her, quite literally, down to earth and shows that the caution of her mother and sister was well judged. Austen cannot approve of behaviour that forgets all social and practical considerations in the emotional conviction of the moment. Austen gently parodies Marianne's Romantic rhapsodies, for instance in the conversation between her, Edward and Elinor as they walk in the fields near Barton. For each lengthy effusion of Marianne, Edward or Elinor replies with a short, truthful statement:

"'Oh!' cried Marianne, 'with what transporting sensations have I formerly seen [the leaves] fall! How I have delighted, as I walked, to see them driven about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the sky, the air altogether inspired! ... '

'It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.'

'Now, Edward,' said [Marianne], calling his attention to the prospect, 'here is Barton valley. Look up to it, and be tranquil if you can. Look at those hills! Did you ever see their equals?... '

'It is beautiful country,' he replied; 'but these bottoms must be dirty in winter.'" (p. 114)

However, it is not for her joy in nature that Austen condemns Marianne. Anne Elliott and Fanny Price, two of Austen's "sensible" heroines, express the same passion for the outdoors, and Marianne's favourite poet, the early Romantic Cowper, was also Austen's. What Austen portrays as most reprehensible in Marianne is her self-indulgent failure to play her allotted role in society. The honesty and openness on which she prides herself more often manifest themselves as rudeness and gracelessness. In a scene in Lady Middleton's drawing room, for instance, Marianne excuses herself from playing cards with the curt explanation that "I detest cards. I shall go to the piano-forte; I have not touched it since it was tuned." (p. 162) By refusing to take part in the group activity of card playing, as essential a part of the social scene as dancing, and by choosing a solitary activity, Marianne implicitly refuses to share in any of the activities or attitudes of the people around her. By suggesting that she considers their choice of amusement beneath her, she implies that she also considers them beneath her. This is why her thoughtless remark is so rude. In a society held together entirely by such delicate glue as dinner-parties, polite conversation, dancing, cards and gossip, to reject any of these activities is to challenge the very structure and validity of that society. As Barbara Hardy has put it, "On [Austen's] sensitive scales, little things weigh heavy."

In the same scene, Elinor would also prefer not to play cards. She is eager to talk to Lucy about Edward and try to understand what could have propelled him into such a foolish engagement. By a subtle and cunning social manoeuvre - offering to help Lucy finish a basket for Lady Middleton's daughter - Elinor gets what she wants without offending anyone. Austen comments tartly that

"Thus, by a little of that address, which Marianne would never condescend to practice, gained her own end, and pleased Lady Middleton at the same time." (p. 162)

Austen also shows in this scene how Marianne's rudeness leaves Elinor with the task of covering up for her; Elinor smoothes over the awkwardness of the moment by complimenting Lady Middleton on her piano and saying that it is no wonder that Marianne cannot stay away from it. Tony Tanner has equated Elinor's skill in covering up with her skill in screen painting, arguing that she is a social painter of screens as well as a literal one. Tanner also coined the phrase "necessary lies" to describe how Elinor negotiates with society: she accepts the "whole task of telling lies when politeness required it" (p. 144) because Marianne refuses ever to say anything that she does not feel. Again, Elinor is willing to participate in the activities and strategies that are required to hold society together while Marianne is not. Ironically, in the scene in London when Mrs. Ferrars is rude to Elinor, Marianne's refusal to conform causes more pain to Elinor than to anyone else. Mrs. Ferrars is disdainful about Elinor's painting and Marianne rallies to her sister's defence; Austen comments that, "Elinor was much more hurt by Marianne's warmth, than she had been by what produced it" (p. 242). Austen makes it clear that the social code is more than just a set of meaningless niceties: when used rightly, it protects other people's feelings and saves them from embarrassment. Had Marianne controlled herself, Elinor would not have been subjected to the humiliation of having Mrs. Ferrars' rudeness made obvious and of seeing her sister expose herself in public.

Because Elinor is so implacable in her adherence to a social code in which politeness supersedes honesty and emotion, Marianne assumes that she has no feelings. When Edward and Elinor are first parted, for instance, Marianne is amazed that "[Elinor's] self-command is invariable". According to Marianne, the proper behaviour for someone who has just been separated from the person they love is to be "dejected" and "melancholy", "to avoid society, or to appear restless and dissatisfied in it" (p. 72) and she is dismayed that Elinor is not to conforming to this stereotype. She, of course, conforms to it completely when she is parted from Willoughby. Marianne has her own idea of how people should behave just as Elinor does, but hers is based on Romantic principles of the supremacy of emotion and the individual self rather than on the Classical values of restraint and harmony. She cannot see through the surface of Elinor's self-control to the suffering beneath, and of course Elinor does not intend her to: like everyone else, Marianne has been taken in by Elinor's social façade. In Sense and Sensibility, self-control is a form of self-defence, perhaps the only form available to women as dependent as those of Austen's day. Elinor's intention in hiding her feelings is to convince everyone that she does not have any and so to make herself immune to the public humiliation that Marianne suffers when Willoughby deserts her. By making it clear to everyone one around her how attached she is to Willoughby Marianne exposes herself to the gossip, clumsy sympathy and general scrutiny that follows the announcement of his engagement to Miss Grey.

Austen is clear that self-control is crucial for survival in the social context in which she places her heroines. She does not claim that they should be unfeeling, but that they should know how to control their feelings.

We are told in the opening chapter that Elinor, "had an excellent heart; her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings strong; but she knew how to govern them" (p. 42). Neither is Elinor without opinions; she does not hold back from expressing them when she feels that the situation is serious enough. She disagrees frequently with Marianne and her mother, but the only moment at which she disagrees with anyone outside the family is during her conversation with John Dashwood about Miss Morton:

"'We think now' - said Mr. Dashwood, after a short pause, 'of Robert's marrying Miss Morton.'

Elinor, smiling at the grave and decisive importance of her brother's tone, calmly replied,

'The lady, I suppose, has no choice in the affair.'

'Choice? How do you mean?'

'I only mean, that I suppose form your manner of speaking, it must be the same to Miss Morton whether she marries Edward or Robert.'" (p. 294)

There is a hint of Elizabeth Bennet's sharp wit here, couched in such a way as to make a point while remaining well within the bounds of acceptable behaviour. Neither sense nor sensibility, then, is the exclusive property of Elinor or Marianne, just as Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy each has their fair share of both pride and prejudice. Marianne is not a caricature of an over-emotional fool, but an intelligent and highly articulate girl, while Elinor is defined as much by her strength of emotion as by her self-control. Even at this early stage of her career Austen was too subtle and clever a writer to be content with an uncomplicated polarisation between her two central characters. Walton Litz felt that Sense and Sensibility was overly schematic and hence unsatisfactory but one could argue equally convincingly that Elinor and Marianne are not two halves of an ideal whole and that they are each complex and fully realised characters in their own right.

Austen's assertion of self-control as a better way of interacting in society than self- indulgence is by no means uncomplicated. Sense and Sensibility poses some difficult questions that form a deliberate sub- text even though Austen chooses not to explore them in an open and explicit way. We feel a strong sympathy for Marianne at the end of the novel, who is tamed and forced into conformity, then married off to Colonel Brandon. Austen tells us that Elinor, Edward and Mrs. Dashwood were all keen on the match:

"They each felt his sorrows, and their own obligations, and Marianne, by general consent, was to be the reward of all." (p. 366)

There is "a confederacy against her" and she finds herself "submitting" to the marriage. This sounds uncomfortably close to the coercion that Elinor and Marianne suffered from earlier in the novel at the hands of the John Dashwoods, the Middletons and Mrs. Jennings. Austen tells us that Marianne eventually came to love her husband as much as she had ever loved Willoughby, but nevertheless we feel that there is some element of compromise in her romantic destiny. Ironically, Colonel Brandon first loved Marianne for her strong feelings. Elinor says that "a few years will settle [Marianne's] opinions on the reasonable basis of common sense and observation", to which Brandon replies that, "there is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions" (p. 86). This is supported later by his admiration of Marianne's outburst against Mrs. Ferrars' rudeness:

"Elinor was much more hurt by Marianne's warmth, than she had been by what had produced it; but Colonel Brandon's eyes, as they were fixed on Marianne, declared that he noticed only what was amiable in it, the affectionate heart which could not bear to see a sister slighted even in the smallest point." (p. 242)

Marianne's warmth and spontaneity are attractive, but these are the qualities that she must learn to curb before she can be worthy of marrying the man who loves her for them.

As for Elinor, her self-control has been painful and difficult. She did not immediately have all the self- possession necessary to cope with being in love with someone who was engaged to someone else, but had to work hard to subdue her feelings:

"'The composure of mind with which I have brought myself at present to consider the matter, the consolation that I have been willing to admit, have been the effect of constant and painful exertion; they did not spring up of themselves" (p. 265)

Elinor is very nearly not rewarded for her efforts. Edward is only able to marry her because of Lucy's defection which, given how rude she and Robert have been about each other, is an unlikely plot contrivance. Is it likely that Robert would marry Lucy when arrangements for transferring Miss Morton over to him were about to be made? Sense and Sensibility avoids tragedy more narrowly than it might appear: Marianne could have died, as she very nearly does, and Edward could have married Lucy, as he very nearly does. This sense of narrowly averted disaster emphasises Elinor's isolation. Through her, Austen shows that social participation and good behaviour cannot save a heroine from internal isolation. Elinor is the only member of her family who does not have a Romantic world-view and the only member of her social circle, except Colonel Brandon, who can hold a sensible conversation. We see all the events of the novel filtered through her consciousness and often the remarks she makes to herself reveal a mind under considerable strain. Austen uses this narrative technique to show how nearly Elinor was a victim of circumstances: she can control herself but she cannot control society. Luck, Austen shows, plays a large part in how things turn out. Beneath the surface of the novel's happy conclusion, then, lie the shadowy yet very real possibilities of death, loneliness, and isolation.