Critiquing ‘Sense and Sensibility’ by Jane Austen (with spoilers)

Author Sophia Alexander with Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

In Sense and Sensibility (1811), Jane Austen's first published novel, she deftly describes behavior that sends my heart out to people, but she inevitably goes on to judge them rather harshly. Though she is quite a fine writer, and I very much recommend reading her, she's not particularly kind nor open-minded.

In the process of ever-so-slowly making my way through Jane Austen’s novels once again, I felt ‘monstrous glad’ to get to this beloved classic. (Note that the novel is sprinkled with ‘monstrous pretty’, ‘monstrous happy’, etc., all of which I find monstrous delightful!)  However, while Austen is indeed a wonderful writer, I’m taking issue with her ever so much more than when I was young. Perhaps it’s because my writing has been repeatedly compared to hers, especially with regards to our social commentary, which is what actually sent me back to reread her novels. Maybe it’s like when a young woman sees an audacious fellow and finds him exhilarating—she's absolutely interested in dating him—but then when he’s hers and his behavior reflects upon her, the same audacity is embarrassing!  The following critique is rooted in my assumption that Jane Austen configured many of her characters and the novel’s events upon her interpretation of people she actually knew, enabling incisive descriptions to combine with an utter lack of empathy (for those not her favorites).

I did finally resonate with the comparisons of our writing whilst reading Willoughby’s heartfelt confession to Elinor towards the end of the novel. It gripped me like almost no other moment in the book (as it must have long ago when I first read it) and had the decided ring of Stephen apologizing to Caroline in The Silk Trilogy!  Not that Willoughby and Stephen are the same character whatsoever, but under Stephen’s stiff, more proper veneer, maybe they do share certain qualities.

Austen did an amazing job with that—and even managed to make me feel rather sympathetic towards that despicable Willoughby. He was distraught about what he’d done, as his love for Marianne was real, despite everything.  However… Austen tends to be biased in favor of men in general, and her defense of Edward sends me spinning. In her estimation, Edward Ferrars is practically perfect, whereas his fiancée, Lucy Steele, is a conniving, manipulative parasite, but I beg to differ!

Let’s reexamine this:  Edward was already engaged to Lucy when he took up with constantly visiting this Dashwood household full of women-only.  Early in the book, he visits them for at least a week, staying right inside their cottage; afterwards, we find out that he'd previously been staying at Lucy’s and had traveled straight from Lucy’s to the Dashwood’s.  In fact, he was wearing a ring fashioned from Lucy’s hair, the same color as Elinor’s, causing the Dashwoods to smile, assuming that he’d somehow obtained a lock of Elinor’s hair to have it made.  Everyone everywhere whispers that Edward is in love with Elinor, yet he never tells Elinor nor anybody else about Lucy, his secret fiancée.

Well, Lucy is a much less fortunate girl than Elinor—of meager financial means and education.  But she’s plucky, and she's clever with her limited resources, managing to seem far better off than she is; Jane Austen relates this with a sneer, as if it makes her a sly thing, not to be trusted, even though her own heroines have financial troubles, too!  Edward can hardly stand Lucy, or so Austen wants us to think, and yet he continually writes her letters and visits her. If he's only doing this to keep up the engagement out of sheer duty, I cannot admire this—that is hardly faithfulness, my goodness! And it’s incredibly unromantic. When Lucy hears of Elinor’s attachment to Edward, she takes the sensible measure of confiding to Elinor that she’s already secretly engaged to him—showing her the irrefutable proof of recent letters from him, and a miniature portrait she carries.  Yet somehow Austen presents this all as diabolical craftiness, with Elinor being the long-suffering one, entirely suffering due to Lucy, not Edward! 

Before Lucy’s confidences to Elinor, Elinor was indeed fairly blameless in this affair, but Elinor pins little to no responsibility on Edward: no, Lucy is pathetic and manipulative, Edward doesn’t love her, he's only with her because of the previous unfortunate commitment, etc.  Elinor’s heart goes out to noble Edward, not blaming him in the slightest for his attentions to herself, his true beloved!

I’m aghast, feeling so sorry for Lucy!  Meanwhile, Lucy is a gracious guest to Lady Middleton, Elinor’s cousin’s wife, though Austen repeatedly misrepresents Lucy’s sweet, thoughtful behavior as sycophantic and wily.  Oh, let me mention that the snooty Dashwood girls can barely stand Lady Middleton or her children, though they owe her endlessly; I feel terribly sorry for Lady Middleton, and I’m glad she finally has a nice guest in Lucy. Austen speaks of Lady Middleton as ‘a fond mother... in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings… her demands are exorbitant, but she will swallow anything.’ Jane relates Lady Middleton’s vanity in preparing her house for social events (not connecting this to the Dashwoods' subsequent enjoyment of those preparations), of her insufferable doting on her children, and of her classy reserve as being aloof, dull, and disinterested. I can only imagine her incredible self-possession in putting up with those bratty Dashwood teenagers who appreciate nothing she does for them and take no notice of her precious children!  Beautiful Lady Middleton knows the Dashwood girls care nothing for her—hence only lighting up, really, when her children enter the room.  How unpleasant for her!  Austen rather despises her for this, but I can completely relate.

Anyhow, towards the end of the book, Edward is disinherited for his years-long secret engagement to poor Lucy. So he technically stands by his word—except that he takes the opportunity to entreat Lucy to break off the engagement if she so wishes.  She says no, that she’ll still marry him, even in his dire new circumstances, but Lucy’s not stupid!  She knows he loves Elinor, and she’s growing increasingly tired of it all.

Elinor saves the day for her beloved Edward and his despicable bride-to-be by asking their friend Colonel Brandon to give Edward a parish near his own mansion so that he can earn his living (after quickly becoming ordained).  It’s a nice living, too!  But we eventually find out that Edward was so foolish that he didn’t even initially appreciate it, as Austen mentions only in hindsight that Edward ‘no longer resented [Colonel Brandon] giving him the living of Delaford’, even though he’d been nearly penniless and was desperate!  So my evaluation of directionless, fickle-hearted Edward is fairly low. Note that he’d previously decided on no occupation at all, as that suited his nature best, and it had been possible because of the fortune he was inheriting.

Then the twist occurs:  Robert Ferrars, Edward’s brother, gets extra inheritance as a reward for being the good son, and it’s bestowed on him precipitously, without strings.  Robert takes it into his head to ‘save’ his brother, though, so he starts visiting Lucy to try to get her to break off her engagement with Edward.  This has to affect her, to make her unhappy, and who knows what Robert honestly confirms about Edward not loving her?  However, she holds out, not quite willing to break it off with Edward, so Robert persists in visiting her, over and over, this lovely, staunch young woman.  But then… Robert and Lucy fall in love (and whose fault is that really? Who keeps visiting her?). Lucy, who is bright and ‘monstrous pretty’ yet knows Edward doesn’t really love her—and was looking to remain relatively poor with him besides—wisely opts to marry Robert the dandy instead.  What a shocker!  Everyone is aghast, but Lucy worms her way into the good graces of almost all parties eventually, whereas Elinor, who does marry that noble Edward, remains less favored because she really can’t stand any of them anyway.

Anyhow, Jane presents this all from the dignified viewpoint of Elinor, who insists upon thinking Edward is fairly perfect, even though he’d broken her heart and misrepresented himself.

That’s my defense of Lucy Steele.  And now for Mrs. Charlotte Palmer:

“It was impossible for anyone to be more thoroughly good-natured, or more determined to be happy than Mrs. Palmer. The studied indifference, insolence, and discontent of her husband gave her no pain; and when he scolded or abused her, she was highly diverted.”  Clearly a fool, hmm, Jane?

So, Mrs. Palmer declares that her husband’s mistreatment of her is funny, that he’s droll, that he suits her.  And she’s cheerful as can be.  Well, I feel admiration and pity for her, because what a brilliant way to deal with an awful situation.  But Austen declares her to be a ‘very silly woman’. 

How can Jane see what’s happening so clearly, yet not comprehend what’s going on at all?  Again, I feel certain that she must be describing people she knows.  She’s so spot-on in the descriptions, but she misses entirely on having empathy for their situations, no ‘putting herself in their shoes’ and trying to make sense of it. Then again… am I wrong?  I’m convinced I’m not, because obviously Mrs. Palmer knows she’s being mistreated, but it isn’t going to do wonders for her social life if she throws fits, especially in public.  However, if she can somehow just make her husband out to be an odd sort whose cantankerous, ornery ways are funny to her, then maybe she can have the semblance of an ordinary life and even have guests over, etc.  Poor Mrs. Palmer! 

I’m dismayed at Jane Austen, and no, I’m not going to blame it on her times.  I’ve read others of and before her time with quite broad, empathetic minds.  Anne Brontë, offhand, is from a slightly younger generation than Jane, but she’s incredibly empathetic.  I’m starting to understand why Austen’s family burned her letters.  She’s not terribly kind nor understanding, and add to that a quick tongue…  Sigh.

Now for a defense of passionate Marianne Dashwood:

Austen has such contempt for Marianne’s intense feelings.  The ironic thing about it is that Austen aptly presents the intensity, the heartbreak, perhaps as witnessed herself or relayed to her by some such passionate friend or relative. However, Austen also says mockingly: “The business of self-command she settled very easily:—with strong affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit.”

Austen keeps suggesting that Marianne is choosing to be distraught: when she is devastated, it aligns with her romantic notions to nearly die of heartbreak, etc.  Just, for heaven’s sake, Jane!  Why so mean?  There must have been a lot of jealousy brewing in Austen’s catty, clever little pen!  Well, judgment, too, but I tend to share that trait with Austen (as you can tell from this critique), so I do designate a difference: Jane Austen could stand to be a bit kinder.

In defense of Jane Austen:

Given that Jane Austen's older brother apparently compared her emotional intensity to Marianne's, it's likely that Austen was scolding herself on letting her passions get so out of hand. With that in mind, we can feel far more sympathetic about her trying to logic her way into reining them in.

At other times, Austen actually takes her inherently catty tongue and turns it into a character flaw, which is brilliant. For instance, Austen at first speaks condescendingly of Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton’s mother. Nonetheless, Mrs. Jennings turns out to be a wonderful woman even by Austen's own estimation. When Mrs. Jennings invites the Dashwood girls to accompany her to London, she tolerantly declares, “I thought it would be more comfortable for them to be together; because, if they got tired of me, they might talk to one another, and laugh at my odd ways behind my back.”  I take it, then, that we’re to assume Austen's initial condemnation of Mrs. Jennings was drawn from the perspective of the Dashwood girls and was not from her omnipotent perspective.

As for her insufferably persistent approval of Edward Ferrars, Elinor does at last say to Edward, just once near the end, “Your behaviour was certainly very wrong,” to my immense relief.  As is to be expected in someone as incisive as Jane Austen about human nature, she apparently does know how unfair she’s being at some level, at least sometimes. It might even be argued that her 'omnipotent' narrator is meant to be a mesh of the opinions of the book characters. Besides, she likely had a hard time condemning the brother (named Edward) in whose house she lived.

Sidenotes of interest:

Even though it’s days of travel to get to London, they speak simply of ‘going to town’!  I find that quite interesting, what a hub London must have been! 

Young women were apparently not allowed to write to men unless they were engaged or married to them.  Elinor assumes there has been an official engagement when she sees that Marianne has written to Willoughby.

We assume that everyone was relatively isolated and that it took forever to communicate before telephones, but mail went out and arrived in London day-of at that time—as is shown by Marianne expecting Willoughby to arrive on the very same day that she sends him a letter. I’ve read that in later Victorian times, mail could be exchanged as much as a handful of times daily by post!

On that note, I was at a family reunion out in the South Carolina countryside just yesterday, and an elderly woman confirmed, “People think we couldn’t have known what was happening very quickly back then, because we didn’t have telephones, but we knew everything that happened almost at once, better than now!”  I don’t think she was referring to the post informing them, but perhaps folks weren’t quite as isolated as we think they were before all this technology.

Lastly, and best of all, I “an’t” the least sorry to report that herein this novel lies further proof that our Southern “ain’t” descends from conversational English. Jane Austen includes “an’t” a full five times in this novel, with the identical meaning to “ain’t”! A mere spelling trifle of a difference ain’t of concern to me. Or as Jane Austen would more likely have written: "It doesn't signify".