Austen's Social Critique in Sense & Sensibility

Gabe Fine
Blog Post 2

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is a deep exploration of the mores and social codes of a time in British history that seemed filled with sexual and sensual repression (“exertion”). Austen’s narrator apparently seems to tell a moral story about a wise, prudent, sister, who aids in transforming her capricious, emotional younger sister into a more societally prescient person. However, if one reads in between the lines of the novel, a more serious social critique actually seems to materialize. This critique largely stems from the total lack of agency and/or autonomy held by the women characters of the novel. Austen, while never directly stating it, seems to be addressing this problem in her novels, and harnesses it to depict a story centered on women who either must forgo any passion for the necessity of prudence and practicality, or must become “tyrannical” or manipulative in the sense that Mary Wollstonecraft uses.

            Throughout the novel, Elinor and Marianne are constantly required to attend gatherings and meetings of various sorts, often against their will. While staying at Barton, they are often requested to meet various people, such as the Palmers, much to their discontent. “The rent of this cottage is said to be low,” Marianne says at one point, “but we have it on very hard terms if we are to dine at the park whenever any one is staying… with them” (80). Though these moments often come off as comical in the book, in many of these circumstances, the whims of men such as Sir John override the desires of the women. Similarly, when Marianne is faced with “a knowledge so intimate of [Colonel Brandon’s] goodness…[and] a conviction of his fond attachment to herself,” both of which only pertain to Brandon’s interests, Austen asks, “What could she do?” (267). Though Marianne does certainly seem to end up happy in her marriage, it yet again fully hinges on the whims of the man she ends up with.

            Marianne’s story is, of course, the greatest example both of a man wielding authority and a woman having to submit herself to practicality. Marianne, whose “sorrows [and] joys could have no moderation,” falls passionately in love with Willoughby, a man who turns out to be a selfish womanizer (8). When, in the end, the relationship falls apart, it is due completely to Willoughby’s autonomy. This circumstance is what eventually leads Marianne to have a change of heart, more in Elinor’s direction, in the end, when she decides, “My feelings shall be governed and my temper improved” (245). Though this seems to indicate that, when it comes down to it, practicality and good sense always end better than passion or sensibility, Austen actually appears to be painting a template by which we must see its antithesis as its moral: that in fact, the horror is not that Marianne might be sensible and romantic, but that she lives in a time and place that precludes this type of passion from leading to anything but “self-destruction” (245).

            Perhaps the only instance of a woman maintaining some sort of agency in the story is when Lucy Steele manages to finagle her way into a comfortable monetary situation with Robert Ferrars, the brother of her supposed lover. Yet, this instance is no evidence of passionate love winning out––rather, it is an example of that tyrannical form that Wollstonecraft refers to, which women are sometimes forced to take on if they truly wish to thrive in the patriarchal society of Austen’s time. Lucy Steele, though getting what she wants, gets it by means of cruelty and manipulation, attributes which she is forced to take on if she doesn’t simply wish to waste away in emotion like Marianne almost does, or settle into a pragmatic situation determined only by her elders or the men in her life. Thus, we can begin to see the way that all of Austen’s characters, though apparently buying into the social codes of her era, may actually be representative, by antithesis, of the very ills that Austen saw in those codes.


Marianne (Kate Winslet) and Elinor (Emma Thompson) in 1996 Film - The scene in which Marianne is sick, almost to the point of self-destruction.
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol30no1/images/thompson-ss-1995-sickbed.jpg