The Sense of Sense and Sensibility

The title of the book Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen, implies an exploration of the two concepts in its characters and plot. Sense can be understood as a logical usage of the mental faculties. Sensibility, on the other hand, can be understood as being an over appreciation of emotions in an illogical and unreasonable fashion. An individual using sense would approach a situation using logical reasoning and would be assumed to come to the truth of the matter. An individual approaching a situation using sensibility would engage with the situation using only their emotional responses, and come out of the situation with their own subjective understanding, rather than what an individual of sense might regard as the “truth” of the situation. In Sense and Sensibility the characters, particularly the women, each fall towards one tendency of faculties: Marianne for instance in her in her blind love for Willoughby exhibits sensibility, and Elinor in her watchfulness over the family’s monetary situation exhibits sense. One character that is less obvious in their tendencies is the narrator. Here I will explore through the narrator’s description of Mrs. Ferrars the narrator exhibits sense rather than sensibility:

“Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong characters of pride and ill nature. She was not a woman of many words: for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas; and of the few syllables that did escape her, not one fell to the share of Miss Dashwood, whom she eyed with the spirited determination of disliking her at all events (Austen 165).”

In this passage the narrator describes Mrs. Ferrars matter-of-factly base on observation. The narrator portrays what is visibly and auditorily observable, particularly Mrs. Ferrars’ body type and facial expressions. The descriptions are not directly focused on the woman’s character but rather on what is seen in the type and positioning of her body. Mrs. Ferrars’ “figure” is what is “upright, even to formality” and her “countenance” or face is what contains “strong characters of pride and ill nature” (Austen165). This description is different from if the narrator stated that Mrs. Ferrars was upright, even to formality or that she was prideful and ill natured. The narrator is not directly making an assumption about the woman’s character but rather is showing what they see.

What is lacking in this paragraph also points to the narrator containing more sense than sensibility. There are no explanation marks or ellipses, which might betray that the narrator was passionate about the subject. The narrator is also not describing Mrs. Ferrars with personal feeling. If the narrator was it might sound like this: “Mrs. Ferrars was a terribly cruel woman who no one could respect! And how rude she was to the dear Elinor! This woman was in no way deserving of respect by anyone, much less our lovely protagonist.” The difference between what I just wrote and what the narrator states in the novel is that the first is a straight forward description lacking in extreme punctuation, adjectives or adverbs, or obvious personal preferences towards characters. What I wrote on the other hand gives preference to Elinor over Mrs. Ferrars and states that Mrs. Ferrars is in fact despicable, with exclamation points showing personal passion on the subject. In this way the lack of emotionality in Austen’s paragraph shows the narrator is a character of sense.

What could be argued is that the narrator’s decision to describe Mrs. Ferrars at all betrays personal preference, and therefore sensibility.  While the narrator wrote using plain language, which displays sense, perhaps the choice of description is driven by the narrator’s sensibility. The narrator could have chosen to see Mrs. Ferrars’ seriousness, as evidence that she is a rational person who knows knows how to choose their words and their friends. In addition, the narrator chooses to interpret Mrs. Ferrars’ behavior towards Elinor as a “spirited determination of disliking her at all events” (Austen 165). Perhaps Mrs. Ferrars was simply uncomfortable, or intimidated by Elinor's intensity and reasoning. It is also likely that the narrator contains characteristics of both sense and sensibility; but as the narrator’s language is mostly plain and straight forward, I would argue that they have at tendency towards sense and away from sensibility.

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