Jane Austen (9 page)
Authors: Andrew Norman
Sense and Sensibility
, published in 1811 by Thomas Egerton, started life as
Elinor and Marianne
, written by Jane as a collection of letters in about 1795–96. However, the novel proper was begun in 1797 (and subsequently revised in 1811).
It is the story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, and their differing reactions to love and rejection, for they are of very different natures. The book begins by describing the Dashwoods’ home in Sussex and the family’s position in society, which epitomises solidity, permanence and respectability.
Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park in the centre of their property where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance.
Alas, this happy state of affairs was not to continue. Elinor, the elder of the two (in fact, there were three sisters altogether), is described as possessing ‘a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgement’, even though she was aged only 19. ‘She had an excellent heart; – her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them...’ Marianne, on the other hand, whose ‘abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor’s’, was:
sensible and clever; but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was everything but prudent.
When their father Mr Henry Dashwood dies, his estate passes to John – his son by his first wife. John and his wife Fanny move into Norland Park where Fanny’s brother Edward Ferrars forms an attachment to Elinor. Elinor, for her part, declares that she thinks very highly of Edward and that she greatly esteems and likes him. Her sister Marianne, however, has reservations about him, saying that although he is very amiable, he ‘has no real taste’. He was scarcely attracted by music and, although he admired Elinor’s drawings, he failed to ‘understand their worth’.
John fails to honour the promise which he made to his father; that he would look after his step-mother and sisters. Mrs Dashwood and her daughters, realising that they are now unwelcome in what had been their home, decide to relocate to Barton Cottage in Devonshire which is owned by their kinsman Sir John Middleton of Barton Park. When the time comes to leave, Marianne exclaims emotionally about Norland, ‘When shall I cease to regret you! – when [shall I] learn to feel a home elsewhere!’
The sisters are introduced to Sir John’s great friend Colonel Brandon whom Marianne regards as ‘an absolute old bachelor, him being on the wrong side of five and thirty’. When the two sisters are out walking, Marianne sprains her ankle and falls to the ground, whereupon John Willoughby (described as a sportsman), who is out hunting with his gun, comes to the rescue. When Mrs Dashwood asks Sir John what kind of man Willoughby is he replies, ‘as good a kind of fellow who ever lived, I assure you. A very decent shot, and there is no bolder rider in England’. (This is Jane humorously describing
how two people can visualise a third from completely different perspectives!)
When Sir John suggests to Marianne that she will soon be setting her cap at Willoughby, Marianne scolds him saying:
That is an expression, Sir John, which I particularly dislike. I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and, ‘setting one’s cap at a man’, or ‘making a conquest’, are the most odious of all.
Marianne, far from being overshadowed by her elder sister, is described as having ‘never much toleration for any thing like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of taste from herself …’. Here she demonstrates that although the Dashwood family are dependent on Sir John’s hospitality she, for one, does not intend to suffer the use of expressions which she considers to be both ‘gross and illiberal’.
When Willoughby presents Marianne with a horse, Elinor expresses reservations about her sister receiving a gift from someone whom she has known for such a short time, and about whom she knows so little. To which Marianne replies haughtily:
You are mistaken, Elinor, in supposing I know very little of Willoughby. I have not known him very long indeed, but I am better acquainted with him, than with any other creature in the world, except yourself and Mamma.
When Willoughby suddenly announces that he is departing on business to London, and has no idea when he will return, the effect on Marianne is devastating:
[She] came hastily out of the parlour apparently in violent affliction, with her handkerchief at her eyes … This violent
oppression of spirits continued the whole evening. She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself. The slightest mention of any thing relative to Willoughby overpowered her in an instant.
When Elinor, hitherto the more sagacious one, expresses the view that wealth has much to do with happiness, Marianne disagrees. It is her view that:
Money can only give happiness when there is nothing else to give it. Beyond a competence, it can afford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned.
When Edward Ferrars travels from Norland to visit the Dashwoods at Barton Cottage, and then disappoints them all by declaring that he is to go away, Elinor reacts in her typically controlled way. As soon as he is out of the house she sits down at her drawing-table and:
… busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor avoided the mention of his name, [and] appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in the general concerns of the family.
Lucy Steele and her sister Anne, distant relations of Sir John, are invited to stay with him at Barton Park. Lucy drops a bombshell when she confides to Elinor that not only is she engaged to Edward Ferrars, but that she has been so for four years. At this news Elinor manages to maintain the composure of her voice, ‘under which was concealed an emotion and distress beyond any thing she had ever felt before. She was mortified, shocked, confounded’.
Marianne is equally disappointed with Willoughby. When she writes to him, he responds by returning her letters and the
lock of hair which she had given him and tells her that he is shortly to be married to Miss Grey, an heiress with
£
50,000. At this Marianne exclaims: ‘Oh! How easy for those who have no sorrow of their own … Happy, happy Elinor, you cannot have an idea of what I suffer’. But when Marianne learns of Edward Ferrars’ engagement to Lucy Steele she is filled with compassion for Elinor and says to her sister, ‘What! – while attending me in all my misery, has this been on your heart? – and I have reproached you for being happy!’
Willoughby arrives on the scene to explain to Elinor the reason for his bad behaviour towards Marianne. ‘I have been always a blockhead, I have not been always a rascal’, he says. And then he declares that notwithstanding his affection for Marianne and despite her attachment to him, these factors were:
all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased.
In other words, for Willoughby, pecuniary considerations must take precedence over romantic feelings. Having heard how guilty and miserable Willoughby now feels about the whole business, Elinor’s heart is softened – Jane Austen could never believe that any character (even one such as Willoughby) was wholly bad; everyone has
some
redeeming features.
Elinor’s hopes of Edward Ferrars are dashed when she learns that he is married to Lucy Steele. However, when she and Edward meet, he explains that it is actually his brother Robert who has married Miss Steele. He then asks Elinor to marry him. All ends happily for Marianne also; she marries Colonel Brandon, and in doing so ‘found that her own happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of each observing friend’.
In
Sense and Sensibility
the sisters Elinor and Marianne react to setbacks in their romantic aspirations in different ways: the former calmly and stoically; the latter histrionically. And yet, both these coping mechanisms are effective in seeing them through to a happy ending.
The two sisters mirror the real life Jane and Cassandra Austen, who when they experience similar problems confide in one another and offer mutual support in precisely the same way. Also, Jane reflects the dread that insecurity can bring. She had doubtless heard how her father, the Revd Austen’s great-grandfather John (born
c
.1670), had bequeathed his lands and estate entirely to his eldest grandson (also John), leaving his wife Elizabeth and their six sons and one daughter penniless. Jane would also have been aware of her father’s own suffering when, as a child, he and his siblings were expelled from the family home by their step-mother Susanna Kelk.
On 17 January 1797 James was remarried to Mary Lloyd. In that year Thomas Knight II’s widow Catherine, transferred to Jane’s brother Edward, the Knights’ adoptive son, Godmersham Park in Kent, and the estates of Steventon and Chawton in Hampshire, together with most of her late husband’s fortune. This provided the latter with an income of
£
5,000 per annum. Meanwhile, Catherine retired to White Friars – a house in Canterbury.
July 1797 saw Eliza de Feullide debating with herself which of her ‘variety of rural Plans … to adopt’, one of her options
being to ‘retire into the embowering shades of the Rectory [i.e. Steventon]’.
1
Jane and Cassandra visited Bath in November 1797 accompanied by their mother Mrs Cassandra Austen. Here, they stayed for about a month with Jane’s aunt and uncle, James and Jane Leigh-Perrot (James being Mrs Austen’s brother). The Leigh-Perrots were accustomed to spending about half the year in the city, where they rented a house at 1 Paragon Buildings. In the same month George Austen wrote to the London publisher Thomas Cadell, to inform them that he was in possession of a manuscript (Jane’s novel
First Impressions
), and to see if they might be interested in publishing it. An answer in the negative was received.