Tue 13 Feb 2007
Sense and Sensibility was first published in November 1811, although the earliest draft of it, a lost sketch in letter form entitled Elinor and Marianne, had been written over fifteen years before.
It was the first of Jane Austen’s novels to be published.
As it’s title indicates, the novel is a study of contrasting temperaments.
The main characters are two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, both of whom are sensible, cultivated and affectionate. The difference between them is that Elinor, ’sense’, is moderate in her conduct and cautious in expressing feelings; whereas Marianne, ’sensibility’, is one for whom every emotion is to be felt keenly and expressed without reserve.
Marianne’s illness, which finally brings home to Willoughby what he has lost, causes a change in herself also. She comes to realize that we become the victims of our feelings, unless we can in some degree command them.
“I considered the past; I saw in my own behavior since the beginning of our acquaintance, nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself, and want of kindness to others. I saw that my own feelings had prepared my sufferings, and that my want of fortitude under them had almost led me to the grave. My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by myself, by such negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the time to be wrong. Had I died… it would have been self-destruction.”
Another famous example on the dangers of excessive sensibility is in Mrs. Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. The heroine, Emily St. Aubert, is warned by her dying father of the dangers of sensibility, of the unhappiness that attends the sensitive heart in a hard insensitive world:
“Above all, my dear Emily, ” said he, “do not indulge in the pride of fine feeling, the romantic error of amiable minds. Those, who really possess sensibility, ought early to be taught, that it is a dangerous quality, which is continually extracting the excess of misery, or delight, from every surrounding circumstance. And, since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute than our sense of good, we become the victims of our feelings, unless we can in some degree command them.”
And again:
“Beware, my love, I conjure you, of that self-delusion, which has been fatal to the peace of so many persons; beware of priding yourself on the gracefulness of sensibility; if you yield to this vanity, your happiness is lost for ever. Always remember how much more valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace of sensibility.”
Strength of fortitude…
To deprive your heart of love, in a self-protecting manner…
Sounded so true, but what kind of “strength” is that…
Now it makes… sense…