Sense and Sensibility

Előszó

INTRODUCTION
Sense and Sensibility, written in 1811, was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be published. It had grown from a sketch entided Elinor and Marianne and tells of the romantic adventures of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, whose characters represent, respectively, sense and sensibility. Having been left at the financial mercy of their stepbrother by the unexpected death of their father, they retire with their mother to Devonshire. There, Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars and Marianne with the impecunious and unprincipled John Willoughby. Willoughby leaves for London causing Marianne great distress, and the sisters contrive an ill-judged visit to London where Marianne is brutally jilted by Willoughby, and is devastated. At the same time, Elinor discovers that Ferrars is secredy promised to the sly and conniving Lucy Steele. She hides her grief. However, when Edward Ferrars's mother hears of his engagement, she disinherits him and settles her property on his younger brother Robert, to whom Lucy prompdy transfers her affections. Relieved of his imprudent betrothal, and having acquired, through Marianne's long-time admirer Colonel Brandon, a living as a country clergyman, Ferrars proposes to Elinor and is accepted. Marianne, thoroughly disillusioned by Willoughby's behaviour, comes to realise the quiet attractions of the excellent Colonel Brandon.
Sense and Sensibility is a multi-layered novel of great distinction. At one level, it can be seen as a bourgeois tract on the importance of material security, especially important for middle-class young women with no social or political independence. More significandy, it marks the divide between the classical Augustan attitude represented by Elinor's sense, and the new passionate longings of the Romantic age that Marianne's sensibility exemplifies. Jane Austen, however, with her beady but amused eye, sees quite clearly that both are subordinate to the business of contriving a livelihood. Vissza