by Jane Austen
Now when we come to bring together in a few sentences Jane Austen’s contribution to fiction, it is quite clear what must be said. She was a realist. She gave anew to the novel an art and a style, which it once had had, particularly in Fielding, but which it had since lost. Fielding was master of two styles, the burlesque and the rich eloquence of the great orators and moralists; he was at will Cervantic and Demosthenic. Jane Austen’s style is the language of everyday life—even with a tinge of its slang—to which she has added an element of beauty. In the manipulation of characters and events, she left much less to chance than did Fielding.
—from The Development of the English Novel (1908)
QUESTIONS
1. Who would you rather have as a friend, or even a lover—Marianne or Elinor? Why?
2. Wilbur Cross describes Jane Austen as a “realist.” Can you be a realist if you leave out as much of life as she does? Does she know anything about what we now call “life”?
3. Beneath or beyond the changes in consciousness and material circumstances, does what goes on in Sense and Sensibility still go on?
4. Sense and Sensibility, like Jane Austen’s other novels, has been a steady seller for some two hundred years. What do you think is the source of their continued popularity? Is it the prose? The marriage plot? The milieu? The kinds of lives the characters can afford to live?
For Further Readinz
BIOGRAPHIES AND LETTERS
Austen-Leigh, James Edward. A Memoir of Jane Austen. London: Richard Bentley, 1870. The earliest biography of Austen, written by her nephew.
Austen-Leigh, William, and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh. Jane Austen: A Family Record. Edited by Deirdre Le Faye. London: The British Library, 1989. A revised and enlarged edition of the original text written by the son and grandson of James Austen-Leigh.
Fergus, Jan. Jane Austen: A Literary Life. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. An accomplished biography of Austen that focuses on her place in the literary world of England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Laski, Marghanita. Jane Austen. Revised edition. London: Thames and Hudson, 1975; reprinted 1997. Originally published in 1969 as Jane Austen and Her World, this is a wonderfully illustrated biography of Austen, with portraits of the author and her family, photographs and sketches of the various places where she lived, and maps to familiarize readers with Austen’s England.
Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen’s ‘Outlandish Cousin’: The Life and Letters of Eliza de Feuillide. London: The British Library, 2002. An in-depth consideration of the life and letters of Austen’s fascinating cousin, with lovely illustrations.
Le Faye, Deirdre, ed. Jane Austen’s Letters. Third edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. An accessible and beautifully annotated collection of Austen’s letters.
Myer, Valerie Grosvenor. Jane Austen: Obstinate Heart: A Biography. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1997. A well-crafted biography of Austen that includes details of her hobbies and interests apart from her career as a novelist.
Nokes, David. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. A thorough and comprehensive study of Austen’s life and works.
Shields, Carol. Jane Austen. Penguin Lives Series. New York: Penguin, 2001. Shields does a nice job of highlighting the major episodes of Austen’s life while offering her own astute commentary on the writings.
Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. A lively, readable, and informative contemporary biography of Austen.
CRITICISM
Armstrong, Isobel. Sense and Sensibility. Penguin Critical Studies. London and New York: Penguin, 1994. Includes a compelling discussion of the Dashwood sisters as intellectual women of the late eighteenth century.
Chapman, R. W. Jane Austen: Facts and Problems. The Clark Lectures. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Chapman edited the standard edition of Jane Austen’s works and is considered the historical authority on Austen’s life and writings.
Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Butler analyzes Sense and Sensibility in relation to other anti-Jacobin novels, arguing that sensibility is linked to notions of individualism and self-worship.
Favret, Mary. Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics and the Fiction of Letters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. A discussion of Sense and Sensibility in relation to the significance of letters and the epistolary genre.
Gay, Penny. Jane Austen and the Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. A wonderful study of Austen’s use of the theater and theatrical themes in her novels.
Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Johnson’s brilliant discussion of Sense and Sensibility centers on questions about the family.
Lynch, Deirdre Shauna. The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Lynch’s excellent study considers Austen’s relationship to the expansion of commercial print culture and the literary market of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. An analysis of the ironies and complexities of the relationship between sense and sensibility.
Tanner, Tony. Jane Austen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. A significant, widely read study of Austen’s works.
Troost, Linda, and Sayre Greenfield, eds. Jane Austen in Holly-wood. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998. A collection of essays that explore Austen’s appeal to filmmakers and contemporary audiences.
OTHER WORKS CITED IN THE INTRODUCTION
Austen-Leigh, William, and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh. Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1913.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Vindication of the Rights of Woman. New York: Penguin, 1983.
a Stepmother.
b Part of the house that included the kitchen and pantry.
c A large amount of money left for a wife after the death of her husband.
d Thicket or hiding place for game.
e Carriage hung between two wheels and pulled by a team of horses.
f Street address.
g Means post-chaise, a carriage led by six horses; an expensive and efficient mode of transportation.
h Illegitimate daughter.
i Lowlands; valleys.
j Chic carriages.
k About to give birth.
l Campaigning for the upcoming election.
m Method of cutting and rolling slim strips of paper to imitate intricate metal-work.
n Popular card game.
o Smelling salts made from a mixture containing ammonia.
p Shelter built for doves.
q Fish ponds.
r Place where debtors were sent in an attempt to collect payments for their debts before they were locked up in debtor’s prison.
s Met to fight a duel.
t Menagerie housed in a building in London on the north side of the Strand.
u Joseph Bonomi (1739-1808), a fashionable London architect.
v Teething rash.
w Clever person.
x Screen placed in front of the fireplace during the summer months.
y Winding drive.
z A hanger is a wood on the side of a steep hill or bank.
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