Editing Sense and Sensibility (section)

== Critical views ==
===19th century responses===
Early reviews of ''Sense and Sensibility'' focused on the novel as providing lessons in conduct (which would be debated by later critics), as well as reviewing the characters. The [[W. W. Norton & Company|Norton Critical Edition]] of ''Sense and Sensibility'' contains a number of such responses in its supplementary material. An "Unsigned Review" in the February 1812 [[The Critical Review (newspaper)|''Critical Review'']] praises the novel as well-written and realistic, with well-drawn characters and a "highly pleasing" plot in which "the whole is just long enough to interest the reader without fatiguing".<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Sense and Sensibility: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism|last=Anonymous|publisher=Norton|year=2002|location=New York|pages=313–324|chapter=Early Views}}</ref> Elinor and her mother are praised, while Marianne's extreme sensibility is seen as bringing unhappiness on herself.<ref name=":0" /> 

Another "Unsigned Review" from the May 1812 ''[[British Critic]]'' further emphasises the novel's function as a type of conduct book. In this author's opinion, Austen's favouring of Elinor's temperament over Marianne's provides the lesson.<ref name=":0" /> The reviewer claims that "the object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined and excessive susceptibility on the other."<ref name=":0" /> He goes on to state that the book contains "many sober and salutary maxims for the conduct of life" within a "very pleasing and entertaining narrative."<ref name=":0" /> 

W. F. Pollock's 1861 article for ''[[Fraser's Magazine|Frasier's Magazine]],'' on "British Novelists" is described as an "early example of what would become the customary view of ''Sense and Sensibility."''<ref name=":8">{{Cite book|title=Sense and Sensibility: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism|url=https://archive.org/details/sensesensibility00aust_089|url-access=limited|last=Pollock|first=W.F.|publisher=Norton|year=2002|editor-last=Johnson|editor-first=Claudia|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/sensesensibility00aust_089/page/n332 313]–324|chapter="British Novelists"|isbn=9780393977516}}</ref> In addition to emphasising the novel's morality, Pollock reviews the characters in catalogue-like fashion, allotting praise and criticism on the assumption that Austen favours Elinor's point of view and temperament.<ref name=":8" /> and extending it to the minor characters. Mrs Palmer is silly, Sir John Dashwood is selfish, the behaviour of the Steele sisters is vulgar. <ref name=":8" /> However, an anonymous piece titled "Miss Austen" published in 1866 in ''[[The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine]]'' departs from other early criticism in sympathising with Marianne over Elinor, claiming that Elinor is "too good" a character.<ref name=":9">{{Cite book|title=Sense and Sensibility: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism.|last=Anonymous|publisher=Norton|year=2002|location=New York|pages=318|chapter="Miss Austen"}}</ref> The article also differs from other reviews in its claim that the "prevailing merit" of the book is not in its sketch of the two sisters; rather, the book is effective because of its "excellent treatment of the subordinate characters."<ref name=":9" /> [[Alice Meynell]]'s 1894 article "The Classic Novelist" in the ''[[Pall Mall Gazette]]'' also concurs with Austen's attention to small things and minor characters and small matters since "that which makes life, art, and work trivial is a triviality of relations."<ref name=":10">{{Cite book|title=Sense and Sensibility: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism|last=Meynell|first=Alice|publisher=Norton|year=2002|location=New York|pages=320–321|chapter="The Classic Novelist"}}</ref> Also discussed is the children's function in highlighting "the folly of their mothers", especially in Lady Middleton's case.<ref name=":10" />

===Characterisation===
As used by Austen, the word "sense" signifies good judgment, wisdom, or prudence, and "sensibility" signifies sensitivity, sympathy, or emotionality. By changing the title from the names of the sisters Elinor and Marianne in her first choice of title to that of their qualities, Austen adds "philosophical depth" to what began as a sketch of two characters.<ref>{{cite book |first=Harold |last=Bloom |year=2009 |title=Bloom's Modern Critical Reviews: Jane Austen |location=New York |publisher=Infobase Publishing |page=252 |isbn=978-1-60413-397-4}}</ref> However, these characteristics, as demonstrated through the dominant behaviour of the sisters, are not mutually exclusive. Although their qualities are compared and contrasted through means of the plot, neither sister is a one-sided caricature. Humanised through emotional suffering, Marianne's sympathy for her sister teaches her self-control and prudence, while Elinor learns to express her emotions more overtly.<ref>Anna Stanisz-Lubowiecka, [https://www.academia.edu/37806292/ The_Semantics_of_Sense_and_Sensibility_The_Meaning_of_the_Title_Words_in_Jane_Austen_s_Novel "The Semantics of ''Sense & Sensibility'': The Meaning of the Title Words in Jane Austen's Novel"], Academia 2015</ref>

Nevertheless, the changes to the original novel's structure are never resolved in the eyes of some critics. [[A. Walton Litz]] judged that ''Sense and Sensibility'' is "caught uneasily between burlesque and the serious novel…in which the crude antitheses of the original structure were never successfully overcome". [[Tony Tanner (scholar)|Tony Tanner]] sees a shift of view instead to "the tensions between the potential instability of the individual and the required stabilities of society", as demonstrated by the influence of the governing qualities on the younger and the older sister. While sensibility has its positive aspects, its over-cultivation leads in the novel to the [[psychosomatic disorders]] to which Marianne nearly succumbs.<ref>Tony Tanner, ''Jane Austen'', Harvard University 1986, [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=khvEXPSIOYgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=meaning+%22Sense+and+Sensibility%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjR3vv6pfuKAxU8_rsIHbKcKc8Q6AF6BAgKEAI#v=onepage&q=meaning%20%22Sense%20and%20Sensibility%22&f=false Chapter 3, "Secrecy and Sickness"]</ref>

[[Claire Tomalin]] too argues that ''Sense and Sensibility'' has a "wobble in its approach", which developed because Austen, in the course of writing the novel, gradually became less certain about whether sense or sensibility should triumph.<ref>{{cite book |first=Claire |last=Tomalin |year=1997 |title=Jane Austen: A Life |location=New York |publisher=Random House |page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780679446286/page/155 155] |isbn=0-679-44628-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780679446286/page/155 }}</ref> Austen characterises Marianne as a sweet person with attractive qualities: intelligence, musical talent, frankness, and the capacity to love deeply. She also acknowledges that Willoughby, with all his faults, continues to love and, in some measure, appreciate Marianne. For these reasons, some readers find Marianne's ultimate marriage to Colonel Brandon an unsatisfactory ending.<ref>{{cite book |first=Claire |last=Tomalin |year=1997 |title=Jane Austen: A Life |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780679446286/page/156 156–157] |isbn=0-679-44628-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780679446286/page/156 }}</ref>

In [[Rachel Brownstein]]’s opinion, the differences between the Dashwood sisters have been exaggerated, and in fact the sisters are more alike than they are different, with Elinor having an "excellent heart" and being capable of the same romantic passions as Marianne feels, while Marianne has much sense as well. Elinor is more reserved, more polite, and less impulsive than Marianne, who loves poetry, taking walks across picturesque landscapes and believes in intense romantic relationships, but it is this very closeness between the sisters that allows these differences to emerge during their exchanges.<ref name="ReferenceA">Brownstein, Rachel "Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice" pages 32–57 from ''The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen'', Cambridge University Press, 1997, page 43.</ref> 

Mary Favret explores the contrast through examining popular forms of fiction of the time. <ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics, and the Fiction of Letters|last=Favret|first=Mary|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1993|pages=145–153}}</ref> In [[epistolary fiction]], action, dialogue, and character interactions are all reflected through letters sent from one or more of the characters. In exploring Austen's fraught relationship with such fiction, Favret surveys how Austen "wrestled with epistolary form" in previous writings and, with the publication of ''Sense and Sensibility'', "announced her victory over the constraints of the letter". Favret contends that Austen's version of the letter separates her from her "admired predecessor, [[Samuel Richardson]]" in that Austen's letters are "a misleading guide to the human heart which, in the best instances, is always changing and adapting."<ref name=":1" /> According to Favret, the character of Elinor Dashwood is an "anti-epistolary heroine" whose "inner world" of thoughts and feelings does not find "direct expression in the novel, although her point of view controls the story."<ref name=":1" /> ''Sense and Sensibility'' establishes what Favret calls a "new privacy" in the novel, which was constrained by previous notions of the romance of letters.<ref name=":1" /> This new privacy is a "less constraining mode of narration" in which Austen's narrator provides commentary on the action, rather than the characters themselves through the letters.<ref name=":1" /> Favret claims that in ''Sense and Sensibility'', Austen wants to "recontextualize" the letter and bring it into a "new realism."<ref name=":1" /> Austen does so by imbuing the letter with dangerous power when Marianne writes to Willoughby; both their love and the letter "prove false".<ref name=":1" /> Additionally, Favret claims that Austen uses the correspondence of both of the sisters to emphasise the contrasts in their personalities.<ref name=":1" /> When both write letters upon arriving in London, Elinor's letter is the "dutiful letter of the 'sensible sister'" and Marianne writes a "vaguely illicit letter" reflecting her characterisation as the "sensitive" sister".<ref name=":1" /> What is perhaps most striking about Favret's analysis is that she notes that the lovers who write to one another never unite with each other.<ref name=":1" />

===Societal themes===
A common theme of Austen criticism has been on the legal aspects of society and the family, particularly wills, the rights of first and second sons, and lines of inheritance. Gene Ruoff's book ''Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility'' explores these issues in an extended discussion of the novel. The first two chapters deal extensively with the subject of wills and the discourse of inheritance. These topics reveal what Ruoff calls "the cultural fixation on priority of male birth".<ref name=":6">{{Cite book|title=Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility|last=Ruoff|first=Gene|publisher=Harvester Wheatshaff|year=1992}}</ref> According to Ruoff, male birth is by far the dominant issue in these legal conversations. Ruoff observes that, within the linear family, the order of male birth decides issues of eligibility and merit.<ref name=":6" /> When Robert Ferrars becomes his mother's heir, Edward is no longer appealing to his "opportunistic" fiancée Lucy, who quickly turns her attention to the foppish Robert and "entraps him" in order to secure the inheritance for herself.<ref name=":6" /> Ruoff comments that Lucy is specifically aiming for the heir because of the monetary advantage.<ref name=":6" /> William Galperin, in his book ''The History Austen,'' comments on the tendency of this system of patriarchal inheritance and earning as working to ensure the vulnerability of women.<ref name=":7">{{Cite book|title=The History Austen|url=https://archive.org/details/historicalausten0000galp|url-access=registration|last=Galperin|first=William H.|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|year=2003}}</ref> Because of this vulnerability, Galperin contends that ''Sense and Sensibility'' shows [[Marriage in the works of Jane Austen|marriage]] as the only practical solution "against the insecurity of remaining [[An Unmarried Woman|an unmarried woman]]."<ref name=":7" />

[[Feminist literary criticism|Feminist]] critics have long been engaged in conversations about Jane Austen, and ''Sense and Sensibility'' has figured in these discussions, especially in the context of the patriarchal system of inheritance and earning. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's seminal [[Feminist theory|feminist]] work ''[[The Madwoman in the Attic|The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination]]'' contains several discussions of this novel. The authors read the beginning of ''Sense and Sensibility'' as a retelling of ''[[King Lear]]'' from a female perspective and contend that these "reversals imply that male traditions need to be evaluated and reinterpreted from a female perspective."<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination|url=https://archive.org/details/madwomaninattic00sand|url-access=registration|last1=Gilbert|first1=Sandra M.|last2=Gubar|first2=Susan|publisher=Yale University Press|year=1979|pages=[https://archive.org/details/madwomaninattic00sand/page/120 120]–172}}</ref> Gilbert and Gubar argue that Austen explores the effects of patriarchal control on women, particularly in the spheres of employment and inheritance. In ''Sense and Sensibility'' they educe the fact that Mr. John Dashwood cuts off his stepmother and half sisters from their home as well as promised income, as an instance of these effects. They also point to the "despised" Mrs. Ferrars's tampering with the patriarchal line of inheritance in her disowning of her elder son, Edward Ferrars, as proof that this construction is ultimately arbitrary.<ref name=":2" /> Gilbert and Gubar contend that while ''Sense and Sensibility'''s ultimate message is that "young women like Marianne and Elinor must submit to powerful conventions of society by finding a male protector", women such as Mrs. Ferrars and Lucy Steele demonstrate how women can "themselves become agents of repression, manipulators of conventions, and survivors."<ref name=":2" /> In order to protect themselves and their own interests, Mrs. Ferrars and Lucy Steele must participate in the same patriarchal system that oppresses them.

In the chapter "''Sense and Sensibility:'' Opinions Too Common and Too Dangerous", from her book ''Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel,'' [[Claudia L. Johnson|Claudia Johnson]] also gives a feminist reading of ''Sense and Sensibility.'' She differs from previous critics, especially the earliest ones, in her contention that ''Sense and Sensibility'' is not, as it is often assumed to be, a "dramatized conduct book" that values "female prudence" (associated with Elinor's sense) over "female impetuosity" (associated with Marianne's sensibility).<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|title=Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel|last=Johnson|first=Claudia|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=1988|pages=49–72|chapter="Sense and Sensibility: Opinions Too Common and Too Dangerous"}}</ref> Rather, Johnson sees ''Sense and Sensibility'' as a "dark and disenchanted novel" that views "institutions of order" such as property, marriage, and family in a negative light, an attitude that makes the novel the "most attuned to social criticism" of Austen's works.<ref name=":3" /> According to Johnson, ''Sense and Sensibility'' critically examines the codes of propriety as well as their enforcement by the community.<ref name=":3" /> Key to Austen's criticism of society, runs Johnson's argument, is the depiction of the unfair marginalisation of women resulting from the "death or simple absence of male protectors."<ref name=":3" /> Additionally, the male characters in ''Sense and Sensibility'' are depicted unfavourably. Johnson calls the gentlemen in ''Sense and Sensibility'' "uncommitted sorts" who "move on, more or less unencumbered by human wreckage from the past."<ref name=":3" /> Johnson compares Edward to Willoughby in this regard, claiming that all of the differences between them as individuals do not hide the fact that their failures are actually identical; Johnson calls them both "weak, duplicitous, and selfish," lacking the honesty and forthrightness with which Austen endows other "exemplary gentlemen" in her work.<ref name=":3" /> 

[[Mary Poovey]]'s analysis in ''The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of [[Mary Wollstonecraft]], [[Mary Shelley]] and Jane Austen'' concurs with Johnson's on the dark tone of ''Sense and Sensibility.'' Poovey contends that ''Sense and Sensibility'' has a "somber tone" in which conflict breaks out between Austen's engagement with her "self-assertive characters" and the moral codes necessary to control their potentially "anarchic" desires.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|title=The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen|url=https://archive.org/details/properladywomanw0000poov|url-access=registration|last=Poovey|first=Mary|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=1984|isbn=9780226675282}}</ref> Austen shows, according to Poovey, this conflict between individual desire and the restraint of moral principles through the character of Elinor herself.<ref name=":4" /> Except for Elinor, all of the female characters in ''Sense and Sensibility'' experience some kind of female excess. Poovey argues that while Austen does recognise "the limitations of social institutions", she demonstrates the necessity of controlling the "dangerous excesses of female feeling" rather than liberating them.<ref name=":4" /> She does so by demonstrating that Elinor's self-denial, especially in her keeping of Lucy Steele's secret and willingness to help Edward, even though both of these actions were hurtful to her, ultimately contribute to her own contentment and that of others.<ref name=":4" /> In this way, Poovey contends that Austen suggests that the submission to society that Elinor demonstrates is the proper way to achieve happiness in life.

===Harmony with the environment===
The new discipline of [[Ecocriticism]] extends the examination of imbalance in Austen’s novels and finds that she "antedated Victorian novelists in predicting early signs of environmental manipulation and identifying the attitudes and practices that led to the ecological collapse of early nineteenth century England".<ref>Faten Hafez, [https://scholar.stjohns.edu/theses_dissertations/335/ "Representations of nature and ecological collapse in the novels of Jane Austen, Lydia Maria Child and Catharine Maria Sedgwick"], St John's University, 2021</ref> Susan Rowland's article "The 'Real Work': Ecocritical Alchemy and Jane Austen's ''Sense and Sensibility''" studies the effects of alienation upon Edward Ferrars and Marianne Dashwood. Edward feels out of place in society because he lacks what Rowland calls "useful employment".<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Rowland|first=Susan|date=2013|title=The 'Real Work': Ecocritical Alchemy and Jane Austen's Sense an Sensibility.|journal=Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment|volume=20|issue=2|pages=318–322|doi=10.1093/isle/ist021}}</ref> His condition underlines the historical problem of labour in Western industrialised societies. Edward's alienation also represents "the progressive estrangement from nonhuman nature"<ref name=":5" /> in modern society as a whole, only resolved in his case by becoming a "pastor". Rowland argues that human culture estranges people from nature rather than returning them to it, serving merely through the fact of ownership to bolster their place in the social order. Marianne’s emotional estrangement begins as she is ripped from the aesthetic enjoyment of her home environment, although ultimately she finds a new identity by uniting with Colonel Brandon on his estate at Delaford.<ref name=":5" />