Sense and Sensibility

Sense & Sensibility was begun by Jane Austen when she was in her early twenties. It was originally conceived as an epistolatory novel but was much revised before finding the final form it was published in in 1811. Austen was by now in her mid-thirties. Traces of the original epistolatory form can still be seen in the novel. The long (and improbable) narration by Col Brandon in Chapter 31 of the history of Eliza Williams, her daughter and Willoughby’s seduction reads like a long letter reproduced within quotation marks, interspersed with added ejaculations of shock from Elinor.

The revisions allowed Austen to add some notable dialogue – in Chapter 2 in the discussion between John and Fanny Dashwood where Fanny, step by step, persuades her husband of the unwisdom of helping financially his bereaved sister and her daughters, Elinor and Marianne. Dialogue too in Willoughby’s return and heart-rending plea to Elinor for forgiveness; the conversations between Elinor and the scheming Lucy Steele; and most touching of all at the end of the book in the conversation with Elinor, where Marianne concedes her faults and comes to an accommodation with her loss of Willoughby.

The return of Willoughby, at the moment he thinks Marianne is dying, is the one scene (shamefully omitted in the Ang Lee film version) where Austen almost touches tragedy. For we see more depth in Willoughby than we have so far. We see in him now something much more than the libertine Col Brandon paints. We see a flawed, passionate human being, distracted by his undying love for Marianne and his own fears of poverty and destitution. He asks for forgiveness. Willoughby needs forgiveness so he can fashion some kind of accommodation with a life without the woman he loves. So he makes a rational marriage with Miss Grey, but one without love.

Marianne too needs to forgive Willoughby so that she can move away from her all-embracing obsession and search for love, symbolised in the fever that nearly kills her. She too is a flawed, passionate human being, distracted by her undying love for Willoughby and her fears of life without love. She too makes a rational marriage – to Col Brandon.

The parallel is striking. Note this minor, but interesting, point. Willoughby marries Miss Grey with £50,000. At 4% this gives an income of £2,000 a year. Col Brandon has £2,000 a year.

Some absurdities. First Col Brandon is a cipher on the page, hardly existing as a being of flesh and blood who could fall in love with Marianne. Her mother’s account of him opening his heart to her in the carriage from Barton is risible.

Second, the contrivance whereby Robert Ferrars, having succeeded to the Norfolk estate after Edward disinheritance for his engagement to Lucy Steele, then himself marries her. This is simply a plot device to clear the way for Edward to marry Elinor (Austen uses a similar trick in Persuasion) which severely strains credulity.

Third, Marianne falling in love with Col Brandon. This is dealt with summarily in one paragraph in the final chapter. It is simply inconceivable. Nothing in Marianne's words or actions have prepared for this. She loves Willoughby and none other. Austen sentimentalises the ending in this pretence of love for Brandon, and in doing so belies the character she has created.

Of the two sisters only Elinor finds love and keeps it.