Style in Sense and Sensibility

Though Austen's style was highly individual, it is based on her close study of the eighteenth-century writers, whose simplicity, accuracy, and precision she admired and imitated. Austen picked up the technique, popularized by Fielding, of the omniscient narrator. But her particular style is more objective. While she definitely has an ironic point of view, she allows her characters freedom within this, for her implications are subtle, and in many cases reserved. A good example of this is shown in the development of the character of Mrs. Jennings. When we first meet her, we are told what to think of her: "Mrs. Jennings was a widow, with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world." But for the rest of the novel the author leaves us alone, and we discover by viewing Mrs. Jennings' actions that despite her obvious faults, she is really quite an amiable character. This lack of intrusion adds a sense of reality to the characters, for they are allowed to develop before our eyes. Character is vividly conveyed through direct speech. Charlotte Palmer's foolishness, Robert Ferrars' complacence and vanity, Mrs. Jennings' blunt good humor and common sense, and Anne Steele's vulgarity and lack of education are revealed in the way they express themselves.  

Despite the constant satire, there is a sense of psychological immediacy which increases the verisimilitude. Austen uses the consciousness of Elinor as the means through which to narrate her story. As Elinor is rarely treated ironically, her feelings and observations have a seriousness which transcends the ironic. Colonel Brandon, too, is hardly treated comically, and even Marianne, although often seen ironically, is finally taken seriously.

Contrast is used with line effect. Elinor's sense is contrasted with her sister's sensibility. Edward's loyalty to Lucy contrasts with Willoughby's betrayal of Marianne. Mrs. Jennings' good humor is in strong contrast to Mrs. Ferrars' sourness.

Every page of the novel reflects Austen's own quiet temperament, her good sense, and her humor. Though she can be satirical or ironic on either a small or a grand scale, she is never malicious, and her humor never exceeds the bounds of good taste and credibility.

It has been said that in Austen's novels "nothing ever happens." That is because she recognized her own limitations and kept within them. "What should I do with your strong, vigorous sketches, full of variety and glow?" she asked her nephew, a writer. "How could I possibly join them on to the little bits (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labor?"

In her own style, she is superb. The events of her story may not be startling, but she makes ordinary happenings as interesting, and sometimes as dramatic, as the most exciting adventure story or romance. Much of the perfection of her style comes from the infinite care and patience with which she polishes her work.

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Critical Reception - Sense & Sensibility

Much critical commentary on Sense and Sensibility deals with the terms referred to in the title—"sense" versus "sensibility." Some critics have concluded that Austen advocated a woman's possessing "sense," not "sensibility," while others have argued that Austen advocated possessing neither one nor the other, but a balance between the two. It is not surprising that a good deal of criticism on the novel revolved around comparisons of one type or another which harken back to the one Austen presents to readers in the title. Critics compare Elinor and Marianne, Willoughby and Edward Ferrars, and lesser characters such as Fanny Dashwood and Lucy Steele. One critic aligns the Dashwood sisters and Willoughby against the rest of the novel's characters. Commenting on other comparisons or "pairings," other critics note that Austen negotiates between actual and hypothetical language; private desire and public voice; epistolary and objective narration.
In addition, several critics have commented on the novel's position within feminist and gender studies. One critic finds the novel the most antifeminist of all Austen's books in its consideration of female authority and power, while another posits that feminist criticism is vital to evaluating Sense and Sensibility for the way in which it offers new ways of valuing the female experience. Yet another critic argues that Austen has created, through the character of Elinor, a female intellectual, signaling Austen's attempt to reshape ideas about gender through her novel.

Source: Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism, ©1999 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.

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Critical Essays Critical Reception of Sense and Sensibility

The nineteenth century contained a hotbed of critical views about the writer. Consistently inconsistent, critics, ranging from the fiery romantics to the subtle Victorians, could not agree.

Jane Austen's warmest admirers have always been men. Archbishop Whately and Macaulay both compared her with Shakespeare. Coleridge, Whewell, Tennyson, Sidney Smith, Andrew Bradley all spoke out in her favor.

Sir Walter Scott, the great romantic, had this to say: "That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiments is denied me." Affirmative acclaims could also be heard from Robert Southey, poet laureate and friend of the great romantics: "Her novels are more true to nature, and have, for my sympathies, passages of finer feeling than any others of this age." And of the Victorians, George Henry Lewes, George Eliot's devoted friend, said: "In spite of the sense of incongruity which besets us in the word prose Shakespeare, we confess the greatness of Miss Austen; her marvelous dramatic power seems, more than any thing in Scott, akin to the greatest quality in Shakespeare."

But adverse criticism rang as loudly as did the favorable. Because they did not rely on high-colored pictures of life, complicated plots, or supernatural terrors, the novels of Jane Austen seemed tame and commonplace to many readers of her time. Madame de Staël pronounced Austen's novels "vulgaires" (commonplace), and Charlotte Bronte said: "The passions are perfectly unknown to her. . . . Even to the feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition — too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress. Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands and feet. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and sentient target of death — this Miss Austen ignores." Thomas Carlyle dismissed Austen's novels as mere "dish washings," and Wordsworth "used to say that though he admitted that the novels were an admirable copy of life, he could not be interested in productions of that kind; unless the truth of nature were presented to him clarified, as it were, by the light of the imagination, it had scarce any attraction in his eyes" (quoted by Sara Coleridge).

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