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
Norton Critical Edition of
Sense and Sensibility contains a number of such responses in its supplementary material. An "Unsigned Review" in the February 1812
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". Elinor and her mother are praised, while Marianne's extreme sensibility is seen as bringing unhappiness on herself. 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 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." Also discussed is the children's function in highlighting "the folly of their mothers", especially in Lady Middleton's case. 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. 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 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.
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. 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. 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. Mary Favret explores the contrast through examining popular forms of fiction of the time. 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." 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. Because of this vulnerability, Galperin contends that
Sense and Sensibility shows
marriage as the only practical solution "against the insecurity of remaining
an unmarried woman." 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. 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. Austen shows, according to Poovey, this conflict between individual desire and the restraint of moral principles through the character of Elinor herself. 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". His condition underlines the historical problem of labour in Western industrialised societies. Edward's alienation also represents "the progressive estrangement from nonhuman nature" 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. ==Publication history==