Sensibilityの行方 : Sense and SensibilityからPersuasionへ
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概要
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It was in the middle of the 18^<th> century that "sentiment" and "sensibility" became the key words of the age. The interest in "feeling" was a powerful reaction against Classicism which dominated the first half of the 18^<th> century with emphasis on "reason." Sentimental novels were in full bloom, involving the female writers and readers and accelerating the popularity with a great help of circular libraries. Yet it is very difficult to define "sensibility" as The Universal Magazine (1778) called it "the enigmatic moral feeling" which was a moral view based on the unreliable feeling. Which should come first, "morality" or "feeling sense" or "sensibility"? This question caused perpetual controversy within the novels in those days. Jane Austen (1775-1817) underwent the flourish of sentimental novels when she was a girl and she began her career as a writer to see clearly the relation between "moral feeling" and society. Jane Austen dealt with "sensibility in 1790s" in her work SS (written from 1796,published 1811) examining it through the failure of Marianne Dashwood's first love with John Willoughby. Austen tried to control Marianne's delightful sensibility by Elinor's prudent persuasion and Brandon's patriarchy. Our expectation that Marianne would grow through the conflict between sense and sensibility fails when we see that she married Colonel Brandon before she loved him. Austen failed to bring her heroine into a higher level of recognition. Here is "something punitive" as Tony Tanner indicates. At the end of the 18^<th> century, the English society dramatically began to guard against "sensibility" which had been a new social bond of the middle classes, because sensibility proved that it could be a radical feeling in the French Revolution. Yet the female writers were cornered because sensibility was considered as the women's own peculiar quality. How to deal with it in their writings? This perplexity couldn't help but suppress Marianne's spontaneous response within herself. Austen was to pay off a great debt on Marianne in P (1818). In P, the first love of the heroine is realized. Condemned sensibility in SS is admitted as a creative one for 27-year-oId Anne Elliot. P is the work to rethink SS. The new age's advent made Austen predict that her novels had to overcome the 18^<th> century proposition, the discord between sense and sensibility. The heroine in P chooses a man without estate, which is quite new in Austen's works. What does it mean to cut her from the social bond with the community? A new proposal of "elasticity of mind" is another way to ride out the storm of life in the 19th century. What could be seen through two works cleverly arranged to reflect Austen's trace of sensibility?
- 川村学園女子大学の論文
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関連論文
- 『フランケンシュタイン』にみられる知性と感性の分裂
- Sensibilityの行方 : Sense and SensibilityからPersuasionへ
- 十八・九世紀女性作家にみられる父娘像
- ジェイン・オースティンの大いなる逆転 : "ノーサンガー僧院"と"ユドルフォ城の秘密"の比較から
- 2. Sensibilityの行方 : 『分別と多感』から『説得』へ(日本英文学会第71回大会報告)
- 神尾美津雄著, 『他者の登場-イギリス・ゴシック小説の周辺-』, 近代文芸社, 1994年, iv+252pp.