Sense and Sensibility -時代精神と女達の価値観-

概要

論文の詳細を見る
Is Jane Austen a moral conservative? Is she a romantic or a classicist? Critics' opinions are divided, especially with the recent emphasis on some ambiguous and disturbing implications in the text. It is more fruitful to ask such questions in the context of what was happening in the history of thought and also in the history of the Novel from the eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century. Especially with Austen's Sense and Sensibility, it is important to study the history of the ideas behind the title. The concept of "sensibility"developed in the general atmosphere of the aesthetic thought of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson,with the emphasis on man's sensitivity,feelings and resulting humanistic moral sense, against the more socially deterministic view of Hobbes and Locke who did not believe in the natural goodness and moral judgment of man. Why the idea of "sensibility"became popular in the middle-class society, which sought gentleman's ideals(man of taste,man of sensibility,etc), can be explained both from the wish of the rising middle-class people to find self-identity and from their need to justify their otherwise profit-seeking,self-centred actions and turn of mind. In literaturem, while the idea of "sensibility" became genuinely important in the formation of romantic poetry, it also became influential as a more controversial, possibly corrupt, popular sentiment in what are called "sentimental novels". Though in Richardson's novels themselves the heroine's moral judgment against the corruptive environment was important by itself, the pattern alone of the martyred young heroine,who,being pure, defies the evil social forces and is painfully violated and destroyed by them, prevailed in those sentimental novels. The popular fiction, with its tendency for repetition, exaggeration and melo-drama, however, reflects keenly the dilemma of fiction, which from its middle-class origin and readership always stood between the individual passion and the social reality, between "sensibility"and "sense". Austen's early works developed as a parody of the sentimental novels. The story of Sense and Sensibility, too, is basically a parody. Marianne, the heroine of sensibility, makes nothing of social conventions and practical considerations and is miserably betrayed by her lover who, she trusted, fully shared her sensibility but chose to marry a richer woman for money. She is barely saved from madness and death by her sister Elinor whose "sense"or cool-headed judgment never fails her. What characterizes Elinor is not rigid reason but a sense of balance between the individual needs and the demands of the society-what in a more general sense could be called"common sense". Even so, if we look beneath the story at the tension, pain, irresolution and sense of loss and of guilt, which strikes Elinor no less than Marianne, we begin to see the novel as a fuller discussion or questioning of the very ideas of "sense"and "sensibility".
神戸女学院大学の論文
1993-03-00

Sense and Sensibility -時代精神と女達の価値観-

スポンサーリンク

概要

著者

関連論文

スポンサーリンク