194 Austen, Jane
her, and she becomes infatuated with John Wil-
loughby after a very romantic introduction. Novels
of sensibility were popular a few decades prior to the
publication of this novel, and Marianne represents a
type of femininity that is no longer considered to be
ideal. Even her features are more attractive than Eli-
nor’s “regular” ones, as though Marianne’s immoder-
ate beauty parallels her excessive feeling and Elinor’s
reasonableness is mirrored by her more moderate
beauty. Marianne’s relationship with Willoughby
must end badly; their feelings develop too quickly,
they are too rash, and he is a rake—the antithesis
of proper masculinity. Only after her illness can she
learn to be calm, to compose herself and control her
emotion. She learns to desire further education,
repents her selfishness, and expresses her wish that
her behavior and conduct had been more like Eli-
nor’s. Now that she embraces her feminine role, the
attractions of an appropriately masculine gentleman
like Colonel Brandon are not lost on her. They come
to complement one another and marry, and, based
on the optimism with which Austen speaks of their
future happiness, we can assume that the union is
harmonious.
On the other hand, the colonel’s friends, Sir John
and Lady Middleton, cannot make the same claim
to propriety that he may. Sir John is boisterous and
kindly, and his wife is elegant and polite, yet he is
also a bit too intimate with guests, and she is actu-
ally indifferent to everyone but her children. He is
far too warm in society, and she is much too cold.
Neither performs the proper gender role, and they
appear, consequently, incompatible and trapped in a
mismatched marriage.
Even further from the ideals of masculinity and
femininity are John and Fanny Dashwood. John is
controlled by his wife, coerced through her conniv-
ing selfishness into breaking the promise he made to
his father on his deathbed. Fanny schemes, pursuing
acquaintances who will further her social standing,
ignoring inferior family members and manipulat-
ing others. Neither appears to be really happy: John
must live with the suspicion of his own inefficacy,
and Fanny nearly dies of disappointment when her
brother Edward’s secret engagement to an unsuit-
able woman is revealed—and then her other brother
Robert marries this very woman.
Perhaps furthest from performing their proper
feminine role are the Misses Anne and Lucy Steele.
Anne is unattractive in every way and developing
into a spinster. She is socially inappropriate, verbally
free with her acquaintances, and an embarrass-
ment to her sister. Lucy is attractive and clever but
also calculating and deceitful. She purposely hurts
Elinor by forcing Elinor into her confidence with
regard to her secret, and very improper, engagement
to Edward. Lucy’s selfish intentions become clearer
when she abandons Edward, once he has been made
poor, and marries his brother Robert, newly rich.
When one considers Lucy’s deficiencies, as well
as the fact that she had once described her future
husband as a coxcomb (a sentiment seconded by
Elinor), we can conjecture that her marriage, though
well-funded, will be neither a happy nor a loving
one. In this novel, two people who are so unable to
perform their appropriate gender roles are likewise
unable to complement each other in the easy way
these roles are meant to permit.
Laura L. GuggenheiminnOcence and experience in Sense and
Sensibility
In Sense and Sensibility, Marianne, the middle Dash-
wood sister, and Elinor, the eldest, in many ways
embody the qualities of innocence and experience,
respectively. Innocence, in the context of this novel,
really means the absence of a general knowledge
of society, lacking an understanding of its rules as
well as how to cope, both personally and publicly,
with strong emotions like love, disappointment,
and loss. Marianne, for example, is quick to form
emotional attachments and sees no need to veil her
feelings in public, no matter how improper they
might seem. She believes, in fact, that true feelings
run so deep that they cannot be disguised under any
circumstances. To be “experienced,” on the other
hand, means that one understands the ways of the
world and accepts that adherence to social codes,
at least to a certain degree, is necessary in order
to maintain the good opinion of society and avoid
shame, and, on another level, to protect oneself. Eli-
nor has developed a certain level of experience, and
she knows that to veil one’s emotions in public is to