This document discusses analyzing Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility through a feminist literary criticism lens. It explores how the characters of Elinor and Marianne present different roles for women in society. The document also examines themes around marriage, economics, secrets, and the female authorial perspective in the novel. Feminist critics like Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue Austen subtly subverts conventions through her style and irony. The analysis suggests Marianne must sacrifice her private desires to achieve social resolution and a reconstituted self.

1. Sense and Sensibility
Viewing the novel through the feminist lens

2. Austenthrough
afeministlens
 Feminism: specific political movement, but also a word
that describes a variety of critical theories
 To some degree, it is impossible to separate these two
meanings, it’s also important for critical thought to
sometimes distinguish between feminism as a political
movement, and feminism as a set of various
philosophical inquiries.

3. Normative&
Descriptive
 Categorizing feminist beliefs into normative and
descriptive groups is a way of creating a framework for
discussing a lot of different types of concerns.
 Normative= how things should be
 Descriptive= how they are

4. Findingthe
source
 Biological?
 Socially constructed?
 Economic?

5. Re-Awakening
&Feminist
LiteraryCritique
 Adrienne Rich writes:
 “Re-vision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh
eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical
direction—is for us more than a chapter in cultural
history: it is an act of survival. Until we can
understand the assumptions in which we are drenched
we cannot know ourselves.”

6. Response?
 “Grouping women’s narratives together as feminist has
to do with “the recent cultural phenomenon of women’s
explicit self-identification as an oppressed group, which
is in turn articulated in literary texts in the
exploration of gender-specific concerns centered around
the problem of female identity.” —Rita Felski, Beyond
Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social
Change

7. Feminist
Criticism
 “For feminists, the question of how we read is
inextricably linked with the question of what we read.
More specifically, the feminist inquiry into the activity
of reading begins with the realization that the literary
canon is andocentric, and that this has a profoundly
damaging effect on women readers.” —Patrocinio
Schweickart, “Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist
Theory of Reading”

8. Feministliterary
lens
 Re-examining the male canon
 Expanding the canon to include female authors
 Examining literary works by women for themes related
to the condition for women, both in the universal and
historically specific contexts
 Examining the act of writing for women, from both a
stylistic & economic perspective
 Re-envisioning existing works, to read between the
lines of what has been written

9. Austenand
feministliterary
criticism
 Prior to 1970s feminist literary expansion, Austen’s
role as a feminist writer was not significant.
 Some have argued that Austen more than any other
writer benefited from the feminist literary movement,
which began to read her style and irony as itself as a
subversion of the confines women lived in during
Austen’s era.
 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (The Mad Woman in
the Attic) argue "For all her ladylike discretion . . .
Austen is rigorous in her revolt against the conventions
she inherited" Jane Austen is subversive, they find,
covering her ”discomfort", her "dissatisfaction," and her
"rebellious dissent" with conservative, conventional
plot strategies, thereby attaining "a woman's language
that is magnificently duplicitous"

10. Austenthrough
thefeminist
lens
 In what ways do Elinor and Marianne differ in terms of
presenting the roles of women in society?
 Does your view of either change by the end of the
novel?
 What role do secrets play in the novel, and what role
do they play in the characters’ inner lives?
 Why does Marianne get sick?
 What do you think Austen’s view on marriage is based
on the endings in the book?
 How are the economic realities the male characters
face different than those of the women?
 How do the polarities of “sense” and “sensibility”
perhaps also offer a lens for the female author herself?

11. “TheSacrificeofPrivacyin
Senseand Sensibility”by
GeorgeE.Haggerty
 “Marianne's dependence on metaphor and imagination
leads to self-consuming madness…she begins to
emerge from instability when she can order her
linguistic structures so as to include a sense of a world
beyond her private vision. Elinor, too, must discover
that her rejection of private desire in favor of screens
and surfaces and the maintenance of decorum will lead
her to a desolate future.”

12. Ibid
 Marianne is "saved" from her hysteria in order to be
swept into social resolution at the expense, of course, of
her seemingly aberrant private desire. Once her
sexuality has been harnessed, she fits more readily
into a position of social influence and public power. We
feel the sting of what has been sacrificed to achieve
this resolution, for Marianne plays her role in a power
structure that excludes her as effectively as it
celebrates her reconstituted self. Social relations
replace the private aspirations of sensibility and
establish an unfamiliar public role for the heroine.
What private value is not lost is redirected toward
"new attachments.”
 Foucault analysis

13. Butonamore
cheerfulnote
 Sense and Sensibility is Austen’s first novel, and
perhaps her least sophisticated (depending on your
point of view), but it also lays the way for Austen to
resolve these conflicts, as a novelist, between “sense”
and “sensibility,” and the way she wants to write her
heroines. Her characters take a very strong turn
toward independence, as you’ll see next week when we
start Pride and Prejudice.

14. Adaptation
 Emma Thompson’s adaptation presents the challenges
of bridging the gap between historical eras while
preserving the fundamental veracities explored in the
original.
 In the case of Austen, as discussed in “From Page to
Screen” also requires supplementing narrative and
voice with visual language.
 “Austen’s reemergence demonstrates progressive,
feminist elements at work in popular culture [as]
adaptations contribute to a ‘mainstreaming’ of
feminism” (Devoney Looser)