I See Every Thing As You Desire Me to Do: The Scolding and Schooling of Marianne Dashwood
Barbara K. Seeber, Brock University
Volume 11, no. 2, January 1999
©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.
ABSTRACT
During the course of Sense and Sensibility, Marianne Dashwood’s passionate beliefs are corrected; she learns to “compare” her conduct “with what it ought to have been” (p. 345) and to “counteract … her most favourite maxims” (p. 378). Sense and Sensibility‘s status as a problem novel is well documented, and Marianne’s transformation is considered particularly puzzling. Her marriage to Colonel Brandon, who “sought the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat” (p. 378), has disappointed many readers. If, however, we cease to read it as a problem novel — riddled with flaws which Austen learned to correct — this early work sets a precedent for dialogism in Austen. Sense and Sensibility illuminates a world of contesting ideas and shows that in this war of ideas, it is the strongest, those who can make others “submit” (p. 379), who survive. Austen’s dialogic novel does not side with Elinor, or even Marianne; instead, it explores the struggle to achieve ideological dominance.
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Austen” include:
Why the Show Must Not Go On: ‘Real Character’ and the Absence of Theatrical Performances in Mansfield Park
by KATHLEEN E. URDA (ECF 26.2, Winter 2013-14)
Jane Austen’s “Excellent Walker”: Pride, Prejudice, and Pedestrianism
by OLIVIA MURPHY (ECF 26.1, Fall 2013)
Adolescence in Sense and Sensibility
by SHAWN LISA MAURER (ECF 25.4, Summer 2013)
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