Sense, sensibility, sentiment,

love, gender. Dissertation:

Emotion
 Sensibility
Sensibility: acute perception and responsiveness
towards the world in eighteenth-century Britain
"I conceive that Ideas in the Understanding, are coeval
with Sensation; which is such an Impression or Motion,
made in some part of the Body, as makes it be taken
notice of in the Understanding." Essay Concerning
Human Understanding, John Locke (1690)
In early 18thc: sensitive individuals who had extremely
receptive nerves would have keener senses, and thus
be more aware of beauty and moral truth so seen as
positive. Medical profession corroborated this.
Sensibility gave rise to the sentimental
novel
individuals who were prone to weeping, fainting, feeling weak, or
having fits when confronted with emotional experience
sentimental heroes, such as Harley in Henry Mackenzies The Man
of Feeling (1771) Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
(1740), Oliver Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Goethes The
Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), Rousseaus Julie ou la Nouvelle
Hloise (1764).

Mocked by Samuel Richardson in The Idler (1758-60) in his portrait

of Miss Gentle:
She daily exercises her benevolence by pitying every misfortune that
happens to every family within her circle of notice; she is in hourly
terrors lest one should catch cold in the rain, and another be frighted
by the high wind. Her charity she shews by lamenting that so many
poor wretches should languish in the streets, and by wondering what
the great can think on that they do so little good with such large
estates
 Sentimentalism and radicalism
Middle of 18th century growing insight into
the subjective mind (which would later
become the cult of the self and feeling in
Romanticism).
Attacks on sentiment came from political and
religious orthodoxy and criticism of putting
the individual before the group. Austen
criticizes sentimental style but also what it
stands for.
 Anti-sentimental thought before the
sentimental novel
Criticism of seeing mans nature as good. Both in
England and France the natural view of man was
associated with political liberalism, that is, Whig
politics or the liberal philosophy of Locke. Hobbes on
the contrary was pessimistic about human nature:
"During the time men live without a common power to
keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called
war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every
man.
"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all,
continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of
man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 12 (1651).
 The role of the novel in sentiment
In broad terms the novel is associated from the beginning with the
more individualistic, optimistic, and politically liberal strands in
eighteenth-century thinking () the form of the novel itself pleads
for the individual, for his innate well-meaningness and for his
value (Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, p. 10)
The novel is different from earlier forms in that it makes the
personality of hero/heroine dominate over the action implies
subjective view of reality.
Samuel Johnson in The Rambler in 1750, anticipating the
sentimental era, criticizes sentiment in the novel (thinking of
Fieldings eponymous hero of Tom Jones, 1749) because our
delight in their passions takes away our critical and moral faculties.
In the 1790s during Jane Austens apprenticeship as a young reader,
there was a strong tide of criticism against sentimental literature
 Defence of sentiment
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
passions, and can never pretend to any other
office than to serve and obey them. David
Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1740), Sect.
iii. Of the Influencing Motives of the Will
Faith in the individual also upheld by Adam
Ferguson and Edward Gibbon in 18thc.
 Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831) illustrates well the
sentimental movement: grew up in Edinburgh
dominated by the two great figures of Scottish
Enlightenment Hume and Adam Smith and their
interest in psychology, of the importance of the
passions. See Julia de Roubign (1777),
Mackenzies interpretation of Julie, ou la nouvelle
Hloise. Mackenzies novel was one of the most
admired love-stories to appear in England and is
a direct contrast to many of Austens novels.
 Julia like Rousseaus Julie is characterised by
Richardsonian elevation of soul and absolute
virtue. Julia is bound to Montaubon by filial
obedience but loves Savillon. Mackenzie
approves of Julias idea that marraige is about
passion and not rational choice. Julias feeling
for Savillon is total emotional identification
(Butler, 25) and her memories of music,
reading and courtship are just like Mariannes
for Willoughby.
 Madame de Roubign warns Julia that her love will
evaporate and waste:
The rapture of extravagant love will evaporate and
waste; the conduct of the wife must substitute in its room
other regards, as delicate, and more lasting (Mackenzie,
183)

Montaubon has a traditional, objective code of ethics

and propriety (Butler 25) and represents a
conventional point of view (closer to Edward Ferrars or
Brandon). Montaubon could almost be Elinor.
 If they [romantics] say that affection is a
mere involuntary impulse, neither waiting the
decisions of reason, nor the dissuasives of
prudence, do they not in reality degrade us to
machines, which are blindly actuated by some
uncontrollable power?
Mackenzie, Julia, p. 160-1.
 Sense or Sensibility? What map does
Austen provide for us in the novel?
Elinor and Marianne (first version) similar to Mrs.
Wests Gossips Story (1796) (conservative, anti-
Jacobin and preferring disciplined Louisa to
wayward Marianne) and also to a lesser extent
Maria Edgeworths Letters of Julia and Caroline
(1795). Conservative and ideological counterparts
of Wollstonecraft.
BUT: Sense and Sensibility more subtle and
evolves and grows
 Elinor passionate but controlled. How does
she endure?
Similarity of situation to bring out dissimilarity
of character. How?
Rival value-systems. How?
 Emotion
Introduction:
What are the connotations of the word? Unfold its different
meanings (in the past and in contemporary usage).
Where can we position Austen in terms of the notion of
emotion and its relation to sense and sensibility, reason
and sentimentalism or reason and irrationality and (brief
explanation)?
What will the dissertation demonstrate about emotion in
Sense and Sensibility? (problmatique). I wish to show
that
Main body of the essay: Parts 1, 2, 3
Conclusion
 Emotion:
A strong feeling deriving from ones circumstances,
mood, or relationships with others: she was
attempting to control her emotions
Instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from
reasoning or knowledge: responses have to be based
on historical insight, not simply on emotion
Mid 16th century (denoting a public disturbance): from
French motion, from mouvoir 'excite', based on Latin
emovere, from e- (variant of ex-) 'out' + movere 'move'.
The current sense dates from the early 19th century.
 Emotions and humours
the history of emotions is now an area of historical
research. Although there are precursors of the history
of emotions - especially Lucien Febvres Histoire des
Sensibilits or Peter Gays Psychohistory - the field
converges methodologically with newer
historiographical approaches such as conceptual
history, historical constructivism and the history of the
body.
The four bodily humors were part of Shakespearean
cosmology, inherited from the ancient Greek
philosophers Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen:
melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine.
 Instances in S&S:
Mrs. Dashwood remained at Norland several months; not from any disinclination to
move when the sight of every well known spot ceased to raise the violent emotion
which it produced for a while; for when her spirits began to revive (Chap 3)

Surprised and alarmed they proceeded directly into the room she had just quitted,
where they found only Willoughby, who was leaning against the mantel-piece with his
back towards them. He turned round on their coming in, and his countenance shewed
that he strongly partook of the emotion which over-powered Marianne. (Chap 15)

"I did," said Elinor, with a composure of voice, under which was concealed an emotion
and distress beyond any thing she had ever felt before. She was mortified, shocked,
confounded. Fortunately for her, they had now reached the cottage, and the
conversation could be continued no farther. After sitting with them a few minutes, the
Miss Steeles returned to the Park, and Elinor was then at liberty to think and be
wretched. (Chap 22) [At this point in the first and second editions, Volume 1 ends.]

He listened to her with silent attention, and on her ceasing to speak, rose directly
from his seat, and after saying in a voice of emotion, "to your sister I wish all
imaginable happiness; to Willoughby that he may endeavour to deserve her,"took
leave, and went away. (Chap 27)
 Plan 1
Emotion as externalising, the external, the
surface, effluvia (negative).
Emotion as depth and meaning: from heart
and soul, sincere (positive)
Emotion as the motor of reason (useful
vehicle and catalyst) (contained/in its proper
place) and creative of social links
 Plan 2
1. Lack of emotion: Heartlessness (practical,
rational or cold, ruthless)
2. Excessive emotion: The rule of the heart (true,
sincere or destructive, divisive)
3. Emotion as empathy, sincerity: Heartfelt or
heartfulness (socially binding)
4. Austens use/exploitation of emotion in her
technique of writing (in the texture of writing
and in her narrative structure suspense,
surprise etc)
 Plan 3
1. Emotion and its place as in society as a
good or bad influence: economic, class, and
social concerns (macrocosm)
2. Emotion as gendered and domestic?
(microcosm)
3. Emotional intelligence: Austens writing and
the containment of emotion
 Heartful
Characterized by deep emotion or sincerity of
expression; genuine, sincere, heartfelt. Of an emotion:
deeply or acutely felt; intense. Late Middle English;
earliest use found in Robert Mannyng (d. c1338), poet
and historian. From heart + -ful.

Heartfulness: The fact or quality of being heartful;

sincerity or warmth of feeling or expression. Early 17th
cent.; earliest use found in Randle Cotgrave (fl. 1587
?1630), lexicographer. From heartful + -ness.
 "coutons notre cur en permanence pour
matriser notre vie Le Monde 19/6/15

HEARTFULNESS:
La mditation du cur (dite heartfulness
en anglais) est une forme de raja yoga ou
yoga mental. Conformment la tradition
vdique indienne, le cur est considr
comme tant le centre du corps, l o le sang
est purifi, mais aussi comme le centre du
systme spirituel, l o la condition
intrieure est aussi purifie.