This article was downloaded by: [Tulane University]On: 07 October 2014, At: 15:27Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

The ExplicatorPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vexp20

Austen's Sense and SensibilityJoan Klingel Ray aa University of Colorado at Colorado SpringsPublished online: 30 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Joan Klingel Ray (2001) Austen's Sense and Sensibility, TheExplicator, 60:1, 15-19, DOI: 10.1080/00144940109597155

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00144940109597155

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,

sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tul

ane

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

5:27

07

Oct

ober

201

4

Filmer, Robert. “Quaestio Quodlibetica (1653):’ The Usury Debate in the Seventeenth Cenrury: Three Arguments. New York: Arno, 1972.

Gilbart. J . W. The Histury, Principles and Practice of Banking. Ed. Ernest Sykes. 2 vols. London: G . Bell, 1907.

Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Ed. Henry B. Wheatley. 10 vols. London: G. Bell, 1893-99.

Quinn, Stephen S. “Banking before the Bank: London’s Unregulated Goldsmith Bankers 1660-1694.” Diss. U of Illinois, 1994.

Swift, Jonathan. The Poems of Jonathan Swif. Ed. Harold Williams. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon, 1937.

Usher, Abbott Payson, ed. Two Manuscripts: 1.-A Memorial Concerning the Coyn of England, November; 1695. 11-A Memoriall Concerning Creditt. July 15, 1696. Baltimore: Johns Hop- kins UP, 1942.

Wilson, Thomas. “A Discourse upon Usury (1572):’ Ed. R. H. Tawney. London: G. Bell, 1925.

Austen’s SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

No character in Jane Austen’s much-studied repertoire of characters is as desperately in need of explication as Sense and Sensibility’s Colonel Brandon, despite his revealing his true nature in a detailed-filled but cursorily read monologue in chapter 9 (204-10). The traditional view of Brandon is swayed by his appearing “silent and grave” and talking of “rheumatism” and “flannel waistcoats” (34, 37, 38). His manying Marianne Dashwood, a woman eigh- teen years his junior with highly romantic sensibilities, is even seen as “puni- tive” of her.’ Indeed, the narrator herself colludes in conveying Brandon this way. After all, Marianne, Willoughby, Elinor, and the narrator remark repeat- edly on his silence, gravity, earnestness, thoughtfulness, sang-froid, and reserve (34, 50, 51, 169, 172, 282).

But this is an instance where D. H. Lawrence’s dictum “Never trust the artist. Trust the tale” is apposite. For although the narrator concludes Mari- anne’s story by presenting her “by general consent’’-that is, Elinor’s, Edward’s, and Mrs. Dashwood’s-as a consolatory “reward to Brandon for “his sorrows, and their own obligations [to him],” a thorough explication of the Colonel Brandon that Jane Austen actually presents and that he reveals in the tale he tells Elinor about himself shows us a very different character from the one that critics, influenced by the novel’s other characters and the narrator, tend to interpret disparagingly (378). In fact, Brandon exhibits behavior throughout his life that not only shows him as having a highly developed sensibility in eighteenth-century terms, but also, according to Lawrence Kohlberg, writing in the 1980s about moral development in psy- chological terms, proves him to be operating at the highest level of princi- pled, moral conduct.2 We secure a fuller view of the whole Brandon by

15

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tul

ane

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

5:27

07

Oct

ober

201

4

looking closely at the speech about his “past” and “present” that he delivers to Elinor in chapter 9, only snippets of which other readers use in their analyses of the colonel.

According to Brandon, when he was “nearly the same age” as his father’s seventeen-year-old ward, Eliza (205), he planned to elope with her. The young Brandon was knowingly and purposefully defying his father, who had arranged for Eliza, an heiress, to many Brandon’s loveless elder brother so that her money could rescue the Brandon estate from financial exigency. In Kohlberg’s scheme, as described in note 2, Brandon’s decision to resist his father’s authority on the grounds of its avarice and his willingness to accept the punishment-his father banished him to a distant relation’s house, and he went-would place him at the highest level of moral development.

With the elopement foiled, Brandon “depended on her [Eliza’s] fortitude” to thwart his father’s strategies to many her to his elder son; he depended on her “moral sense,” her highly developed conscience, in Kohlberg’s terms. Meanwhile, Brandon’s love for Eliza was so pure that he selflessly tried to alleviate her sorrow about their failed elopement by “procur[ing] [his] exchange” militarily, thus physically removing himself from England and heading to the East Indies (206). Kohlberg would place this behavior at the highest stage of development, for Brandon made a personal sacrifice to help Eliza and his brother succeed as a couple. But Brandon’s losing Eliza to his brother was not the blow that “threw [. . .] gloom” over him (206). As he observes, the “shock” of her marriage “was of trifling weight-as nothing- to what I felt when I heard [. . .] of her divorce” (206). His “gloom” about Eliza’s shameful immorality, however, did nothing to abate his love for her. On returning to England three years later (2 1-22), he found her near death and assumed guardianship of her illegitimate daughter Eliza (11, known as Wil- son), aged three.

His ward’s recent conduct causes the silence and gravity he manifests at Barton. “Last February, almost a twelvemonth back,” the now seventeen-year- old Eliza (11) “suddenly disappeared” while visiting Bath (208): “In short, I could learn nothing but that she was gone; all the rest, for eight long months, was left to conjecture. What I thought, what I feared, may be imagined; and what I suffered too” (209). No wonder the colonel looked “grave” at Barton! When eight months after her disappearance, he abruptly left the Middleton party in October, he found Eliza “near delivery,” having been seduced and deserted by the man he has since identified as Willoughby. Knowing Willoughby’s role in Eliza’s scandal, Brandon exhibited what Looser calls his “military” identity by dueling with him ( 173).3 But what she deems Brandon’s “softer side” did not start, as she claims, with Emma Thompson’s screenplay of the novel (173).

On the contrary, as Brandon recounts the events between October and Feb-

16

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tul

ane

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

5:27

07

Oct

ober

201

4

ruary, he explains why he did not tell Elinor of Willoughby’s part in Eliza (11)’s scandal as soon as he first learned his identity or upon the Dashwood sis- ters’ arrival in London in early January: “[S]ometimes I thought your sister’s influence might yet reclaim him” (210). Just as years ago he depended on Eliza (1)’s “fortitude” (i.e., her devotion to him and her natural virtue) to resist marrying his brother, so, too, he now depended on Willoughby’s moral refor- mation through Marianne’s devotion to him. In both cases, Brandon hoped that, in the earl of Shaftesbury’s terms, the individual’s natural (not actual) propensity to good would be prompted by an awareness that the pleasures found in virtue far exceed the pleasures of egotistical vice. If this does not sig- nal Brandon’s optimism about human nature, it at least reveals, in Willough- by’s case, Brandon’s sentimental credence in the old clicht of a good woman’s power to change even the worst of men. Austen certainly shows us the kinder, gentler side of the soldier when he apologizes to Elinor for telling his tale: “I would not have suffered myself to trouble you with this account of my family afflictions, with a recital which may seem to have been intended to raise myself at the expense of others” (210). In fact, Brandon tells Elinor the story of the two Elizas, Willoughby, and his own past only after Willoughby’s duplicity is exposed by his escorting the wealthy Miss Grey to the party, where he mistreats Marianne, and by the subsequent day’s public knowledge of his engagement to the heiress (194). This is the same self-effacing and stoic Brandon who avers that after Eliza succumbed to the forced marriage to his brother, “Had her marriage been happy, so young as I then was, a few months must have reconciled me to it” (206). Brandon was always willing to make personal sacrifices for the good of others. He is inherently a man of sensibil- ity and highly developed moral sense, whether by eighteenth-century or mod- em ~tandards.~

So while Willoughby was, in Margaret Dashwood’s word, Marianne’s “pre- server” when she fell down the hill, Colonel Brandon has been the real pre- server not only of fallen women (Elizas I and II), but also of the reputation of the man (Willoughby) who made one of them fall (46). Add this protective trait to Brandon’s being a daring eloper, a heroic defier of his father’s and brother’s greedy schemes, a believer in the fortitude created by constancy in love and the natural propensity to virtue, a genuine optimist about man’s abil- ity to change from bad to good through the love of a good woman, a brave dueler, a military officer, an individual willing to make personal sacrifices for a higher good, and a man with a heart so retentive that even Persuasion’s Anne Elliot would admire him, and we see that Jane Austen created a Colonel Bran- don who, for Marianne Dashwood, is a very romantic “conquest” indeed (Per- suasion 233, Sense and Sensibility 45).

-JOAN KLINGEL RAY, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

17

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tul

ane

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

5:27

07

Oct

ober

201

4

NOTES

1. For both classic and recent examples of criticism calling Brandon boringly unromantic and his manying Marianne an unfair deal for the romantic heroine, see Tanner 72, 100; Ruoff 68; Kaplan 208,209,214; Looser 171-73; and Nixon 39.

2. Eighteenth-century philosopher Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, believed that human beings were endowed with a “moral sense” and “benevolence” that not only directed the individual in matters of right and wrong, but also enabled one to sympathize intensely with the joys and sorrows of others (Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit). (See Sprague.) Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development appears in current psychology textbooks. He assumes three levels of moral development in human beings: the preconvenrionul, dominated by self-inter- est and avoidance of punishment; the conventionul, characterized by conforming to the standards established by authority figures; and the posrconventionul or principled, based on a respect for others, a highly developed conscience, a set of internalized principles of social responsibility, and a willingness to make personal sacrifices and take punishment to uphold those principles.

3. As Eileen Sutherland (58) explains, Brandon’s wearing a flannel waistcoat marks him as a military officer, for whom this apparel was a practical addition to one’s uniform, not a sign of debility.

4. Another Austen novel, but one known for being “light & bright & sparkling,” contains tem- porarily “silent and grave” characters who will help us to dispense with the idea that an Austen character who manifests those characteristics is necessarily dull, depressed, and deficient in sen- sibility (‘To Cassandra Austen” 203). In Pride and Prejudice, when Darcy, having secretly com- pleted his romantic mission-a mission he performed “only” for Elizabeth (366-f saving the Bennets from the stigma of Lydia’s affair with Wickham, visits Longbourn with Bingley, he says “scarcely any thing” (335). Distressed at Darcy’s behavior, Elizabeth asks herself, “Why if he came to be silent, gruve, and indifferent [. . .I did he come at all?” (339; my emphasis). Six chap- ters later, with Darcy’s proposal accepted and love on both sides declared, Elizabeth, Austen’s most spirited heroine, questions Darcy about his “silent, grave” behavior during his earlier visit, and he, ironically, responds by inquiring about her silence and gravity:

“What made you so shy of me [. . .I? Why [. . .] did you look as if you did not care about me?” [asks Elizabeth.]

“Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement.” “But I was embarrassed.” “And so was I.” “You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner.” “A man who had felt less might.” (381) For Darcy and Elizabeth, then, silence and gravity are not signs of indifference or dullness.

Rather, they indicate deep feeling, true anxiety, and deep concern, particularly in matters of the heart-emotions that Elizabeth and Darcy (at their first post-Pemberley meeting) and Brandon (through the greater part of Sense and Sensibility) share.

WORKS CITED

Austen, Jane. “To Cassandra Austen.” 4 February 1813. Letter 80 of June Ausren’s Lerrers. COIL

-. Persuasion. London: Oxford UP, 1933. Vol. 5 of The Novels of Jane Austen. Ed. R. W.

-. Pride and Prejudice. London: Oxford UP, 1933. Vol. 2 of The Novels of June Ausren. Ed.

-. Sense and Sensibility. London: Oxford UP, 1933. Vol. 1 of The Novels of Jane Ausren.

Kaplan, Deborah. “Achieving Authority: Jane Austen’s First Published Novel.” Modern Criricul

Kohlberg, Lawrence. Essays on Moral Development. 2 vols. San Francisco: Harper, 198 I , 1984. Looser, Devoney. “Feminist Implications of the Silver Screen Austen.” June Austen in Hollywood.

and ed. Deirdre Le Faye. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.

Chapman. 3rd ed. 5 Vols.

R. W. Chapman. 3rd ed. 5 Vols.

Ed. R. W. Chapman. 3rd ed. 5 Vols.

Views: June Austen. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

Ed. Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1998.

18

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tul

ane

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

5:27

07

Oct

ober

201

4

Nixon, Cheryl. “Balancing the Courtship Hero: Masculine Emotional Display in Film Adapta- tions of Austen’s Novels.” June Ausren in Hollywood. Ed. Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1998.

Ruoff. Gene W. June Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. New York: St. Martin’s, 1992. Sprague, Elmer. “Shaftesbury.” The Encyclopediu ofPhilosophy. Ed. Paul Edwards. 8 vols. 1967.

Sutherland, Eileen. ‘The Infamous Flannel Waistcoat.” Persunsions 18 (1996): 58. Tanner, Tony. June Ausren. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986.

New York: Macmillan, 1972.

Hawthorne’s MY KINSMAN, MAJOR MOLINEUX

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” is the story of a backwoods lad’s “rites of passage” from rural boyhood to urban maturity. In the discussion that follows I shall treat the story as allegorical of the cultural and civilizational shift that had overtaken American life in Hawthorne’s life- time. The protagonist Robin’s’ moving from a rural environment to an urban one is not a simple advance to the good, as the unappealing description of the mob leader and the cruelty of Major Molineux’s treatment suggest. The old gentleman’s humiliation is repellent, and yet the hero of the story, the inno- cent young lad from the frontier, finds himself joining heartily in the specta- cle of his would-be benefactor’s humiliation. Such a transformation reflects the fact that the world is not the idyll of innocence Robin left in the back- woods. He has to adjust to life in the big city.

In this new urban, “progressive” world, Robin observes “gay and gallant figures” who sport “[elmbroidered garments of showy colors, enormous peri- wigs, gold-laced hats, and silver-hilted swords.” He sees “[tlravelled youths, imitators of the European fine gentleman of the period, (treading) jauntily along, half dancing to the fashionable tunes which they hummed, and making Robin ashamed of his quiet and natural gait.” Robin is so fascinated by “the gorgeous display of goods in the shop-windows” that he has to take “many pauses” to examine them (Hawthorne 429). Robin is visiting “the little Metropolis of a New England colony” but he has “an eager eye as if he were visiting London city” (426). And as we might expect in the case of a boy from the village wandering into Hogarth’s London, he is obliged to resist the entreaties of a lady of the evening (43 1).

In short, New England is “modernizing” and becoming part of the big, wide, urbanized world. But Robin has his roots in the older culture of the fron- tier. Indeed, he is “of the household of a New England Clergyman” (43 1). And when, after his long and trying first evening in the city seeking to track down his kinsman, he slips into a homesick reverie, we learn about those roots. His mind drifts back to his rural home, where it was “his father’s custom to per-

19

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tul

ane

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

5:27

07

Oct

ober

201

4