Sense and Sensibility

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1811

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-17

Chapters 18-34

Chapters 35-50

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Literary Devices

Omniscient Narration

Austen employs an omniscient narrator to give impartial commentary on characters and their actions. Sometimes, as with the novel’s opening line, “the family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex” (2), the omniscient narration relates indisputable facts that contextualize the story for the reader. This particular authorial comment ensures that from the outset that the reader is aware of the Dashwoods as an old, established family and thus recognizes their pretensions to gentility in the rigid class system of Austen’s day.

At other points in the novel, the omniscient narrator offers critical commentary on the behavior of different characters for the amusement and instruction of the reader. For example, at the end of the novel, Mrs. Ferrars’ changing favor and obvious power moves are satirized. Austen writes how Mrs. Ferrars “had had two sons; but the crime […] of Edward a few weeks ago, had robbed her of one; the similar annihilation of Robert had left her for a fortnight without any; and now, by the resuscitation of Edward, she had one again” (419). The use of the passive voice and the imagery of death in words such as “annihilation” and “resuscitation,” communicates Mrs. Ferrars’ ironic belief that the woes that are causing the changes in her family size are being done to her and that she is the innocent victim. However, through the violence of these words, the narrative also aligns with what we know to be the cruelty and impetuousness of Mrs. Ferrars’ conduct in cutting sons off and promoting one at the expense of the other. On a further level, the violent terms mock her superficiality, as social positioning becomes a matter of life and death.

Hyperbole, Irony, and Understatement

Austen uses hyperbole, the exaggeration of facts for dramatic effect, and its opposite, understatement, to reveal hypocrisy and inconsistency of character. For example, Fanny Dashwood, who has helped cause the Dashwood sisters’ relative poverty, finds that doing her social duty by them and sending out her carriage to fetch them is an “exceedingly great inconvenience” (280). This is not only a gross exaggeration because Fanny is rich but reveals her intention to slight the Dashwood sisters.

Another type of hyperbole is the ironic kind, where Austen exaggerates the opposite of the truth. This is evident when John Dashwood earnestly refers to how “we all know the tenderness of Mrs. Ferrars’s heart” (416). This statement is amusing because Mrs. Ferrars, who has cut off both her sons in sequence for aiming to marry the woman they love, is extremely hard-hearted. John’s use of the first-person plural, indicating that Mrs. Ferrars’ tenderness is common knowledge, includes not only his correspondent Elinor but the reader as well. The reader, who shares Elinor’s awareness of the untruth of John’s statement, is thus led to not only disparage Mrs. Ferrars, but John, who perpetrates her falsehoods and contributes to her program of social injustice.

Austen uses understatement or the tendency to minimize strong emotion in order to give unsentimental depictions of happiness. For example, after describing Robert Ferrars’ lavish attitude, she outlines’ Edward’s contentment thus:

[If] Edward might be judged from the ready discharge of his duties in every particular, from an increasing attachment to his wife and his home, and from the regular cheerfulness of his spirits, he might be supposed no less contented with his lot, no less free from every wish of an exchange (424).

Austen follows the boons of a happy marriage and domestic life with the idea that an impartial observer might suppose Edward no less happy than his spendthrift brother. Here, by outlining the real things that make Edward happy, Austen allows a more rational reader to imagine that Edward might be even happier than his whimsical brother, without dictating this to them. This adds to the reader’s enjoyment as it makes them an active part of the narration.

Free Indirect Discourse

The critic Mary Favret observes that Austen’s original plan of writing an epistolary novel, in which the narrative was communicated by first-person correspondents, would have been impossible with a heroine as reserved and private as Elinor Dashwood. Instead, Austen’s adoption of free indirect discourse enables her to better do justice to Elinor’s private nature as it tethers a third-person narrative voice to a character’s point-of-view, endowing it with qualities more typical of first-person narration. While Austen uses free indirect discourse for other characters, including Edward, Fanny, and Mrs. Dashwood to mirror their mode of thinking, Elinor is the main beneficiary of this device. While we get a sense of Marianne’s vivid internal world from her direct mode of speech, or the outwards symptoms shown in her body, Elinor’s behavior and outward presentation often contradicts her private world. By employing free indirect discourse, Austen allows us to see the liveliness of Elinor’s acute observations and her changes of mind about the world and herself. For example, when Elinor thinks that she has learned the news of Edward’s marriage to Lucy, she reflects that there is:

[A ] difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it, and certainty itself. She now found, that in spite of herself, she had always admitted a hope, while Edward remained single, that something would occur to prevent his marrying Lucy (400).

This passage brings the reader closer to Elinor because it shows her discovering the vulnerability that bad news can bring and expresses the difference between the anticipation of an unfortunate event and its irreversible completion. The articulation through thought rather than through speech or bodily expression puts the reader in the exclusive position of witnessing Elinor's realization. The reader feels close to Elinor because there is no other character who shares her confidence.

The success of free indirect discourse is evident in Austen’s increasing use in subsequent novels, where more of the narrative is given over to the heroine’s experience and the omniscient perspective diminished.