The Social Structure in the English Society - Book Report/Review Example

One of the best known today from Regency England, Jane Austen's work comprised mostly of satirical comedies about the middle and upper middle class. All of her novels function around the plot variations involving young women's courtships and eventual marriage, and Sense and Sensibility is no exception. She worked on a small scale, describing small social groups in provincial environments, and is often accused of being too real in her examination of the nature of society, marriage and family, and how these affected and shaped each other. The theme of marriage was ubiquitous in her writings because for a young lady of those times it was the only way to attain a degree of dignity, freedom and self-respect, and in some cases, even the barest essentials for survival. Marriage to a wealthy man of impeccable position was considered the most desirable state for a single woman, as we see from the situation of the Dashwood sisters whose only hope at a decent life is marriage to a well-provided husband. Mrs. Dashwood's daughters do need to find a husband, despite her assurances to the contrary: "I do not believe," said Mrs. Dashwood, with a good-humoured smile, "that Mr. Willoughby will be incommoded by the attempts of either of my daughters, towards what you call catching him. It is not an employment to which they have been brought up".( Chapter 9). We see the underlying desperation for a suitable match for her daughters in her hopes and aspirations for them, when she is so eager for their marriage that within just a week of Willoughby's acquaintance, she can readily picture him as a son-in-law: "Her mother, too, in whose mind not one speculative thought of their marriage had been raised, by his prospect of riches, was led before the end of a week to hope and expect it; and secretly to congratulate herself on having gained two such sons-in-law as Edward and Willoughby."(Chapter 10) In contrast to this depiction of marriage in the traditions of the eighteenth-century women's novels, we see Mary Hayes in Memoirs of Emma Courtney, where the heroine struggles to find an intellectual companion who would give her access to the male dominion of scientific and philosophical education that she wishes to acquire, through the partnership of marriage. Despite being alone with no parents, fortune or skill to support her, she rejects an offer of marriage on the grounds that the suitor, Montague, is not intellectually compatible : Emma's response is to firmly reject Montague's marriage offer because her strong sense of self will not allow her to barter herself for creature comforts. This attitude is crucial to any understanding of Emma's character and motivation. She is a woman in whom the urge to find a partner - one who is both intellectually and sexually stimulating - is too strong to be sacrificed to the bourgeois consideration of an income, or even the social legitimacy of being a married - and hence somehow better - woman.( Sharma,2001) Near the end of the novel however, Emma is compelled to marry Montague due to dire financial straits, and we realise that social realities of marriage were after all the same here as in Austen's work, what differs is the method of portrayal and the author's attitude. While Hayes is frequently passionate and emotional in her style and not very distanced from her heroine, Austen maintains a judicious distance and an undramatic but equally effective narrative. Marriage is thus inseparably tied in the middle and upper-class gentry to the issue of money. While Hayes' Emma is forced to marry against her ideals on the brink of total destitution, marriages in Austen's Sense and Sensibility are often forged on the basis of money or prevented due to lack of it. Lucy Steele marries Robert instead of Edward because of Robert's inheritance, Willoughby cites his aunt's anullment of his legacy as the reason why he chose to marry Miss Grey with her 50,000$ against the fortuneless Marianne, and Edward is only able to marry Eleanor once his mother settles money on him. The only exception is Colonel Brandon's marriage to Marianne, where money does not play a significant role. But we must admit that the portrayal of courtship and eventual marriage in this novel is more typical of the times and atypical of Austen. Austen's other heroines, for instance in Pride and Prejudice, get married to a man they are shown to be slowly developing a relationship with, and the men do not marry them for their beauty alone, whereas Colonel Brandon marries Marianne purely because she resembles his lost love, and the relationship between Eleanor and Edward is also left inadequately fleshed out. Austen also does not dig deep into the relationships between married couples in this novel, unless we count the Palmers, who serve more as a comic relief than anything else. The main characters enter matrimony in the end, but we are not shown their married lives. This is quite different from Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story, where the anatomy of the marriage between the vivacious Miss Milner and her guardian Dorriforth forms the main story. Miss Milner is an attractive, self-confident woman, whose vigour cannot be tied down by an oppressive marriage. She indulges in an extramarital relationship with a former suitor during her husband's prolonged absence, in resistance to his patriarchal attempt at subjugating her through marriage: "Through marriage, Miss Milner would be in her husband's power, and her own power would be subdued by eighteenth-century standards of how a wife should act in public."(Martini, 2004). Austen's world of manners does not include these power equations between a man and woman bound in marriage, and in this novel we see little, if any, of domestic dischord.We also do not see marriage resulting in the breaking up of the core family in order to create a new family. Eleanor and Marianne continue "living almost within sight of each other": the emphasis is placed on the relationship between the two women rather than between husband and wife. But that does not mean that the concept of family is left unexplored. Family, in Austen's times, was defined in a "traditional conservative and expansive sense: consist[ing of] members of a land-owning tribe ... as its property is held from generation to generation, going from one male heir to another" (Doody viii). Austen follows this definition in the novel, but her true beliefs lie in love and compassion and not legalities which are more often than not shown to tear families asunder.The very first line of the novel introduces the theme of family: "The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex." The family of course, will come to constitute of the legally inheriting family of Henry Dashwood, to be followed by John Dashwood and his son, as well as those with no legal claim on the fortune, Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters. This forms a contrast throughout the novel, as the practices of entailment and primogeniture leave one part of the family without money while providing the other part with an excess, and place between them an unbridgeable gap. Money divides a family, for instance, Edward's mother disinherits him from the fortune, which creates a fissure in their family.But it is not legal bonds that have Austen's sympathy. She supports the bonds of affection as we see from the relationship between the two sisters and that of the mother and the daughters, not to mention their ties with the kind Sir John Middleton, who is a sharp antithesis of the self-righteous John Dashwood, or in Eleanor's self-sacrificing concern for her family: "I owed it to my family and friends, not to create in them a solicitude about me, which it could not be in my power to satisfy." (Chapter 37) In Austen's world, family provides support in times of distress in the form of Sir John Middleton. It also provides guidance in times of confusion, reaffirmed by the portrayal of Eleanor's ever-supportive counsel for Marianne during her problems.A lack of strong familial support can wreak havoc on an individual, as we see in Hayes' Emma Courtney whose mother died at childbirth.She was left alone by her father, who gave her access to a library without adequate direction, resulting in an imbalanced education that adversely influenced Emma in later life.Emma goes so far against eighteenth century morals as to offer herself to her object of affection, Augustus Harley, without the ceremony of marriage, in order to gain his love, thus totally subverting contemporary ideas of family and marriage. Another aspect of the family in the novel is where people who are not directly related take up roles of the family, for instance, Sir John Middleton becomes a supportive figure for the Dashwoods, or Colonel Brandon fosters a daughter not his own, but born to his erstwhile love.This was quite common in the fiction of this period: Throughout late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British fiction, sons are exhorted to see their parents' female wards as sisters; older men adopt paternal stances to young, unprotected women; and servants love their masters as children ideally love their parents. As good friends come to see each other as "like" family, sentimentalized familial bonds multiply This recurrent situation comprises what has been called the period's urge toward "familialization." ( Shaffer, 1999) Adopting new members into the family fold is seen as a positive trait in the novels of this period, and Austen reflects this trend.Of special significance is the role of the father figure, which is open to interpretation.In Inchbald's A Simple Story, Dorriforth is Miss Milner's father's friend, and as such is in effect a father figure, whose fatherly image is underscored by also being a priest. But that does not prevent them from falling in love and marriage, which has a hint of an incestuous relationship.Colonel Brandon, on the other hand, is truly concerned for Eliza's daughter as a father should, and Austen does not elaborate on this angle in Sense and Sensibility as she does in her later novels, Emma and Mansfield Park. The utmost sanctity of family relationship is maintained, as is ideal in a society concerned with manners, wealth and class. Classes in Austen's novels are strictly limited to the middle and the upper classes, and she never ventures towards the portrayal of the lower orders with whom she must surely have been familiar as a clergyman's daughter. Class is a stringent code followed among the landed gentry, where money from trade is still frowned upon. The only ways of sustenance open to the gentry were law, clergy or the military, apart from the inherited estates, and it was perfectly acceptable for men with inheritance to be idle, as illustrated through Edward: I always preferred the church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for me. The law was allowed to be genteel enough: many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and drove about town in very knowing gigs. But I had no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family approved. As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I was too old when the subject was first started to enter it; and, at length, as there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford, and have been properly idle ever since. (Chapter 19) The social structure in the English society contemporary to Austen was rigid, with limited social mobility, and any aberrations led to an exile from all"decent society", as it tends to happen in the case of Edward when he is disinherited by his mother. Austen pokes ruthless fun at upper-class mediocrity in the form of Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Middleton and the Palmers, and seeks to distinguish between internal merit based on a natural goodness and external qualities like rank and possessions. Matching Austen's social consciousness, Hayes portrays her middle-class Emma with an excellent education and a capable nature left at a loss because of her lack of social standing and any fortune attached to it; she is forced to marry against her desire due to her social and fiscal circumstances. Austen was criticized often for the limited scope of her novels. But she considered herself an miniature artist, and could observe and portray tiny details of daily life with perception and rare insight. Her art is subtle, and her critiques, though scathing, are perfectly couched in manners, as against the forthright work of Hayes and Inchbald who attracted much unjust criticism from their contemporaries. As Virginia Woolf puts it, "Of all the great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness." Works Cited Doody, M. A. Foreward. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990. vii-x1vi. Eddleman S. M. ""The Family of Dashwood": The Effect of Wills and Entailments on Family Connections in Sense and Sensibility". Jasna. Jane Austen Society of North America.30 Nov.2005 Huising, A. "Why Women SleepEscaping Patriarchy is Not A Simple Story". The St. lawrence Review.St. lawrence University.30 Nov.2005 Martini M. "Sexuality and Power in Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story".ETD manager East Tenessee State University. December 2004. 30 Nov.2005. Shaffer, J. "Familial Love, Incest, and Female Desire in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century British Women's Novels - Critical Essay". Criticism. Winter 1999 Sharma, A. "A Different Voice: Mary Hays's The Memoirs of Emma Courtney". Women's Writing Vol 8. Num 1. 2001. Triangle Journals.30 Nov.2005. Shubinsky D. "Sense and Sensibility: An Eighteenth-Century Narrative".Jasna. Jane Austen Society of North America.30 Nov.2005 Read More