Slide 1

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 2

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 3

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 4

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 5

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 6

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 7

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 8

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 9

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 10

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 11

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 12

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 13

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 14

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 15

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 16

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 17

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 18

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 19

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 20

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 21

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 22

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 23

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 24

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 25

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 26

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 27

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 28

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 29

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 30

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 31

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 32

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 33

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 34

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 35

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 36

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 37

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 38

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 39

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 40

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 41

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 42

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 43

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 44

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)


Slide 45

“Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My
poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy
father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears
choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children.
“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve
them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying,
bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send
him to support us.”
“Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards.
“In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.”
“I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many
a time when first I came amongst strange folks.”
He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they
walked in silence to the churchyard.
There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters,
half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a
cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.
Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had
only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he
stifled his sobbing.
“I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart;
she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not
starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”
The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and
wept between every kiss.
(Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1771)

John Earlom (after George
Romney), Sensibility. A
Portrait of Emma Hart
(1789)

Defining sensibility
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1. Quickness of sensation.
2. Quickness of perception.

Defining sensibility
Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd edn, 1797):
a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or
deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is
natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the
nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is
experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in
savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than
among boors and illiterate mechanics.

Philosophy and sensibility
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711)
No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them
as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye
distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and
admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or
the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that
as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the
discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

Philosophy and sensibility
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
That there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned,
the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can,
to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home
to himself every little circumstance of distress which can
possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case
of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to
render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of
situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

The Cult of Sensibility
Time
Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s.

Archetypal victims/heroes:
The chaste suffering women
The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man.
Stock Vocabulary
Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender,
fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

The Cult of Sensibility
Novel
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)
Poetry
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5)
Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783)

Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722)
Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

The Attack on Sensibility

Detail of James Gillray, New Morality
(1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

The Attack on Sensibility
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
[…] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and
that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every
emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober
suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you
should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames
your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.

The Attack on Sensibility
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very
well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.

His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely
please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture
became more vivid—Whither did not my imagination lead me? In
short, I fancied myself in love—in love with the disinterestedness,
fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had
invested the hero I dubbed.
(p. 130)
What a revolution took place, not only in my train of thoughts, but
feelings! I trembled with emotion—now, indeed, I was in love.
Such delicacy too, to enhance his benevolence! I felt in my pocket
every five minutes, only to feel the guinea; and its magic touch
invested my hero with more than mortal beauty. My fancy had
found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went
to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that
heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous
impulse.
(p. 135)

Divorced by her husband—Her lover unfaithful—Pregnancy—
Miscarriage—Suicide.
(p. 202)

She read them over and over again; and fancy, treacherous fancy,
began to sketch a character, congenial with her own, from these
shadowy outlines […] What a creative power has an affectionate
heart! There are beings who cannot live without loving, as poets
love; and who feel the electric spark of genius, wherever it
awakens sentiment or grace.
(p. 86)

His steady, bold step, and the whole air of his person, bursting as
it were from a cloud, pleased her, and gave an outline to the
imagination to sketch the individual form she wished to recognize.
(p. 89)

[H]ow difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who
have no active duties or pursuits.
(p. 87)

[S]he was too much under the influence of an ardent imagination
to adhere to common rules […] A magic lamp now seemed to be
suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round
the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of
despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.—
She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
(p. 99)

‘But Darnford!’—exclaimed Maria, mournfully—sitting down
again, and crossing her arms—’I have no child to go to, and liberty
has lost its sweets.’
(p. 189)

A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter—leading
a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached the
bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called her—
she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
'Behold your child!' exclaimed Jemima. Maria started off the bed,
and fainted.—Violent vomiting followed.
(p. 203)

A sense of right seems to result from the simplest act of reason,
and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the mastersense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may
be carried still farther) how often is the exquisite sensibility of
both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar occupations, and
ignoble pleasures of life?
(p. 80)

[W]hen told that her child, only four months old, had been torn
from her, even while she was discharging the tenderest maternal
office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy’
(p. 80)

Defining Sense
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Faculty or power by which external objects are perceived.
Perception by the senses; sensation.
Perception by intellect; apprehension of mind.
Sensibility; quickness or keenness of perception.
Understanding; soundness of faculties.
Reason; reasonable meaning.
Opinion; notion; judgement.
Consciousness; conviction.
Moral perception.
Meaning; import.

Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:
Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).

They found it increasingly difficult to acknowledge or to integrate into
their self perceptions desires that did not support this stereotype.
And, by the same token, they found it increasingly difficult to
recognize that the stereotype was prescription, not description, and
thus to renounce it. But all kinds of writing by women of this period
suggest that, even though women may not consciously have
acknowledged their own impermissible desires, energies not
sanctioned by propriety did exist.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 15)

Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;
But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake […]
(Alexander Pope, ‘An Epistle to a Lady’, 1743)

The very translation of sexual control into “duty” is perfectly in
keeping with the tenets of individualism: a woman’s social
contribution was, in essence, self-control, just as her primary
antagonist was herself.
(Poovey, The Proper Lady, p. 27)

The object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of
life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined
and excessive susceptibility on the other. The characters are happily
delineated and admirably sustained. Two sisters are placed before the
reader, similarly circumstanced in point of education and
accomplishments, exposed to similar trials, but the one by a sober
exertion of prudence and judgment sustains with fortitude, and
overcomes with success, what plunges the other into an abyss of
vexation, sorrow, and disappointment […] We will, however, detain
our female friends no longer than to assure them, that they may
peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits,
for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary
maxims for the conduct of life, exemplified in a very pleasing and
entertaining narrative.
(Review of Sense and Sensibility in the British Critic, May 1812)

Patrilineal system:
The system by which money/property descends through the male line.

The right of primogeniture:
The right of the first born son to succeed/inherit.

The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to
leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate,
or by any sale of its valuable woods.
(p. 4)

Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your
father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no
particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very
well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the
world to them.
(p. 11)

Map of the
Counties of
England, c. 1824.

Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty
girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to
none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such
things!
(p. 144)

At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married
against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said
for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
(p. 153)

My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they
ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The
consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to
all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not
lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me
occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke
inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my
father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my
regiment in the East Indies) she should fall?
(p. 154)

I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every
reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a
life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance.
(pp. 154-5)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

Detail of William Hogarth, Harlot’s Progress, Pl. 5 (1732), showing
Moll’s syphilitic death.

He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a
situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no
friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return;
he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.
(p. 157)

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind!
hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to
be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had
once doted.
(p. 155)

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family,
no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her
there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which
happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of
the family property,) she visited me at Delaford […] It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed
her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable
woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five
other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had
every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to
go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter.
(pp. 155-6)

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her
figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion
was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally
without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued
her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong
characters of pride and ill nature.
(p. 174)

a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most
rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her
demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the
smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all
the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her
cousins submitted.
(p. 91)