Another interesting Jane Austen blog

[pegkerr]

I've been pointed to by the blog Jane Austen's World (janitesonjames) to another interesting one by Chris Dornan, Peace and Wisdom (I've syndicated it as peaceandwisdom), which Jane Austen's World characterizes as Mr. Dornan's musings about Jane’s novels, politics, and Buddhism. Recently his thoughts have turned mostly to Jane. I was particularly intrigued by his discussion of the standard interpretations of Sense and Sensibility (Elinor=Sense, Marianne=Sensibility) and his suggestion of another reading:

. . . Angela's "'Sense' versus 'Sensibility'" critique is essentially a conservative one, that puts Elinor at the centre of the novel (rightly in my view) but sees the novel as a dialectic between sense and sensibility with sense winning the day. Christina's interpretation, what I would characterise as a liberal critique that is sympathetic to Austen, also sees this as a dialectic between Marianne’s romantic sensibility and Elinor’s prudential sense, with neither quality winning out (or both sisters winning through learning from each other).

Clearly I can’t compress my book into a blog article but I argue in it that Austen designed the book to be misread (other critics have said the same of Emma: see Emma’s Debt to Sense and Sensibility), that the reader has to remain sharp witted to navigate all the twists and turns in the book, just as Elinor does inside the narrative, and we have to follow her. And remember the novel is told from Elinor’s perspective, the first time a novel integrated the narration into the heroine’s perspective (i.e., free indirect speech) in a sustained way. Elinor is at the centre and embodies with Edward sense and sensibility, with the (early) Marianne and Willoughby representing the perverted sensibility and Lucy Steele and Robert Ferrars representing heartless prudence, perverted sense. Of course the only way for the head and heart to work is if they work together.

I've always been interested in this novel, of course, because of my interest in the heart of flesh/heart of stone theme. I'll be keeping a close eye on this blog in the future; it seems Mr. Dornan has some interesting things to say.