"I See Every Thing As You Desire Me to Do": The Scolding and

Schooling of Marianne Dashwood

Barbara K. Seeber

Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Volume 11, Number 2, January 1999, pp. 223-234

(Article)

Published by University of Toronto Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ecf.1999.0042

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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/413619/summary

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"I See Every Thing As You Desire
Me to Do": The Scolding and
Schooling of Marianne Dashwood
Barbara K. Seeber

Such behaviour as this, so exactly the reverse of her own, appeared

no more meritorious to Marianne than her own had seemed faulty to
[Elinor].1

During the course of Sense and Sensibility, Marianne Dashwood's pas-

sionate beliefs are corrected; she learns to "compare" her conduct
"with what it ought to have been" (p. 345) and to "counteract ... her most
favourite maxims" (p. 378). Sense and Sensibility's status as a problem
novel is well documented, and Marianne's transformation is considered
particularly puzzling. Her marriage to Colonel Brandon, who "sought the
constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat" (p. 378), has disappointed
many readers. If, however, we cease to read it as a problem novel—riddled
with flaws which Austen learned to correct—this early work sets a pre-
cedent for dialogism in Austen. Sense and Sensibility illuminates a world
of contesting ideas and shows that in this war of ideas, it is the strongest,
those who can make others "submit" (p. 379), who survive. Austen's dialo-
gic novel does not side with Elinor, or even Marianne; instead, it explores
the struggle to achieve ideological dominance.
1 lane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, ed. R.W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988),
p. 104. References are to this edition.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 11, Number 2, January 1999

224 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION

Mikhail Bakhtin's critique of Dostoevsky scholarship as "too direct

an ideological echoing of the voices of his heroes," which neglects the
"genuine polyphony offully valid voices," is relevant to Austen studies.2
Readers of Austen often focus on the story of the great heroines—Emma,
Elizabeth, Anne, and Fanny. The values the central heroine learns to em-
brace by the end of the novel are often taken to be those of Jane Austen
and the novel itself.3 The "truth" the heroine arrives at is taken to be
the novel's "truth" or ideology, and this move obscures the text's dialo-
gism. Bakhtin argues that the representation of the hero's world-view as
"someone else 's discourse," separate from the author and novel as a whole,
allows other characters and their world-views to coexist. Dialogism insists
"that all meaning is relative in the sense that it comes about only as a res-
ult of the relation between two bodies occupying simultaneous but different
space."4 Although some critics acknowledge the potential of other world-
views represented in other characters, they render them in the light of
attitudes the heroine successfully combats to achieve full maturity or hap-
piness; ultimately, "the culminating marriages in Austen's novels lack the
undercurrents of ambivalence."5
Part of the critical problem with Sense and Sensibility is that it resists this
pattern of reading by presenting two heroines, both appealing in their own
way, who meet radically different fates: Elinor is rewarded with the object
of her affections, while Marianne has to learn to retrain her heart. The
"reader must be made to accept the priority of ... [Elinor's] moral vision,"
Alistair Duckworth insists, but this "task is complicated by the author's
refusal in any way to limit the attractive individualism ofthe other sister." In
the other novels, "this problem is successfully avoided": "Whereas in Sense
2 Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems ofDostoevsky's Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 8, 6.
3 Alistair Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1994); Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War ofIdeas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987); Jane Spencer,
The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1986); Jan Fergus, Jane Austen and the Didactic Novel (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1983); Tony
Tanner, Jane Austen (London: Macmillan, 1986); and A. Walton Litz, Jane Austen: A Study of Her
Artistic Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).
4 Bakhtin, p. 65. Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (London: Routledge, 1990),
p. 20.
5 Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary
Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p.
203. Similarly, Nancy Armstrong argues that Austen's "marriages ... make statements that are at
once perfectly personal and perfectly political": "Austen's heroines marry as soon as their desire
has been correctly aimed and accurately communicated." Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political
History of the Novel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 192-93.
 THE SCHOOLING OF MARIANNE DASHWOOD 225

and Sensibility there is a bifurcation of action and reflection, in the later

novels the two modes are one in the actions and retrospective reflections
of the heroine."6 The system of contrasts, however, far from being a maze
that the reader, along with the heroine, has to go through to arrive at the
monologic truth, represents Austen's polyphonic vision. There is a bi-
or even tri-furcation in Emma and in the other novels, too. And rather
than being a "problem," this is where Austen's artistic success lies. The
existence of "other" heroines posits the possibility of other marriages and
other truths.
A Bildungsroman with two heroines, Sense and Sensibility invites a
dialogic reading, yet perhaps more than any of Austen's novels, it has been
seen as didactic. The pros and cons of sense and sensibility have been
debated, and Roger Gard and Claudia Johnson provide a welcome break
from this polemic. Austen's target is the "unfeeling, unintelligent world" in
which the sisters have to live, rather than the sisters themselves. As Claudia
Johnson has pointed out, the problem lies in "those sacred and supposedly
benevolizing institutions of order—property, marriage, and family."7 While
it is true that neither Elinor nor Marianne is safe in this world, there is a
pronounced inequality in the destiny of the heroines. Elinor gets Edward
and although we may find him dull, she does not. Her lot may not be
as exciting as that which awaits Elizabeth Bennet, but it is preferable to
Marianne's.
Marianne comes very close to death; no other Austen heroine under-
goes such a violent education. Although Marianne starts out as a heroine
of sensibility, she becomes a member of the community of sense. Mari-
anne does not successfully court her own death during the "indulgence
of ... solitary rambles" (p. 303) around Cleveland, but when she recovers,
she does so only to recant her sensibility. At the end of the novel, her in-
dividualism is renounced and she is defined strictly in terms of her role
as a member of society: "she found herself at nineteen, submitting to new
attachments, entering on new duties, placed in a new home, a wife, the mis-
tress of a family, and the patroness of a village" (p. 379). To call Sense and
Sensibility a novel of education is to leave out half the story. For obviously
6 Duckworth, p. 114. Marianne's appeal is frequently a problem in interpretations of this novel.
Marvin Mudrick goes so far as to speculate that Marianne is "perhaps more winning and lovely
even than Jane Austen had originally planned": "Against her own moral will and conscious artistic
purpose, the creator makes her creature wholly sympathetic." Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and
Discovery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 81, 91.
7 Roger Gard, Jane Austen's Novels: The Art of Clarity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992),
p. 93; Claudia L. Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988), p. 49.
226 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION

Marianne has already been educated, namely, in the school of sensibil-

ity. What is involved here is a violent purgation, a re-education, and a
rewriting of the past. Marianne dies, is reborn, and this birth is a birth into
another ideology. In a memorable phrase, Louis Althusser states that "indi-
viduals are always-already subjects."g Austen stresses that Marianne "was
born to an extraordinary fate" which is not natural birth, but ideological
interpellation:

She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by
her conduct, her most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection
formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong
esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another! ... But so it
was. (p. 378)

Austen presents the conversion as unlikely and anything but voluntary.

That Marianne's "whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her
husband, as it had once been to Willoughby" (p. 379) is something we
never see. What we do witness is the rather violent process which brings
about the endings.
Inventing "a something ... in Willoughby's eyes ... which I did not like,"
Mrs Dashwood is "very sure" that Marianne "would ... never have been so
happy with him as she will be with Colonel Brandon" (p. 338). Elinor "was
half inclined to ask her reason for thinking so, because satisfied that none
founded on an impartial consideration of their age, characters, or feelings,
could be given" (p. 336, emphasis added). The "pang" (pp. 339, 379)
that Elinor and Willoughby continue to feel about the match that was not
meant to be further underscores the contradiction at the heart of Marianne's
marriage to Colonel Brandon. The text strips sense, the dominant discourse,
of the power to legitimize itself. Marianne's marriage to Colonel Brandon
is not a natural occurrence. It needs some hefty assistance: John Dashwood,
Mrs Dashwood, Elinor, and Edward "felt [Colonel Brandon's] sorrow and
their own obligations, and Marianne, by general consent, was to be the
reward of all." The novel asks "With such a confederacy against her ...
what could she do?" (p. 378). Clearly, Marianne is powerless against this
communal wish.
Claudia Johnson sees Austen's resurrection of Marianne as part of the
novel's iconoclasm: she "is dangled over the brink of death only to be
yanked back into a second and happy attachment which flies in the face
8 Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left
Books, 1971), p. 164.
 THE SCHOOLING OF MARIANNE DASHWOOD 227

of cultural ideals about women's sentimentally self-monitored loyalty to

the men who first love them." The happiness of the "second attachment,"
however, is dubious at best. Austen has Marianne defy one social conven-
tion only to enter another one. Johnson's reading, in which Marianne is
allowed "to withdraw from the world" and happily nestled within the pri-
vacy of the family circle, reinstates the very ideology that she argues the
text unmasks: Burke's "little platoon."9 The novel's denaturalizing of the
most natural of bonds—the family—goes beyond the novel's unlikeable
Mr and Mrs John Dashwood and company, for the coercion of Marianne
is brought about at the hands of the very family members she loves.
Central to bringing about the impossible match is the telling of stories.
In Austen criticism, the story of the two Elizas is a neglected narrative,
yet another flaw of the novel.10 This narrative plays an important function,
however; spilling beyond its frame, it creates a rippling effect that changes
the surface of the novel. The narrative has a "generalizing effect," revealing
similarities between Edward and Willoughby, as Johnson argues,11 but the
parallels do not end there: the story threatens the construction of Colonel
Brandon as the "good" hero. When Eliza is married against her will,
Brandon is conveniently absent, as he is for all of the second Eliza's
misfortunes. He claims that he "gladly would ... have discharged" his
responsibility towards Eliza "in the strictest sense," but "the nature of our
situations" did not "allow" it: "I had no family, no home," but even when
he does, he keeps her away from himself and places her "under the care
of a very respectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire" (p. 208). And his
decision not to warn the Dashwoods about Willoughby is dubious at best:
"what could I do? I had no hope of interfering with success" (p. 21O).12
Willoughby's forgetfulness—"I did not recollect that I had omitted to give
her [Eliza] my direction" (pp. 322-23)—appears to be a rather common
problem; both men know when to absent themselves from responsibility.

9 Johnson, pp. 69, 72, 51.

10Susan Morgan, In the Meantime: Character and Perception in Jane Austen's Fiction (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980), refers to the story as "uncomfortably conspicuous" (p. 176).
A "hackneyed tale" (Litz, p. 82), it marks the point at which "Jane Austen's control of her subject
collapses utterly" and its "effect may verge on hilarity or acute boredom" (Mudrick, pp. 89-
90). Others, giving the story its due, see a subversive potential, which, however, finds only covert
expression. The story is "never permitted to become central": it is "tuck[ed] ... safely within the
centre" of the novel "as if to defuse the sensitivity of the subject matter" (Johnson, p. 55). Cf.
Poovey, p. 187.
1 1 Johnson, p. 57.
12See Mudrick, pp. 85-86.
228 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION

Colonel Brandon ostensibly tells the story for the remedial purpose of
giving "lasting conviction" to Marianne's "mind" (p. 204): "She will feel
her own sufferings to be nothing" (p. 210). Yet, this is not the effect it pro-
duces: Elinor "did not see her less wretched. Her mind did become settled,
but it was settled in a gloomy dejection." If the tale's healing power is
limited, its coercive one is not, and Marianne is married off to the Col-
onel: with "a knowledge so intimate of [Colonel Brandon's] goodness ...
what could she do?" (p. 378). Willoughby and Colonel Brandon are not
alone in "appropriat[ing] ... heroine's stories" and making them "suit es-
tablished social arrangements."13 The same can be said of Elinor. After all,
she is the one who always gets to hear the story first, both from Colonel
Brandon and Willoughby. Willoughby's objection to Colonel Brandon's
narration—"Remember from whom you received the account. Could it be
an impartial one?" (p. 322)—is valid. Colonel Brandon is hardly an impar-
tial narrator, and neither is Elinor. And while Elinor has less power than
Colonel Brandon or Willoughby or Edward, she has more than Marianne
and Mrs Dashwood. The only one who hears Willoughby's confession,
Elinor decides when and how much to tell Marianne and Mrs Dashwood.
Elinor "was carefully minute ... where minuteness could be safely in-
dulged" (p. 348). The "simple truth" that she "wished ... to declare" (p.
349) is shown to be anything but "simple." Although a "thousand inquir-
ies sprung up from her heart," Marianne "dared not urge one" (pp. 347^18)
and resigns herself to her fate: "I see every thing—as you can desire me
to do" (p. 349). And as the newly programmed subject, Marianne re-
cites "I wish for no change" and then "sighed, and repeated—? wish for
no change' " (p. 350).
This is not to suggest that Marianne's sensibility, which is crushed out of
her, was natural or even preferable. As a heroine of sensibility, Marianne
follows a particular code of conduct, and, as the reformed heroine, she fol-
lows another code. In both ways she is a subject of a discourse. Critics often
point out that Marianne's behaviour is undercut as contrived. Indeed, Mari-
anne's behaviour is artificial in the sense that it is dictated by something
bigger and outside herself, not her own unique sensibilities, as she be-
lieves. Ideology works by disguising itself as the independent, "natural"
desire of individuals: Althusser tells us that "every 'spontaneous' lan-
guage is an ideological language" and "there is no practice except by and
in an ideology."14 When we see that Marianne "would have thought her-
self very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after
13Johnson, p. 68.
14Althusser, pp. 207, 159.
 THE SCHOOLING OF MARIANNE DASHWOOD 229

parting from Willoughby" (p. 83), we observe her replicating a predeter-

mined code of conduct, rather than following her "unique" sensibilities.
The artificiality of Marianne's behaviour is obvious, but not for the reasons
usually given: not because Austen is on the side of sense; not because Aus-
ten has not yet outgrown the burlesques of the juvenilia; and not because,
as Poovey suggests, Austen must make Marianne "seem intermittently
ridiculous" for "to take Marianne's passions and longings seriously on
their own terms would be to call into question the basis of ... the so-
cial order."15 Rather, the overtly dramatic Marianne is the key to the text's
exposure of individual language as always already an acting out of an
ideologically constituted language. This does not make Marianne's suffer-
ing any less painful or significant. We may laugh at Marianne, but we are
also moved by her. That Marianne's behaviour is constructed, moreover,
is only half the story. Foregrounding the denaturalized position of Mari-
anne, the text invites us to recognize the way in which Elinor's naturalized
position is manufactured.
Marianne's grief is treated ironically, but it is seen from the point of view
of Elinor, hardly an impartial observer. Sense and Sensibility does not allow
us to see only through Elinor's eyes, for Austen makes us aware of gaps,
omissions, and contradictions, stories that sense cannot tell, stories that
do not make sense. By incorporating contradictions, Austen incorporates
contrary discourses, thus giving us a glimpse of the polyphonic world
that the dominant ideology, in order to legitimize its hegemony, needs
to repress. Austen shows how any discourse tries to deny the validity of
another discourse. To validate her own behaviour, Elinor has to undercut
Marianne's. Elinor's self-righteous statement—"I will not raise objection
against any one's conduct on so illiberal a foundation, as a difference
in judgement from myself, or a deviation from what I may think right
and consistent" (p. 81)—can hardly be taken at face value in the way Jan
Fergus does: Elinor "tries to allow for differences between her opinions and
conduct and other people's."16 Clearly, the novel suggests otherwise. When
Marianne realizes the dangers of sensibility and Mrs Dashwood confesses
"imprudence," Elinor was "satisfied that each felt their own error" (p. 352).
Throughout the novel, Elinor polices Marianne's behaviour; on their return
to Barton, Marianne

grew silent and thoughtful, and turning away her face from their notice, sat earn-
estly gazing through the window. But here, Elinor could neither wonder nor blame;
15Poovey, pp. 188-89.
16Fergus, p. 47.
230 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION

and when she saw, as she assisted Marianne from the carriage, that she had been
crying, she saw only an emotion too natural in itself to raise anything less tender
than pity, and its unobtrusiveness entitled to praise. In the whole of her subsequent
manner, she traced the direction of a mind awakened to reasonable exertion, (p.
342)

Elinor observes and approves of Marianne's reformed behaviour. However,

there are contradictions in this code. Marianne's emotion is "natural in it-
self," but subjected to "reasonable exertion." What is at stake here is not
emotion, but its codification. Readers who side with Elinor often remind us
that Elinor has feelings, too, and, of course, she does. But the text emphas-
izes that both exertion and indulgence are performances; both are directed
to something or someone beyond the self; both are answers to the call-
ing (interpellation) of ideology, be it that of sense or of sensibility. Elinor
is unaware that she is used as a tool by the ideology of sense, and that
her affection for Marianne is recruited by the dominant ideology to se-
cure her sister's subjection, for Elinor feels she is acting in her sister's
and family's best interests. It is owing to her own ideological position-
ing that Elinor thinks these two interests can be reconciled. Repeatedly, we
see Elinor attempting to find happiness by acting in accordance with so-
ciety's expectations. Elinor's self-denial is not the unequivocally heroic
self-sacrifice it is often made out to be, for Elinor does find satisfaction
in "feeling that I was doing my duty" (p. 262). Elinor's "plan of gen-
eral civility" (p. 94)—frequently cited as selflessness in comparison to
Marianne's selfish insistence on individual happiness—is, however, also
shown to be motivated by self-interest. The point here is not to demonize
or, alternatively, to humanize Elinor, but to show how Elinor's "selfless-
ness" is a flattering construction facilitated by discursive power: Elinor
subscribes to an ideology which places individual happiness within the
community and, hence, her behaviour is no more selfless or selfish than
Marianne's, which is constituted by an individualistic ideology. For ex-
ample, Elinor's offer to help Lucy complete "a fillagree basket for a spoilt
child" (p. 144) of Lady Middleton's appears to be generous. Elinor "joy-
fully profited" (p. 145), however, for she receives an opportunity to satisfy
her curiosity about Lucy and Edward's engagement and "to convince Lucy
... that she was no otherwise interested in it than as a friend" (p. 142).
Thus, "by a little of that address, which Marianne could never condes-
cend to practise, [she] gained her own end, and pleased Lady Middleton
at the same time" (p. 145). The self-gratification Elinor finds in appear-
ing selfless is further parodied when she leaves the room to give Edward
and Lucy Steele some privacy:
 THE SCHOOLING OF MARIANNE DASHWOOD 231

Her exertions did not stop here; for she soon afterwards felt herself so heroically
disposed as to determine, under pretence of fetching Marianne, to leave the others
by themselves; and she really did it, and that in the handsomest manner, for she
loitered away several minutes on the landing-place, with the most high-minded
fortitude, before she went to her sister, (pp. 241-42)

Elinor's "exertions" are shown to be as contrived and staged as Marianne's

indulgences. Elinor is not exempt from Austen's irony: the language in
both cases is denaturalized.
That Austen puts Elinor and Marianne in parallel situations is obvious,
but instructive. Much of their behaviour is similar, but Elinor presents
hers in a reasonable light. Her sister is instrumental in this process. Elinor
has much at stake in portraying Marianne as over-indulgent, for her own
identity as a woman of sense depends on it. For someone so discreet
about Mrs John Dashwood and Lucy Steele, Elinor is remarkably frank
about Marianne's flaws: "Her systems have all the unfortunate tendency
of setting propriety at nought; and a better acquaintance with the world is
what I look forward to as her greatest possible advantage" (p. 56). Elinor
insists to Colonel Brandon that Marianne is still excusing Willoughby—
"I have been more pained ... by her endeavours to acquit him than by
all the rest" (p. 211)—even when this does not appear to be the case. In
fact, if anyone is prone to make excuses, it is Elinor, who is "consoled by
the belief that Edward had done nothing to forfeit her esteem" (p. 141).
The similarities between Edward's and Willoughby's conduct are striking,
and it takes all of Elinor's resources to rationalize them away. Again and
again we see Elinor engage in the same behaviour that she chides in
Marianne. When she sees "a plait of hair" (p. 98) in Edward's ring, Elinor
"instantaneously felt" that "the hair was her own": she "was conscious [it]
must have been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself"
(p. 98). Similarly, Elinor interprets Edward's "want of spirits, of openness,
and of consistency" in a way that is consistent with her own desire: "it
was happy for her that ... [Edward] had a mother whose character was
so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse for every thing
strange on the part of her son."
It is the novel's triumph that it keeps hinting at the "other" side, a liber-
ality extended even to the villains. From Elinor's perspective, poor Edward
was trapped by the scheming Lucy; clearly, Marianne is not the only quasi-
quixotic character: the young man seduced by the money-hungry schemer
is one of the oldest stories in the book and one that Elinor has to be-
lieve. But, as Johnson reminds us, Edward "forms an early attachment out
of the idleness endemic to landed gentlemen" and Lucy is one of his vic-
tims. Elinor's conflicted emotions about Willoughby are another case in
232 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION

point, and, indeed, many readers cannot help but have some sympathy
for Willoughby. Even Johnson argues that Willoughby is "in some senses
the victim" of property arrangements.17 And however culpable he is in his
treatment of the second Eliza, he also is right in questioning the objectiv-
ity of Colonel Brandon's narration: "I do not mean to justify myself, but at
the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge—
that because she was injured she was irreproachable, and because I was a
libertine, she must be a saint" (p. 322).
Throughout, the novel points out that nature is a carefully wrought
artifice. The Palmers' Cleveland gardens may flaunt their artistry with
Grecian temples, and Edward may tease Marianne's interest in books that
"tell ... her how to admire an old twisted tree" (p. 92), but the utilitarian
"pleasure" that he finds in "a snug farmhouse ... and a troop of tidy,
happy villagers" (p. 98) is hardly more natural. In Sense and Sensibility
equally "natural" possibilities intersect. Elinor's opinions are juxtaposed
to Marianne's and both think they are right: "Such behaviour as this, so
exactly the reverse of her own, appeared no more meritorious to Marianne
than her own had seemed faulty to" Elinor (p. 104). That is, of course,
until the conversion. The underdeveloped character of the third sister,
Margaret, further illustrates the point. In the story of war between sense
and sensibility, there is no room for a third. By the end of the novel, there is
no room even for one "other" sister, as all difference has been neutralized
into a harmonious melting pot: "there was that constant communication
which strong family affection would naturally dictate ... they could live
without disagreement between themselves, or producing coolness between
their husbands" (p. 380). The way of achieving this harmony, however,
has been less than peaceful. Marvin Mudrick's provocative reading is
partly right: the story is "tidied up into its prudent conclusion," but not
because Jane Austen is an emotionally stunted author who uses irony as
"a defense against feeling." Marianne is indeed buried "in the coffin of
convention,"18 but the text exposes this burial—not because it is an early,
clumsy work, which failed to "pull off" its didactic message, but because
the text foregrounds, rather than naturalizes, this process of coercion.
The recent film, unapologetic in its celebration of Sense and Sensibil-
ity, which "has never been allowed its full weight in Austen's canon,"19
will give it a more prominent status. On the other hand, it corrects pre-
cisely those areas that have been identified as the novel's weaknesses.
17Johnson, pp. 56-57.
18Mudrick, pp. 85, 91.
19Johnson, p. 72.
 THE SCHOOLING OF MARIANNE DASHWOOD 233

Edward's personality and honesty are greatly improved (as are his looks);
he attempts to tell Elinor about his engagement and it is the evil sister
that prevents the disclosure. Elinor's sense did steer her in the right dir-
ection, whereas Marianne has to become more like her sister. In this way,
the film presents a didactic reading of the novel. Moreover, Marianne ap-
pears to learn her lesson quite happily. The film gives us moving scenes
of Marianne falling in love with a Colonel Brandon who is as full of pas-
sion as Willoughby. He, too, can read with great feeling, and the film
invents a dramatic second rescue: carrying Marianne in his arms out of the
rain storm, Colonel Brandon looks like "Willoughby's ghost." The film re-
assures us that "there is nothing lost, but may be found, if sought." In order
not to disrupt this narrative, Willoughby's confession had to be cut. Emma
Thompson admits that "bringing Willoughby back at the end" is a "won-
derful scene in the novel," but it "unfortunately interfered too much with
the Brandon love story."20 Naturalizing what the novel denaturalizes, the
film tells a great love story, but it is not Jane Austen's.
Sense and Sensibility's, two heroines, at odds for much of the novel,
allow us to recognize a pattern in the later novels. Austen's closures are
full of gaps that speak of the inadequacy of the endings which fail to
fulfil everyone's desire. These closures entail exits and silences on the part
of figures, the "other" heroines, who throughout the novel competed for
centrality. Their stories must be exiled to the margins or come to an abrupt
end if the story of the central heroine is to be resolved. In Persuasion, for
example, Louisa Musgrove is forcibly dropped from the Cobb and the main
action to allow Anne's rise in the narrative. Mary Crawford's "lively mind"
must degenerate into a "corrupted, vitiated"21 one to make room for Fanny
Price in Mansfield Park. Sense and Sensibility is a profoundly dialogic text,
filled with contradictions and active dissent, and a closure which reveals
the process of achieving ideological dominance. The dialogic design of
competing heroines documents the cost of "general consent" (p. 378): the
scolding, schooling, and finally silencing of Marianne Dashwood's voice.
Brock University

20Emma Thompson, Sense and Sensibility: The Screenplay andDiaries (London: Bloomsbury, 1995),
pp. 179, 187, 272.
21Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed. R.W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 64,
456.