For Wednedsay: Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapters 1-12

The "Austen" group should answer two of the following:

Q1: How does the opening chapters dramatize the late eighteenth-century debate of sense vs. sensibility—or reason vs. emotion?  What view does Austen (or the narrator) seem to take on the subject?  Cite a specific passage in support of your reading.

Q2: Read Chapter 2 carefully: what is Mrs. John Dashwood trying to convince her husband to see about their financial situation? Why does he let himself be convinced against his father’s wishes? Why does the language—and the sentiments—of this chapter sound like an echo of The School for Scandal?

Q3: Unlike many conventional romances or novels, Austen’s men are rarely romanticized—and never bare-chested hunks. In describing Edward Ferrars, she writes, “[he] was not recommended to their good opinion by any particular graces of person or address.  He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing” (17).  Why would she risk making Elinor’s love interest—and a little later, Colonel Brandon—so unappealing?

Q4: How does the book offer the same kind of social and class satire that we’ve already seen in Tom Jones and The School for Scandal? Since our sympathies are with the Dashwood sisters, how is Austen critiquing her society through them? What makes these women “bastards,” so to speak, in their society (like Tom Jones)?