For Monday: Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapters 20-27 (or to Vol. 2, Chapter 5)

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

Q1: In sizing up her rival, Elinor judges Lucy Steele as “naturally clever...but her powers had received no aid from education, she was ignorant and illiterate” (122). Is this the sour grapes of thwarted hopes, or does Lucy Steele represent the eighteenth-century woman without sense or sensibility? What “clues” does Elinor unearth to support her reading of Lucy?

Q2: How does Colonel Brandon emerge as a character of sensibility in these chapters?  How is Austen trying to make him more appealing to us as a possible romantic interest for Marianne (or for Elinor?), and why can’t Marianne appreciate this? Has love simply blinded her to the attractions of other men, or does it point to a greater flaw in her character?

Q3: In William Deresiewicz’s book, A Jane Austen Education, he writes, “For Austen, before you can fall in love with someone else, you have to come to know yourself.  In other words, you have to grow up.  Love isn’t going to magically transform you, make you into a better or even a different person...it can only work with what you already are” (220). How does this apply to Marianne specifically?  In what ways does she not know herself, or expect to be transformed by love?  How does this account for her tremendous disappointment in London?

Q4: How does society respond to the Marianne/Willoughby affair?  Does the extended family (Lady Middleton, Miss Jennings, the Palmers) become more full of ‘feeling’ here, or do they remain a largely comic or satirical backdrop?  Is Marianne or Willoughby more censured for their behavior?  What does this say about the ‘way of the world’  in Austen’s day?