Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility." (review)

REVIEWS 97 really owes to Mansfield" (p. 140). Similarly, because he cherishes the femininity of female characters like Elinor and Elizabeth, Gard does not recognize the power dynamics at work in Henry's attraction to Fanny. Before quoting Henry's description of how Fanny attends "with such ineffable sweetness and patience, to all the demands of her aunt's stupidity" (p. 296), Gard admires his courtship which "has become so gracious and above all sincere" (p. 138). In so doing, he completely overlooks the way Henry loves Fanny for her servility or the way, at the ball, Sir Thomas uses his "absolute power" (p. 280) to get Fanny to behave as he wants. Austen suggests that, for both men, Fanny is ideal when she acts like an obedient slave, an historically relevant image given Sir Thomas's activities in Antigua. If Gard simply failed to consider Austen in her historical context, one might just add him to the old group of writers, who, as Catherine Morland points out, do not put women in history, and leave it at that. But what makes his work most troublesome is that, despite his contention that history is irrelevant, Gard still believes he can make historical claims for Austen and England without thinking seriously about what that means. Indeed, Gard is anxious to identify Austen as a "great national figure" (p. 12), and he is convinced that her own supposed removal from history and politics proves her Englishness; for "it is my impression that modem Anglo-Saxon civilisations ... are historically very unusual in being peopled with those who ... on the whole contrive to evince a positive disregard for politics and power" (pp. 15-16). Thus, "[u]npoIitical, [Austen] is therefore the realistic novelist of an evolving national democracy" (p. 17). Even a reader who agrees with Gard's "impression" of Austen and of all Anglo-Saxon culture is apt to find this statement shallow. At the opening of the study, Gard announces his intention of proving that Austen "is still one of us" (p. 24). Nowhere does he seem to recognize just how limited his own definition of "us" is. Not only does "us" not include those who take a primarily "historical, marxist, freudian, generic, feminist etc." (p. 24) approach to Austen. It also, at moments, seems not to include non-British readers. Given Gard's patriotic bent, what is perhaps most unfortunate is that "us" does not even include those British readers who might view their own history as something complex, varied and, at times, troubling. I am not sure that this "us" includes Austen. But I, of course, am excluded from the start. Susan C. Greenfield Fordham University Gene W. Ruoff. Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility." Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. xiii + 125pp. ISBN 0-7450-0889-5. Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" is a sophisticated, erudite, teacherly, and enviably well written monograph that all students and scholars of Austen should read. As part of the "Critical Studies of Key Texts" series published by Harvester Wheatsheaf in Great Britain and St Martin's in the United States, this volume is designed principally for undergraduates of all levels. It includes short chapters on "Historical and Cultural Context," "Critical Reception," and "Theoretical Perspectives," a lengthy reading of the text, and finally an annotated guide to further study. Because it historicizes not only Sense and Sensibility but also Austen criticism itself, because it illuminates the intertextual boundaries of politics and literature, and because it promotes the excitement of good 98 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 6:1 close reading across these boundaries, Gene Ruoff's book will be of enormous value to teachers of fiction, Romanticism, literary criticism, and, of course, Austen's novels. In describing the pedagogical merits of this book, I do not want to give readers the impression that Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" is just a classroom book, however valuable and necessary such a volume would certainly be. Indeed, its very usefulness for the classroom points to a larger agenda that is crucial to Austen studies in general. As Ruoff well knows, using Sense and Sensibility for the "Critical Studies of Key Texts" series is an unusual choice, and critics less...