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Sense and Sensibility and the Problem of Feminine AuthorityTara Ghoshal Wallace For almost two hundred years, readers of Sense and Sensibility have questioned Jane Austen's ambivalence towards the values of proper conduct as opposed to those of inner-directed behaviour; but this question has tended to obscure another ideological issue in the novel—the issue of feminine authority and power.1 While readers debate whether the nar1 Critics bodi sympathetic and hostile to die code ofpropriety agree to locate die issue at die centre of die novel. Marilyn Buder, for whom Elinor is "an active, struggling Christian in a difficult world," says of Sense and Sensibility diat "The entire action is organized to represent Elinor and Marianne in terms of rival value systems" (Jane Austen and the War ofIdeas [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975], pp. 192, 184). Marvin Mudrick sees Austen marshalling her defences against "an insurgent sympathetic committing character like Marianne" (Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952], p. 91). Angela Leighton, providing a feminist revision of Mudrick, notes that "Elinor's Silences have Austen's approval; they signify heroic reticence and control, and are contained by the language of Sense. Marianne's Silences signify emotions which have escaped control, and which are therefore in opposition to Austen's art" ("Sense and Silences: Reading Jane Austen Again" in Jane Austen: New Perspectives, ed. Janet Todd, Women and Literature, n.s. 3 [New York: Holmes and Meier, 1983], 132). Those who blur or reverse die conventional identifications remain convinced of the centrality of this issue. Howard S. Babb, pointing to rhetorical evidence of overlapping, finds that "The argument remains utterly conventional, and Jane Austen's pursuit of it by tracing what might be called die double allegiance of each sister makes die novel none die less rigid" (Jane Austen's Novels: The Fabric ofDialogue [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1962], p. 56); and Jan Fergus, reversing die dichotomy, argues mat "One of Austen's major interests in die novel is to define feeling and sensitive behaviour ... This behaviour is what Elinor exhibits and Marianne violates throughout die novel. It is Marianne who must learn to behave feelingly, not Elinor" (Jane Austen and the Didactic Novel: "Northanger Abbey," "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice" [Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1983], pp. 40-41). Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), detect a tension in the novel "because Austen herself seems caught between her attraction to Marianne's sincerity and spontaneity, EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 4, Number 2, January 1992 150 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION rator is drawing rigid lines between sense and feeling, they may overlook the book's attitude towards female power, an attitude which is negative, cautionary, devaluing. In this essay I argue that Sense and Sensibility betrays Austen's anxieties about female authority; seen from this perspective the novel reveals struggles and tensions rather than ideological serenity. The most straightforward way to begin is to assert that Sense and Sensibility is an account of Austen's failure to legitimate feminine authority. It is Austen's most antifeminist book, a book inhabited by monstrous women and victimized men, a book which seems to deny all possibility of sisterhood, articulated in its equivocal last words—"and among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves."2 At the same time, feminist critics such as Patricia Meyer Spacks and Deborah Kaplan have shown that Sense and Sensibility criticizes patriarchal values and practices.3 The dichotomy between fear of feminine authority and desire for it occupies Austen's novelistic imagination and informs her narrative strategies in Sense and Sensibility. One antifeminist strategy that Austen consistently uses is the diversionary tactic. The sins of a man, while not ignored or excused, are overshadowed by an emphasis on the despicable behaviour of a woman. Manifested in nearly every male/female relationship in the novel, the device is pervasive. For example, although...

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