Expressions // Illness in Sense and Sensibility
There’s nothing quite like the coming of spring (FINALLY) to rejuvenate what’s been for me a pretty stagnant and uncreative few months (one day I’ll stop beginning every post with ‘IT’S BEEN AGES, YOU GUYS’), and there’s nothing quite like the common cold to inspire the kind of bemusement I feel every time a (usually female) character in a novel becomes inexplicably, dangerously ill after walking around in the rain and returning home with the sniffles. Since my Sunday has kindly afforded me both of these ‘gifts’, I figured, what better time to spend a few hours wondering what the heck is wrong with Marianne in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility?
My introduction to Sense and Sensibility came in the form of the wonderful 1995 film starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet. Prior to sitting down and watching this, my only real knowledge of Jane Austen and her work comprised a fleeting acquaintance with Pride and Prejudice and the (also marvellous) Lost in Austen TV miniseries from 2008, with which I soon became obsessed. I later read Sense and Sensibility faster than I’ve ever read any book in my life, so taken was I with the contrast between the two sisters: sensible, pragmatic, selfless Elinor, and romantic, idealistic, emotional Marianne. The latter sister is taken ill a number of times in the novel, and it’s this that I’d like to explore here. I realise it’s not exactly ground-breaking stuff to consider Marianne’s illness as a key component of her ‘sensibility’ which obviously needs to be quashed in some way, but it’s always worth exploring a little more, especially in the context of the medical texts that may have been available in the average Georgian household.
It’s also very tempting to diagnose her illness according to the standards of twentieth and twenty-first century medical practice, but when read in conjunction with the medical and psychological theories prevalent in her time, it is clear that Austen’s Sense and Sensibility strongly reflects the received ideas of that age. Austen’s awareness of, and interest in the major medical concerns of her age is well-documented. This enthusiasm is evidenced primarily by her personal letters, in which she details various ailments and their cures, but it is also reflected in the medical precision with which Marianne’s illnesses, particularly her fever, are described.[1] The exploration of Jane Austen’s ‘usage’ of contemporary medical and psychological theories will, here, extend to the material to which we might assume she had access, such as William Buchan’s popular 1769 work Domestic Medicine, since it is mirrored almost exactly in Marianne’s fever symptoms, and that material which illustrates the broader medical consensus of the time during which Austen wrote, such as noted physician William Heberden’s Commentaries on the History and Cure of Diseases. Much of Heberden’s writing in the Medical Transactions of the Royal College of Physicians reached a wider audience by being reproduced in the popular publication The Gentleman’s Magazine.[2] Austen’s use of medical theory is certainly reflective of many of the general anxieties of Georgian society – for example, the apparently well-established notion that severe colds were occasioned by rainy weather and damp clothes – but it also allows her to comment more effectively on her characters, and on society as a whole.
Elinor and Marianne’s thirteen year old sister Margaret styles Willoughby as Marianne’s ‘preserver’, and though the narrator suggests that she affords him this title ‘with more elegance than precision’[3], the ‘preserver’ delineation is, retrospectively at least, not wholly without substance. While Willoughby quite literally plays the role of ‘preserver’ in rescuing Marianne following her fall, it is his presence, and Marianne’s perceived assurance of his affection, which together eventually constitute the sole ‘preservers’ of her rather precarious state of happiness, and the narrative of Marianne’s illness experience underscores the danger inherent in this mentality. In other words, it is precisely because Marianne is of such a romantic, single-minded disposition that she is so susceptible to the physical illness which nearly kills her; as John Wiltshire notes, ‘Marianne’s sensibility is both an ideology and a physical condition’, and the novel ‘ties Marianne’s ideas… to her bodily vitality.’[4] In this context then, it is appropriate to consider both the medical and psychological ideas that operate in Austen’s novel.
Marianne’s ‘excessive’ sensibility is established in her response to the death of Mr Dashwood, at the outset of the novel. Both she and her mother, initially overpowered by grief, share in the ‘violence of their affliction’, but, as Elinor observes with concern, they ‘voluntarily renew’ it, resolving ‘never to admit consolation in future’ (p.42). This seemingly inherited tendency of Marianne’s, to indulge, even ‘nourish’ feelings of sadness and loss rather than seek distraction or ‘exertion’ as Elinor repeatedly suggests, is exposed again later, following Willoughby’s hasty departure from Allenham, when Marianne succumbs once more to a violent ‘affliction’ before sinking ‘within a few days into a calmer melancholy’ (p.110). Again, Marianne’s apparent inability to recover from her grief is exacerbated by an unwillingness to do so: ‘she was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself’ and ‘she was unable to talk and unwilling to take any nourishment.’ Again, she forbids ‘all attempt at consolation’ (p.110). Laurie and Richard Kaplan state that throughout the novel, Marianne intermittently suffers from what Heberden would have referred to as ‘hysterical affections’.[5] Heberden wrote of the ‘hysterical affections’ and the melancholia to which it gives way, taking care to emphasise the subjectivity of the patient’s conception of their own suffering. He states that the force of suffering ‘will be very different, according to the patient’s choosing to indulge and give way to them, or to struggle against, and resist them.’[6] It is not surprising then, given Marianne’s stated tendency to indulge her grief to such alarming degree, that from this point, she remains largely unhappy until her physical recovery from fever in Chapter 46.
In his Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson (whom Austen admired and whose work she was familiar with) describes ‘melancholy’ as ‘a kind of madness in which the mind is always fixed on one object’, and ‘a gloomy, pensive, discontented temper.’[7] In light of this, the use of the term ‘melancholy’ in Sense and Sensibility is striking in its psychological connotations, marking Marianne as a sufferer of a particular type of ‘madness’. Indeed, both of Johnson’s descriptions are borne out in Marianne’s behaviour, particularly the mind’s unhealthy focus on a single object. The fixation on Willoughby that consumes Marianne is presented almost immediately after their first meeting. His impact on the Dashwoods has been such that her imagination is ‘busy’, her reflections ‘pleasant’, and the pain of her sprained ankle which had prevented her from even standing is now completely ‘disregarded’ (p.76). In Willoughby’s absence this fixation is aggravated, and all the pursuits they had once enjoyed together are now simply a source of misery for Marianne, yet, in solitude, she continues to occupy herself with them. She plays ‘every favourite song which she had been used to play to Willoughby’, reads ‘nothing but what they had been used to read together’, and wanders about ‘Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment and crying over the present’ (p.110). Marianne is evidently a victim of the hysteric affection and of the melancholy which, as Heberden claims, renders ‘every blessing tasteless and unenjoyable’ (Heberden, p.181). She even goes so far in this fixation as to project her desire for Willoughby’s return onto an approaching gentleman, who turns out to be Edward Ferrars. She is told by Elinor that ‘It is not Willoughby. The person is not tall enough for him’, but Marianne, in the strength of her wish to see him again, and despite her sister’s rationality, is convinced; as the narrator states, ‘[her] mind could not be controuled.’ (p.112)
Marianne is often compared unfavourably with Elinor, whose feelings are quite as strong as her sister’s but are justified by the fact that ‘she knew how to govern them’ (p.42). Similarly, although she also finds herself ‘deeply afflicted’ by her father’s death, she is still able, unlike Marianne and Mrs Dashwood, to ‘exert herself’ (p.42). The question of ‘exertion’ is frequently mentioned throughout the novel, often in the context of Marianne’s reluctance to exert herself. The aversion to idleness was a preoccupation of many Georgians, and contemporary medical literature indicates its detrimental effects on the mind and body of patients already predisposed to, or suffering from, particular conditions. Buchan, for example, warns that fevers will be worsened and prolonged considerably by a patient’s unwillingness to exercise wherever possible, [8] and, as Heberden argues, ‘idleness will not only foster a disposition to a languor of spirits but will unquestionably create it’ (Heberden, p.184). Elinor, playing the unofficial role of nurse figure (Wiltshire, p.52), implores Marianne to exert herself, if only for her mother’s sake, and Marianne responds with incredulity and frustration: ‘how easy it is for those who have no sorrow of their own to talk of exertion!’ (p.197) Clearly, then, Marianne has no intention of exerting herself, which has the effect of demonstrably worsening both her physical and mental condition.
After receiving her letter from Willoughby in London, Marianne, in another of what Heberden termed, ‘hysteric fits’ (Heberden, p. 182), is in ‘restless pain of mind and body’, and grows ‘more and more hysterical’ (p.202), and is finally, and temporarily, calmed with lavender. But, as Heberden states, and as occurs earlier in the novel, the convulsive violence of hysteria soon gives way to the gloominess of melancholy, and, sure enough, Marianne’s ‘mind did become settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection’ (p.221). It is this ‘gloomy dejection’ which leads Marianne to ‘rejoice in tears of agony’ (p.299), and to ‘indulge’ in the ‘solitary rambles’ (p.300) which ultimately prove so deleterious to her health.
As mentioned earlier, the Georgian association between the contraction of colds and damp conditions is, as Olsen notes, a familiar one. Buchan, for example, attributes the onset of fevers to primarily ‘moist air’. (Buchan, p.172) In particular, Buchan suggests ‘evening dews’ and ‘damp ground’, presumably not unlike those which Marianne carelessly exposes herself on her ‘twilight walks’ amongst the ‘longest and wettest [grass]’ (p.302). Unsurprisingly, after two such twilight walks, an infectious fever results, and Elinor must nurse her back to health. Although it has often been the tendency of literary critics to compare the behaviour of Elinor and Marianne to the obvious detriment of the younger sister, the shortcomings of both sisters are implied in their responses to the onset of Marianne’s illness. Buchan states that ‘when a patient struggles with the disease, instead of driving it off, he only fixes it the deeper and renders it more dangerous’ (Buchan, p.167), and, as Wiltshire points out, ‘Elinor, through her common sense and optimism… plays down the significance of the early signs of Marianne’s disease,’ while Marianne, ‘careless of her own body, tries to pretend she is well, and thus the illness is neglected in its first few days’ (Wiltshire, p.47). Wiltshire also notes that the course of Marianne’s illness matches almost exactly what Buchan refers to as a ‘remitting fever’, whereby the patient experiences a temporary ‘remission’ of symptoms (Buchan, p.164). He argues that the specific medical detail utilised by the author, and the fact that Marianne is not now suffering a ’hysterical’ or ‘nervous’ illness, but rather one which is ‘authenticated by contemporary physicians’, that Austen obliquely suggests that ‘ideas alone cannot bring about serious physical illness’ (Wiltshire, p.46).
Overall, however, it seems more plausible that Austen’s use of such accurate medical detail serves to give credence to the notion that ‘excessive sensibility’, particularly when indulged, can indeed prove dangerous, rather than detract from it, as Wiltshire seems to suggest. After her recovery, Marianne possesses a ‘mind awakened to reasonable exertion’ (p.334), and she states, unambiguously, ‘my own feelings had prepared by sufferings’ (p.337). Although Austen’s message could be viewed as a call for the moderation of Marianne’s sensibility and Elinor’s repression and ‘sense’, the greater change is of course in Marianne, and the narrator’s critical view of the younger sister cannot be ignored. Her fever has, it seems, prompted a moment of clarity. She lays down ‘a plan’, intending to ‘govern’ her feelings, and follows a mild exercise regimen, taking every measure to ‘check’ her remembrance of Willoughby with ‘religion… reason… and constant employment’ (p.338), that is, to keep her mind ‘easy’, as Buchan recommends for recovering fever patients (Buchan, p.190). Austen accepts the established medical theories of her day and incorporates them into her narrative in specific detail in order to emphasise the link between the health of the mind and the body, and to lend authority to the assertion that sensibility indulged is potentially dangerous.
Works Cited
[1] Laurie and Richard Kaplan, What Is Wrong With Marianne?
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number12/kaplan.htm (1990)
[2] Ernest Heberden, ‘William Heberden the Elder (1710-1801): Aspects of his London Practice’, Medical History, 1886, 303-321, p.306.
[3] Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), p.78.
[4] John Wiltshire, Jane Austen and the Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p.31.
[5] Laurie Kaplan and Richard Kaplan, ‘What is Wrong With Marianne?’, http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number12/kaplan.htm (1990)
[6] William Heberden, Commentaries on the History and Cure of Diseases (1798; repr. Boston: Wells and Lily, 1818), p.189
[7] Samuel Johnson and John Walker, A Dictionary of the English Language (London: William Pickering, 1828), p.453.
[8] William Buchan, Domestic Medicine (Edinburgh: Balfour, Auld, and Smellie, 1769), p.173.
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