Abstract

Jane Austen is an outstanding English realistic novelist at the turn of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. In her short writing career, Jane Austen only accomplished six novels, all of which develop with the plot of women looking for their marriages. This kind of plot makes Austen’s works the subject under the microscope of eighteenth-century marriage views.

Sense and Sensibility, one of her masterpieces, has received much intense attention from many critics and scholars, who adopt various perspectives to interpret the novel. The story revolves around Elinor and Marianne, two sisters with opposite characters. Elinor is the representative of sense, while Marianne is sensitive and romantic. At first, Marianne immersed herself in the fantasy that love was supreme. She judged the ideal marriage by her sensitive feeling alone and totally ignored the importance of economic security and personal integrity. In the end, she comes to the stream of sense and decides to assess marriage with reason as Elinor does. She undergoes the most development within the book, which determines her attitudes towards love and marriage. While this kind of the development is not just what the story needed, it may be the process of Austen’s reflection of a happy marriage.

This paper tries to analyze Marianne’s pre- and post-views on marriage by her different attitudes towards three heroes: Edward, Willoughby and Brandon and reveal Jane Austen’s ideal marriage concept by introducing her love experience. With the comparison of Austen’s and Marianne’s love story, I would like to figure out that Marianne’s growth is the process of Austen’s application of an ideal marriage concept.

Keywords: Jane Austen; Sense and Sensibility; Marianne; marriage views; transformation; romance; sense

Contents

Abstract

摘要

Introduction-1

1. The Information about Jane Austen and Sense and Sensibility-1

2. Literature Review-2

1. The Analysis of Marianne’s Pre-views on Marriage-4

1.1 The Pre-attitudes towards Edward-4

1.2 The Pre-attitudes towards Brandon-5

1.3 The Pre-attitudes towards Willoughby-6

2. The Analysis of Marianne’s Post-views on Marriage-8

2.1 The Post-attitudes towards Willoughby-8

2.2 The Post-attitudes toward Edward-9

2.3 The Post-attitudes towards Brandon-9

3. Jane Austen’s involvement in the novel-11

3.1 The Love Experience of Jane Austen-11

3.2 The Application of Jane Austen’s Marriage Concepts to Marianne-12

Conclusion-13