Pride and Prejudice; Sense and Sensibility

Chapter 123 Good things come in pairs (2)
Willoughby could not but feel terribly distressed at the news of her marriage.After a while, Mrs. Smith's forgiveness for him only pushed his punishment to the climax.Mrs. Smith made it clear that if Willoughby could marry a decent woman, she would treat him favorably, which gave him reason to believe that if he could treat Marianne decently, he would be happy immediately and become a get rich.Willoughby regrets the punishment he has brought upon himself for his immoral actions, and his confession is sincere and beyond doubt.It is equally indubitable that for a long time he thought of Colonel Bland with envy and Marianne with regret.But if it is taken for granted from this that he will never be comforted, that he will flee from the world, develop a morose and depressing character, and die of excessive sorrow, you are very mistaken!Because he's nothing like that.He lives tenaciously, and often has a good time.His wife wasn't always morose, and his family wasn't always morose either!He trained horses and dogs, and participated in various hunting activities, which brought him a lot of happiness.

Despite the absurdity of losing Marianne--that he should survive without her--he had always had a distinct admiration for Marianne, and he was deeply interested in everything connected with her, In his heart he had always regarded her as the perfect example of a woman.In the years that followed, many young beauties appeared, but he sneered at them all, because they were all inferior to Mrs. Bland in his eyes.

Mrs. Dashwood was more circumspect, and remained at the cottage instead of moving to Delaford.It was fortunate for Sir John and Mrs. Jennings that Marianne was married, but Margaret was old enough to dance, and not unsuitable to have a lover.

Due to the deep family friendship, Barton and Delaford naturally maintained continuous communication.Eleanor and Marianne had many virtues, and had their own happiness, but one thing should not be regarded as a trivial matter: although they were sisters, and they were close at hand, and could even see each other, there was no difference between them. However, they were able to live in harmony with each other, and the relationship between their husbands did not become alienated.

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Sense and Sensibility is Jane Austen's first novel.The first draft was completed in [-], in the form of an epistolary, called "Elinor and Marianne", and was revised several times later, before it was officially published under the name of "Sense and Sensibility" more than ten years later.

"Sense and Sensibility" takes two sisters with very different personalities as the protagonists, takes their love stories as clues, and through the changes of their living environment and the transformation of social interactions, it shows readers their life backgrounds and reasons for them like gossip. The character traits, spiritual outlook and worldly feelings of various characters in contact.Surrounding all of this to show elder sister Eleanor's rationality and calmness, younger sister Marianne's passion and sensibility.Through the different reactions of the people, things and things they face, the characters' personalities and attitudes are expressed, and the secular human relations and the value orientation of marriage and love in the British rural society at that time are discussed.Readers, while following the sad and happy love plots of the hero and heroine in the story, will also appreciate the various customs of British society from the country gentry to the emerging market class at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century.

"Sense and Sensibility" is full of humor and irony.Jane Austen is good at satire, and highlights the character of the characters with parody and reflection. She does not rely on appearance description and inner monologue to portray the characters, but through lifelike dialogue and details.And Jane Austen's delicate and profound portrayal and description, humorous and relaxed satirical skills greatly enhance and highlight the artistic value and charm of this book.

In Sense and Sensibility, Austin presents the characters of the two protagonists to the readers in a contrasting way, and narrates most of the stories from the perspective of the older sister. The reader explains or hints at the plot of the story.At the same time, the author created an "ideal woman" in her mind through shaping the image of her sister - a "reasonable mortal".

Elder sister Eleanor represents rationality. "Although she is only 19 years old, she is very knowledgeable and calm-headed, so she can be her mother's consultant and advise her mother." She can stop the impatient mother from acting rashly, Thus benefiting the whole family.Eleanor was "good-natured, sweet-natured, strong-hearted, but she knew how to restrain herself," a quality her mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters was determined to refuse to learn.Her intelligence can be manifested in the following aspects:

First of all, she can control her emotions when facing emotional problems, and has enough self-control to face the twists and turns and tests along the way.When she learned from Lucy that her sweetheart Edward was engaged to the vulgar Lucy, she was able to restrain her feelings and consider the issue from Edward's point of view. Through rational analysis, she believed that Edward was caused by impulsiveness when he was young. And always out of morality, he understands Edward's behavior, and tries to persuade his sister, who has a clear love and hatred, to understand Edward in the same way.

Secondly, in dealing with people in the world, she has shown extraordinary reason, she can be fair, and does not make judgments on the situation and human conditions based on other people's likes and dislikes.She is tactful and old-fashioned, has a good demeanor, conforms to etiquette and customs, and wins favor from all sides.This quality of hers manifests itself in two ways:

On the one hand, she can be objective and fair in dealing with people, observing with her own eyes, appreciating and evaluating with her heart, and not being swayed by other people's irresponsible remarks.At Barton Manor, she meets Colonel Brandon.Willoughby and Marianne have a lot of complaints about Brandon, even extremely contemptuous, but Elinor doesn't think so, and even refute their prejudice.On the one hand, this is because she sees people in the world objectively and fairly, and on the other hand, she also has elements of sympathy for Colonel Brandon, because she knows that the colonel loves his sister Marianne, but she is ridiculed by Marianne in the end. Eleanor sympathized with him.In addition, when looking at Mr. Palmer, Eleanor didn't have much affection for Mr. Palmer at first, but after getting to know Mr. Palmer's character and his helplessness, and when Marianne was seriously ill, Palmer Mr. Mer's actions allowed Eleanor to have a better understanding of Mr. Palmer, and finally understood the reasons for Mr. Palmer's incompatibility and cold impulsiveness.

On the other hand, in dealing with the world, she appears sophisticated and thoughtful, extremely cultivated and intelligent.This is not only reflected in the fact that she can be a good mother's consultant internally, but also in the external aspect, she can also show that she must have the quality of calmness in every major event.When she heard the news of Edward's engagement, she suppressed the intense unease in her heart and accepted every temptation from Lucy.Moreover, for the Steele sisters whom she disliked, even if their actions made her feel ashamed or even disgusted, she always treated each other with courtesy, instead of showing disgust and indifference like her younger sister Marianne.When faced with Lucy's temptation, she also knew clearly in her heart, reacted quickly, pretended not to know, showed "concern", and asked Lucy about her future plans.At this time, Eleanor is rational and shrewd, and also invincible.Through her sophistication, she overcomes her rival's ulterior motives, and at the same time turns her enemy into a "friend".

In contrast to Eleanor, it is the character traits of her sister Marianne.When expressing Marianne's character, the author adopts the method of generalizing first, and then expressing it concretely through the characters' language, actions and moods, so as to create a passionate, lively, frank and bold character who dares to love and hate. woman.She doesn't know how to socialize, and treats people according to her own preferences.She is more enthusiastic than rational, she is straightforward and bold but ignorant of the world, and even deliberately ignores the world.

For this character, the author is not without preference.After introducing Eleanor's character at the beginning of the novel, Marianne's character is commented: "Smart and sensible, and she is dedicated to whatever she does. She has no restraint when she is sad or happy. She is generous, amiable, and charming. People are happy, all is well, just careless. She is uncannily like her mother."

These characteristics of Marianne are fully displayed in her attitude towards love.She is a perfectionist when it comes to love. For Colonel Brandon, she is enthusiastic and lively and thinks the colonel is too old.But for Willoughby, who is handsome but a playboy, she is dazzled by love, turns a blind eye to all Willoughby's shortcomings, and makes favorable excuses for his various behaviors, and falls in love all of a sudden, unable to Pulling himself out, he suddenly fell into a state of grief because he was abandoned by the other party, and almost lost his life due to illness.Just imagine, only a character like Marianne can love vigorously and be heartbroken, which is exactly where the author's unique ingenuity lies.If it were Eleanor, first of all, her reason would not let her throw her feelings casually to a man she didn't understand, and even if she interacted with him, she would not ignore the secular etiquette or people's gossip .This is also the reason why Eleanor's love has never been well known or full of storms.

In addition, Marianne's character is also displayed in her candid and even willful resistance to social conventions.Marianne is bold and bold, and regards etiquette as nothing.She dares to criticize all kinds of remarks that don't please her ears, and ignores other people's perception of her.When she was a guest at her sister-in-law's house, facing her sister-in-law and her mother's unfair judgment on the screen painted by her sister, she boldly attacked and said outrightly: "This kind of praise is really fresh! What business does Miss Morton have on us? We are admiring a kind of Extraordinary painting art! Who is Miss Morton? Who knows her? Who cares about her? We are thinking and talking about Eleanor." His hypocrisy, cunning, vulgarity, boredom, and dullness were criticized for nothing.That's the lovely thing about Marianne.

Of course, after experiencing a series of setbacks, her personality also changed. She was able to face Willoughby's feelings calmly and rationally, and finally found true love, throwing herself into the arms of the "old man" she thought at the beginning. Became the mistress of the manor.She has matured and become more sensible.Marianne grows from a passionate girl longing for beautiful love to a qualified housewife, which is also the ideal destination arranged for her by the author, and this does not make people feel that Marianne has really compromised with the world, but I feel that she has really grown up and become a mature woman in the real society.

Austin shows us the two sisters' very different attitudes towards love, life, and human conditions, and at the same time, it also shows us the human conditions of their era: some are vulgar and vulgar, and some are hypocritical and cunning. , Some people are preoccupied, some people are confused... But love and marriage are the themes that Austin wants to express after all. What she tells us is, when faced with the proposition of love and marriage, who can really do it rationally? With emotion in place? ——Some people are in control, but I'm afraid they are the real worldly people and greedy people who take marriage as a bargain as shown in the novel.

In addition, "Sense and Sensibility" also centers on Eleanor and Marianne, and shapes various characters related to them.The true colors of these characters are also displayed in a humorous and contrastive manner as the plot unfolds.For example, they made humorous satire on their hypocritical elder brother who was somewhat fearful of guilt, making his words and deeds contradictory and inconsistency. The image of a social speculator who tries his best to make friends with the rich and powerful.As for his wife, they also showed a despicable, snobbish, hypocritical, and impersonal image of a woman by their mutual "suggestions" about family matters.

Austin is like this, using his own pen to show some ordinary and ordinary characters, and the fate and stories of the characters all reveal the shadow of the world and human conditions at that time.And this kind of shadow, if we pay attention to it a little, can be found everywhere in our current life.

In the end, Austin arranged a happy ending for the protagonist of the novel. Not only that, but the fate of the secondary characters is also extremely perfect, which shows the author's kindness and mellowness.For example, Mrs. Jennings, who takes pleasure in inquiring about other people's privacy, is a somewhat annoying old lady with a broken mouth, but when Marianne was seriously ill, she was obliged to do her duty as a mother and take care of Marianne. Marianne, who was disgusted with her, was deeply moved and accepted her from the bottom of her heart.But in the face of Mrs. Ferrars' family's attitude towards Edward, this old lady who had no contact with Edward actually said that she would arrange life for him, and she dared to face John Dashwood. It was wrong to scold his mother-in-law, Mrs. Ferrars.This originally annoying old lady actually made us like her too.

As for the shrewd and selfish Lucy, the author did not completely leave her alone. After all, this is not a heinous and cunning person. The author arranged for her to be her husband, who is quite suitable for her.What's more, she fully revealed her flattery skills, and won the forgiveness and care of her Diao mother-in-law, Mrs. Ferrars.The ingenuity of this arrangement has to be admirable for Austin's witty-let people with similar smells check and balance each other.While being humorous, it is not difficult for us to see the author's gentle and kind character who can't bear to be too cruel to the characters when writing.

As for the playboy Willoughby, although his actions are shameful and outrageous: on the one hand, when the author is writing about Marianne's serious illness, at the same time, it is also implying that Willoughby is ungrateful and ungrateful. His cruelty—what’s more, he also committed the sinful thing of abducting a girl but being irresponsible—this makes readers hate him even more.But just when the readers are about to gnash their teeth at him, he suddenly arrives. Only when Marianne's life is dying, he has a clear understanding of his own feelings, and expresses regret for what he has done in the past.Facing such a person, I believe readers will, like Eleanor, criticize him, but also feel compassion.This all reflects the author's "magnanimous" mind.

Austin is wise, humorous and gentle. She uses her pen to show us her characters, and at the same time uses her characters as a mirror for each of our readers in real life, especially when you face love and marriage. when.

Perhaps what Austen wants to tell us through the characters in her pen is that people need a mature love that has been polished by reason.The achievement of this result often requires a process-people learn to soberly look at their feelings, marriage and life, as well as life, character, and human conditions through the experience of life and feelings.

editor

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