The Female Gothic and Marianne Dashwood: the Gothic Heroine of Sense and Sensibility
Abstract
In the late eighteenth-century, the rise of the English Gothic novel propelled an extension referred to as the Female Gothic. Through the complexity of the English Gothic genre, writers—particularly women writers—explore the intersectionality of gender, class, natural horrors, and race, creating a space where the heroines of these Gothic novels exist beyond the confinement of the domestic sphere. The Female Gothic was a way for these women writers to acknowledge the natural horrors that plagued the experiences of being a woman—it addressed the oppression of a patriarchal society in which the subversion of the female body was perceived as an incubator for reproduction and sexual pleasure. Although Jane Austen’s novels can be regarded as more traditional pieces, Austen’s Sense and Sensibility arguably applies the Female Gothic framework to highlight the patriarchal dangers of women engaging with men outside of their paternalistic/family sphere. Through the development of Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby's relationship, we can observe the societal reprimands linked to gender, reputation, and the female Gothic body. Founded in the legitimization of the Gothic genre, the discourse of the Gothic female body deepened the conversation of the terrors suffered by women at the hand of male-dominated societies.
Acknowledgements
For every step of the way, Dr. Dressel, Dr. Levin, Dr. Magosaki, Dr. Van Meter, and, of course, Dr. Hall have been my greatest supporters; they have provided the best experience and education that I could have asked for. Thank you.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Towards the end of the eighteenth-century, the brilliance of the Gothic novel had risen to a popular and legitimate literary genre. Propelled by the publication of authors such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Matthew Lewis, the complexity of the English Gothic genre provided a space for writers to explore the intersectionality of gender, class, natural horrors, and race—the balance between, as literary and historical scholar Jerrold E. Hogle states, the “earthly laws of conventional reality and possibilities of the supernatural” (Hogle 3). Hogle explains that Gothic fiction is about its “own blurring of different levels of discourse while it is also concerned with the interpenetration of other opposed conditions—including life/death, natural/supernatural, ancient/modern, realistic/artificial, and the unconscious/conscious” (9). Perhaps writers, specifically women writers, utilized this blurring effect to address systemic issues such as patriarchal oppression and women’s confinement to the domestic sphere. By looking carefully at the development of the Gothic Heroine, tracing the characterization from Walpole to Radcliffe and then to Jane Austen, we might better understand the subtle argument for female agency found in these novels.
We can see, then, through the development of the Female Gothic, that Jane Austen is able to utilize the reimagining of the female body with her character Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. Though Marianne might be read as a replacement for the first Eliza in Colonel Brandon’s life, we might also read Colonel Brandon as a replacement for Marianne’s first love, Willoughby—giving the female some agency in the match. By tracing the development of this concept and building from it, we can better understand the importance of the Female Gothic framework in the continuous argument against female confinement. The ways in which the Gothic novel pulls together elements of terror and horror, sublimity and beauty, reality and the supernatural, to blend with the romances of the eighteenth-century, I will demonstrate how these factors created a pseudo-subgenre, which I will refer to as the Gothic Romance.
The principal creator of this newly founded genre is the Gothic novelist, historian, and politician, Horace Walpole. On Christmas Eve 1764, under the pseudonym William Marshal, Walpole published the first edition of The Castle of Otranto, stating in the preface that it was a translation of a medieval Italian manuscript by the author Onuphrio Muralto. Ironically, a year later, when Otranto was republished in 1765, Walpole revealed in the second edition’s preface that it was, in fact, not a translation of a medieval Italian manuscript; he identified himself as the true author and described Otranto as a Gothic story. Not only would Walpole set the precedent for later traditional Gothic novels such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Sicilian Romance (1790) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), culminating in Jane Austen’s satirical Northanger Abbey (1817); he also established the Gothic Romance as a literary genre.
Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, is a perfect example of an author threading social criticisms into her writings through characterization. For instance, Emily St. Aubert has to escape and protect herself from unwanted male attention more than once, and in these situations she is filled with excessive amounts of terror, not because of Udolpho’s infamous veiled portraits or haunted passageways, but because of the apprehension of male violence. In these moments, Emily is experiencing what is referred to as natural horrors, which are not a result of the supernatural but rather from the corruption of man. In other words, she acknowledges the anticipation of what could result from this unwanted male attention. Radcliffe arguably is not only illustrating that women should not fear the irrationality of the supernatural because their terrors are able to be explained through realism, but she also provides critical social criticism. It is from the nature of threats against women (e.g., sexual violence, physical assault, domestic confinement) in society that the extension of the Gothic, which granted voices to these female terrors, has come, according to Carol Margaret Davison, “to be known as the Female Gothic” (84).
Davison explains: “[T]he Female Gothic brought the Gothic to bear on women’s vexed experiences of love and romance, and the multifaceted ideology of femininity, particularly the constraining roles advocated for women and the institutions of marriage and motherhood” (85-86). By highlighting the intersectionality of gender and genre, Davison acknowledges that the rise of the Female Gothic not only provided voices for female terrors but also advocated for women and their roles outside the confines of the domestic sphere. The Female Gothic allowed women writers to portray their heroines’ agency, including inheriting property or simply existing beyond traditional women's roles. As one of the principal creators of the Gothic heroine, Radcliffe demonstrates this possible agency through her novels and, particularly, the ending of The Mysteries of Udolpho: Emily is back at her childhood home, La Vallée, with her hero counterpart Valancourt, and is, more or less, free from the confines of patriarchal guardianship.
Radcliffe, however, did not create the Female Gothic or the Gothic heroine in a vacuum; it started with what Horace Walpole accomplished with The Castle of Otranto and his female characters. Walpole's characterization of Isabella, for instance, set into motion a significant component of the Female Gothic discourse that Radcliffe would later counter with Emily: The female body’s replaceability. For Emily, her male counterpart—after a few dalliances in Paris, for which he is genuinely chastised does not replace her with another body, and he does not treat her as a vessel; in this framing, there is no other woman. Their love story is sealed with the romances of a happily-ever-after as they are brought back together. Radcliffe writes: “O! how joyful is it to tell of happiness, such as that of Valancourt and Emily; to relate, that, after suffering under oppression of the vicious and the disdain of the weak, they were, at length restored to each other—to the beloved landscapes of their native country—to the securest felicity of this life” (Radcliffe 672). Despite existing in a male-dominated hierarchy, Emily is still able to curate agency, identity, and property.
In contrast, Walpole’s Isabella is plagued with the understanding that she is, much as for Manfred, a conduit for Theodore’s eternal grief and fallacious love. Walpole writes: “Theodore’s grief was too fresh to admit the thought of another love; and it was not till after frequent discourses with Isabella, of his dear Matilda, that he was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could forever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul” (105). Theodore eventually redirects his love for Matilda and replaces it with a marriage to Isabella. Conversely, Emily is able to return to her first love and childhood home; she is able to return to a place of agency and restored identity, but Isabella remains a captive in a place she once fled out of fear and is forced to reside in an empty marriage.
Returning back to Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the second preface offers many key facets to the style and structure of the publication, but most importantly, Walpole explains his purpose in merging two genres; he states: “It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In the former all was imagination and improbability; in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success” (9). This would, of course, be ancillary in the publication of other Gothic works, as this laid the foundation for what Hogle refers to as “earthly laws of conventional reality and possibilities of the supernatural” (3). In blending the ideologies of each genre, a space is created for the Female Gothic not just to exist but to be explored as a multidimensional protagonist, inherently offering a voice beyond the domestic sphere. Moreover, what would later be cemented as the Gothic heroine by Radcliffe began with the establishment of The Castle of Otranto’s Isabella.
Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto
In the sudden, supernatural, and tragic death of Isabella’s bridegroom, Conrad, his father, Prince Manfred, calls for a private meeting with her to propose that she set aside her grief and to dry her tears. Isabella’s future was not forsaken because instead of a “sickly boy, [Isabella] shall have a husband in the prime of his age, who will know how to value [her] beauties, and who may expect numerous offspring” (Walpole 24). By this, Manfred is telling Isabella that he is the “husband in the prime of his age,” in which he frames his son as a mere figure in the part of procreating a male heir for Otranto. As he suggests that Isabella forget about Conrad and take his hand in marriage, he denounces his wife Hippolita as she has for too long “cursed me by her unfruitfulness: my fate depends on having sons,—and this night I trust will give a new date to my hopes” (24). In this patriarchal society, Isabella and Hippolita are perceived as merely female bodies with the sole purpose of delivering male heirs—women are understood as systemic incubators deprived of autonomy and inherently interchangeable.
The female body has been deprived of true autonomy in the Western mythical tradition since Eve was formed from the rib of Adam, and the female body has been condemned since Eve is blamed for tempting Adam to eat the forbidden fruit, resulting in the destruction of paradise. This is to say that the social perception of the female body has predominantly been through a subverted male lens that establishes a gender hierarchy. Women have been reduced to a fragmentation of their bodies, to isolated body parts such as the womb rather than being recognized as people. The patriarchal framework has fragmented the female body into pieces associated with sensual pleasure and reproduction—the female body is a figure for sex and offspring.
Hogle states: “From the start, then, the oppression and ‘othering’ of the female seen from her point of view has been a principal Gothic subject, even to the point of depicting her reduced to an object of exchange or the merest tool of child-bearing between men” (10). The Female Gothic body speaks to inherent oppression represented in a patriarchal hierarchical society as well as articulating the female terrors previously discussed. Isabella is perceived as no more than an incubator for the childbearing of expected male heirs and an emotional black hole for Theodore's endless grief. However, Radcliffe illustrates and critiques this condemnation of the female body by blurring the Gothic romance genre through her female Gothic heroine.
Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho
Emily St. Aubert from Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho is often regarded as a cornerstone of the Female Gothic sphere—as Radcliffe is considered its principal creator, and as she would later set the precedent for the ideology of a Gothic heroine. Emily is caught in a tug-of-war between sense and sensibility: although her father, St. Aubert, taught her to resist succumbing to the irrationality of unregulated curiosity and imagination, she is often pulled into the world of the fantastic and the supernatural as she becomes overwhelmed by sensibility. It is important to note here the eighteenth-century understanding: to be sensible was to be ruled by rational thought, emotions, and actions; whereas sensibility meant one was suffering from irrationality and blinded by an overconsuming imagination.
Literary scholar Nelson C. Smith writes the latter meaning “that of a release of emotion, even an excess of emotion, and the cult of sensibility involves people willing to give themselves up to emotions” (578). For instance, in The Mysteries of Udolpho, Emily chastises Annette, her lady’s companion, several times for surrendering to the irrationality that Udolpho is haunted by the ghost of its former marchioness, Signora Laurentini. However, despite Emily’s sensible education by her father, she is not exempt from experiencing the supernatural terrors and the natural horrors of Udolpho and its occupants.
Smith argues that Radcliffe utilized the eighteenth-century understanding of sense and sensibility in order to explain away the supernatural or the flaws of succumbing to sensibility—more or less, the defaults within the female Gothic heroine. Claiming that “[Radcliffe] can evoke the (for her) pleasurable emotions of fear and terror and then expose the rational causes to show the weakness of the sensibility which had given in to those emotions” (578). Radcliffe would thus establish one of the key facets of the characterization of the Gothic heroine: as the underlying trope, at times they are deprived of their sense (i.e., rationality) because their innate curiosity overrules their sensible education.
While Emily is warned against such irrationality, or in this case, a desirous curiosity and excessive imagination, I would argue that it was an important tool that allowed her to escape several dangerous situations—much like Otranto’s Isabella utilizing her understanding/belief of the supernatural to flee through the castle's catacombs to find refuge at the village church. For instance, Emily being caught in a tug-of-war between the emotional and the rational offered her a balance between the castle's supernatural elements, which provoked terror, and the very real natural horror of man. Some might argue that Emily is irrational in her decisions, but this balance propels her to make decisions based on an understanding of being a woman in a castle of dominating, violent, and immoral men of Montoni’s company—she is propelled to make these decisions because she sits between the supernatural and the natural, which is manifested through the Gothic Romance genre.
After Emily meets Montoni’s entourage in Venice, she catches the unwanted attention of Count Morano. Despite Emily telling him she does not wish to marry him, he insists she might change her mind in the future. As Emily is forced by Montoni to flee Venice for the confinement and isolation of Udolpho, Montoni, under false pretenses, writes to the Count that she has changed her mind and wants to take his hand in marriage. This is a capitalist exchange; Montoni has bid Emily, her inherited property and her body—her purse and her womb—to the Count on the condition of his loyalty to Montoni’s growing army, to which the Count agrees. However, the Count grows angry and tired of Montoni’s games, using the marriage as leverage; he breaks into Emily’s room in the middle of the night to force her to return to Venice.
In this scene, Emily is disturbed by the sudden appearance of Count Morano, and a deep sense of apprehension, provoked by a macabre silence, prevents her from changing into her sleepwear. Radcliffe writes: “[B]ut, when she rose to undress, the silence and solitude, to which she was left, at this midnight hour…conspired with the impression that subject she had been considering had given to her mind, to appall her.” (260). This uncertainty that she is experiencing is rooted in the emotional terror that she feels towards Count Morano, Montoni, and the eerie confinement of Udolpho.
Finding a stranger in her bedchamber, Emily is paralyzed with fear and terror as the stranger approaches: “She gazed at [Count Morano] for a moment in speechless affright, while he, throwing himself on his knee at the bedside…would have taken her hand, when the faculties, that terror had suspended, suddenly returned, and she sprung from the bed, in the dress, which surely a kind of prophetic apprehension had prevented her, on this night, from throwing aside” (Radcliffe 261). The apprehension that Emily previously felt in her bedchambers, though derived from a superstitious belief and sense of a supernatural possibility, impels her to remain clothed while she sleeps in case she needs to flee.
As Count Morano penetrates her bedchamber, Emily is able to maintain a sense of propriety because she has remained in her day dress. Not only is it abhorrent of the Count to break into a lady’s bedchamber where it would be likely that she is left unprotected, but also, if Emily had been caught by Montoni in her night attire, there would be severe consequences to her propriety which would inherently affect her marriageability and reputation. Ironically, the trope of Gothic heroines being portrayed as having unruly imaginations, unregulated emotions, and being overcome with sensibility protected Emily—not from the supernatural element of a giant, goblin, or ghost, but from the monsters of man.
It is critical to note that for a lady of middle- to upper-class, her reputation is the entire basis of her worth, and it is one of the few pieces of “currency,” granted by sex, that she has to offer in an exchange for protection (i.e., marriage). Unlike a man, in this case Count Morano, if a woman’s propriety is called into question or even socially spoken about poorly, it will dictate her social currency, which inherently affects the stability of her future. For instance, as the female body has been socially perceived as a vessel—a bearer of a womb—and is inherently linked to the absence of female sexuality, the conversation of purity and social portrayal was dependent on the social acceptance of her propriety. Academic scholar Soile Ylivuori explains that a “‘woman's sexual reputation was the whole of her reputation’, thereby arguing that chastity was the over-riding measure of female honour” (72). In other words, it goes against every moral, religious, and social order for Emily to be alone with Count Morano in her bedclothes and in her bedchamber, and Count would be aware of the circumstances he is placing Emily in—a sexual female body should not exist outside the iron cuffs of matrimony.
The discussion of the Female Gothic body and female terrors is significant to understanding the characterization of Emily, and by extension, for women during the eighteenth-century because it highlights the gravity of the situation in which the Count corners Emily by breaking into her bedchamber. Thus, we are brought back to Emily’s balance between sense and sensibility, and how, in order for her to understand or to exist in her role as the Gothic heroine, she is dependent on blurring the edges of the natural and the rational with the supernatural and the irrational to illustrate the social criticism Radcliffe is addressing. Emily’s sensibility is an intuitive guiding tool that allows her to recognize the dangers of the patriarchy, such as the possible consequences of the Count's unwanted attention, because she is able to identify emotions such as apprehension due to the eeriness of the macabre castle and the black veiled portrait.
Emily’s sensibility, then, should be viewed as a strength, but there is scholarship that argues it to be a weakness of her character and, at times, borders the line of madness, or rather, hysteria. According to Smith, “[a]ll that happens, indeed, results from Emily’s being a highstrung heroine susceptible to the dangers of sensibility” (583). The “all that happens” that Smith is referring to is the majority of the dangerous situations Emily must go through over the course of the novel, and Smith goes as far say that “for all the gloom and mystery of Udolpho, nothing very terrifying really happens there: strange figures, black veils and ‘things that go bump in the night’ make up most of the terrors” (583). The commentary Smith is offering here arguably contributes to a derogatory narrative that women are of a melodramatic nature, that the female terrors that Emily experiences are minute, rather than the torment of sexual harassment and the plausibility of physical assault.
Smith pushes it further, claiming that it is Emily’s sensibility, her rogue imagination, and overindulged self-delusions combined that produce the mysteries and terrors she must confront. Within the bounds of this argument, Smith implies that it is Emily’s fault that the mysteries and terrors of the novel take place, that it is then her fault that Count Morano, unbeknownst to her, penetrates into her bedroom, pursues unwanted advances, and bids Montoni for Emily as if she were not a person but a mere vessel fragmented for marriage and motherhood. The female terrors illustrated in Radcliffe’s novel and the development of the Female Gothic have remained vital over two hundred years later to explore a perpetuated narrative that subverts the female body to abjection. Smith is not only derogatorily mocking Emily’s intuitive guidance of sensibility, but he is also dismissing the entire significance of how Emily’s sensibility has protected her from the systemic dangers of a patriarchal society.
Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility
These systemic dangers do not end with the eighteenth century. The blurring effects of the Gothic Romance genre that started with Walpole's Otranto and the creation of the Female Gothic with The Mysteries of Udolpho have consistently been reproduced by numerous Gothic authors such as Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker, but it has also found its way into novels by Jane Austen. While a Gothic novel relies on the balance between nature and supernatural, rationality and irrationality, the framework of the Female Gothic can be explored in other genres because it is representative of female terrors. For instance, in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, the Female Gothic framework highlights the patriarchal dangers of women engaging with men outside of their paternalistic/family sphere through the development of Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby's relationship, because, yet again, we return to the societal reprimands linked to gender, reputation, and the female Gothic body. Although Marianne Dashwood is not in a traditional Gothic novel, Austen has captured the essence of a traditional Gothic heroine through her characterization as she depicts Marianne navigating the oppression of a patriarchal society. It is evident that Austen drew on elements of the Gothic and its blurring effects to articulate her resistance to female domestic incarceration.
Marianne Dashwood, the Gothic Heroine of Sense and Sensibility
In David Punter and Glennis Byron’s book, The Gothic, they clearly juxtaposed the Gothic with the classical to highlight significant differences in their representation and within the literary scope of the Gothic genre, “[w]here the classical was ordered, the Gothic was chaotic; where the classical was simple and pure, Gothic was ornate and convoluted; where the classics offered a world of clear rules and limits, Gothic represented excess and exaggeration, the product of the wild and the uncivilized, a world constantly tending to overflow cultural boundaries” (7). Punter and Byron’s comparison suggests that the Gothic and the classical exist as two separate worlds, but it is evident in Sense and Sensibility that Austen forced these separate worlds to coexist through Gothic characteristics, double plots, doppelgängers, and dramatic settings.
Austen’s ability to apply Gothic elements to her classical style of writing underscores the natural relationship between the Gothic and the classical, showing that they do not need to be polar opposites for Gothic elements to emerge. In Sense and Sensibility, Austen draws on these elements, such as excess and exaggeration, order and chaos, and the wild and uncivilized, to show that Gothic literature is not confined to its heroines being kidnapped by bandits or being held as a prisoner in an Italian monastery. In the center of London’s marriage markets and in a society founded on propriety, Jane Austen has shaped Marianne Dashwood into the Gothic heroine of Sense and Sensibility.
A common trope among Gothic heroines is the deep “fascination for the past” (David Stevens 46). This fascination is typically viewed as a mark of the heroine's naivety; for example, Gothic heroines are often situated in isolated residences that limit their worldly experience. In another of Jane Austen’s novels, Northanger Abbey, the audience is able to observe this in Catherine Morland, the Gothic heroine, as she becomes fascinated by what she believes happened to the late Mrs. Tilney—her fascination is rooted in the dramatization of terror and murder, as she expects Northanger Abbey to be a dark and gloomy castle from one of her Gothic novels. It is important to note that though Northanger Abbey was published in 1818, after Austen’s death, the original version was accepted for publication in 1803. We can assume that Austen was interested in the effects of the Gothic on the female body and wove this theme into all of her novels, including Sense and Sensibility (1811). That being said, Austen founded Northanger Abbey on satire; the characterization of Catherine Morland is a parody of a Gothic heroine, therefore leading the audience to expect a series of traditional Gothic tropes.
Marianne, however, is not a traditional Gothic heroine; thus, in Austen’s refashioning of many Gothic tropes, Marianne’s fascination with the past does not concern haunted abbeys or black-veiled paintings, but rather the recent death of her father and the sudden departure from her childhood home, Norland. For instance, at the end of chapter one, Marianne delivers an emotional and melodramatic monologue in her final goodbye to Norland. She states:
“Oh! happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more! And you, ye well-known trees! But you will continue the same. No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless, although we can observe you no longer! No, you will continue the same: unconscious of the pleasure or regret you occasion and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade” (Austen 40).
This intimate performance depicts a fascination for the past as Marianne proclaims her sufferings that will go unnoticed by the trees, much as the trees are unaware of the pleasure they bring to those who walk beneath their shade. In this moment, Marianne is in solitude and mourning as she bids her final goodbye to the ancestral home and grounds of her childhood. Arguably, her attachment to and mourning of Norland is a replacement for the sudden death of her father, as this is his final resting place.
As previously stated, Marianne is not a traditional Gothic heroine; therefore, we cannot expect the repetition and trope of the Gothic heroine being rescued from a group of bandits or freed from a tall, gloomy tower, but we can expect a facade or a mirrored image of a man saving a woman. For instance, upon Marianne and Margaret rushing to return home from their unexpected rainy and muddy countryside walk, they decide that running down the steep hillside in front of Barton Cottage would be the quickest way to get out of the cold, treacherous weather. Unfortunately, Marianne misses a step, which causes her to slip, fall, and twist her ankle. This might seem less dramatic than being rescued from a remote Italian castle, but in reading Marianne’s fall through a Gothic lens, it is clear that Austen uses significant Gothic characteristics, such as the typical setting of turbulent weather, to signify the dangers of Marianne’s situation.
Gothic literature relies on the development of the environment and atmosphere, as it is here that an author can set a foundational tone for the scene. At this moment, the skies are dark, the rain is heavy, and unease settles over the scene as the reader is forced to acknowledge that Marianne is at a dangerous disadvantage because she cannot stand and put weight on her injured foot; therefore, she cannot run, and she cannot defend herself. Despite being close to Barton Cottage, these two young women face a critical choice: should Margaret leave Marianne alone to fetch help, or should they both wait and hope that someone will pass by?
In the art of refashioning the Gothic trope in which the heroine needs to be saved by a hero, Austen has maintained the outline, but instead of being a hero, we later learn that he will turn out to be a ravishing monster in polite society. Upon Marianne’s fall, coincidentally, a gentleman named John Willoughby happened to be out hunting with his two pointers at his feet when he heard the commotion. Seeing Marianne alone and on the ground, Willoughby ran over and “offered his services, and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without further delay…and quitted not his hold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour” (Austen 52). It is significant to note that, rather than offering support by helping her stand and slowly working their way down the hillside as a way to maintain propriety and respect Marianne’s modesty, he dominantly inserts himself by creating immediate intimacy between them by tightly carrying Marianne down and into Barton Cottage.
In Devoney Looser’s book, Wild for Austen, she examines these few scenes more closely, clearly articulating the Gothic nature of Sense and Sensibility and, more significantly, the dangers of Willoughby’s character. Looser suggests that Willoughby, “who was out hunting nearby, makes Marianne his substitute harvest. She’s injured and therefore easy to catch. He picks her up and carries her to her home in his arms, instead of returning to his place with a brace of pheasants…[h]e will take his prey as he can” (48). The thread of unease that Austen weaves throughout the relationship between Willoughby and Marianne, especially in their introductions, but also Willoughby as an isolated character, is chilling because it exposes the monstrousness of man underneath the masks of propriety. Frankly, as courting is referred to as a marriage market, the depiction of this scene, with Marianne beneath Willoughby as if she were a wounded animal, and Willoughby standing tall with his gun, they can be read as a symbolic dichotomy between the hunters (e.g., men) versus the hunted (e.g., women), thus reinforcing the patriarchal systemics of a gendered hierarchy.
Additionally, another Gothic trope that Stevens discusses is the delivery of this exotic and eccentric. Referring back to Austen’s framing of Willoughby’s characterization, the day he meets Marianne is rather interesting. It is a strangely eccentric and exotic introduction, as Willoughby dominantly inserts himself by the way he saves Marianne; he also appears as her rescuer with a gun in his hand and his pointers at his feet—both of which can be understood as phallic symbolism. This insertion is bridged to another plot in which Willoughby has been, as Looser puts it, “chasing sexual adventures with another woman [Eliza Williams] … [which is] a more precariously situated doppelgänger to Marianne” (48). The staging of a double, or rather the depiction of a doppelgänger, is an important component of Gothic literature as it is used to juxtapose the good character with their evil counterpart or a possible mirror or future; however, here, Austen is providing a glimpse at an outcome Marianne could have faced if she had not been extracted from Willoughby’s web.
The audience is made aware from chapter one that Marianne is “eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation…she was everything but prudent” (Austen 24), so it is not surprising that from her first interaction with Willoughby, Marianne acted with such a fervent surge of sensibility because, drawing from the modeling of the Gothic heroine, she will, metaphorically, wear her emotions. Despite having a proper upbringing and a sound education, Marianne often neglects the foundational frameworks of polite society and becomes what Punter and Byron refer to as a “product of the wild and the uncivilized” (7). In a systemic patriarchal society, women were not meant to be associated with the wild and uncivilized; they were meant to emulate delicacy, submission, silence, and most of all pure modesty.
Marianne does not conform to these sociocultural expectations of feminine behavior—as she is openly vocal about her opinions regarding what she deems true love, passion, and companionship—which do not align with the narrative surrounding the marriage market or the purpose of marrying for security. Notably, it is in these moments that the audience can observe how Marianne actively resists the patriarchal idealization of the subversive female role.
Moreover, in her wild pursuit, Marianne continues to find herself in dangerous and reputation-damaging situations, such as privately touring the Allenham Estate with Willoughby and maintaining an intimate correspondence with him after he must return to London for an unknown period of time. In Looser’s previous observation, she expands on these private correspondences and notes that “[p]olite women weren’t supposed to write private letters to suitors to whom they weren't engaged; it had the look of impropriety and assignation” (49). The act of maintaining a private lovers’ correspondence outside of a proper engagement was scandalous, and because it was considered an intimate relationship, it was confined by the societal regulations of propriety. As previously discussed with Emily, for a woman’s propriety to be called into question was not only a social scandal within itself; it could inherently affect a woman’s future stability through marriage. Austen emphasizes the social significance of this propriety in a background narrative of rapid gossip between other characters, such as their widowed companion, Mrs. Jennings, which becomes more apparent and continues to spread the more Marianne becomes insistent in calling on Willoughby.
Austen continues to push the boundaries with Marianne as the Dashwood sisters find themselves in London’s high society. As Marianne and her elder sister, Elinor, take a final turn around the room at a fashionable London party, they spot Willoughby conversing with a small group of people. After Willoughby ignores Marianne’s call to him, Austen describes that her “face was crimsoned over, and she exclaimed in a voice of the greatest emotion, ‘Good God! Willoughby, what is the meaning of this? Have you not received my letters? Will you not shake hands with me?’” (Austen 155). Firstly, it was considered, especially by a woman, to be inappropriate and, in some cases, unlawful, to take the Lord’s name in vain. This is bold and risky of Austen to have Marianne act with such irrationality and open intimacy in this scene, but, as the audience has already been made aware, sensibility is inherent in her characterization; Marianne is meant to reside entirely in her body—she is meant to be wild.
Secondly, the first and second time Marianne directly calls to Willoughby, she does so informally, and in dropping the “formal ‘Mr.’ while addressing and speaking of Willoughby…Marianne signals a precipitous intimacy” (Denny 2012). With the lack of formality, alongside the rapid gossip of their private correspondence, it would not be far-fetched for people at this London party to assume that Marianne and Willoughby are engaged. Interestingly, what catches the crowd's attention more, is Marianne's excessive and exaggerated emotional state that followed Marianne’s “Good God Willoughby” because she exposes an outburst of emotions outside the privacy of her home. The patriarchal oppression and subversion of the female body extends to an expectation for women to remain more reserved in their emotions, behavior, and opinions.
Academic scholar Mary Poovey explains that the “paradox of modesty—and the paradox of female sexuality it simultaneously concealed and revealed—necessarily established the terms in which real women both consciously conceptualized and evaluated their own behavior and even unconsciously experienced their own gender” (Poovey 23). This is why the depictions of Marianne are significant in her character development as a Gothic heroine because, much like Emily, she relies on her intuitive sensibility (i.e., emotionality) to navigate the systemics of a male-dominated hierarchy. Evidently, Austen drew on elements of the Gothic and its blurring effects to articulate her resistance to female subversion, lack of autonomy, and agency through Marianne.
Conclusion
Perhaps because Marianne’s extreme sensibility ultimately leads her to a near-fatal illness, and she is later “saved” in a rational marriage to Colonel Brandon, readers and scholars have often read Sense and Sensibility as an argument against this extreme sensibility. This, I believe, is a misreading, similar to Smith's misreading of Udolpho. If we understand the development of the Female Gothic through Radcliffe’s novels, we can better recognize that Austen argues for balance: Marianne, much like her fictional mentor Emily, must learn to balance her sensibility with good sense. She, like Emily, is restored to a proper family estate—it is not Norland, but it is one with similar status. In some ways, she is a replacement body for Brandon’s lost love, Eliza, but it is known that “Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby” (Austen 352). Austen here has flipped the script—giving her female heroine some agency in replacing her first love with a replacement male body and requisite estate.
The development of the Gothic Romance genre, starting with Walpole, led to the creation of the Female Gothic framework, which has allowed writers, especially women writers, to address female terrors, provide social criticism of patriarchal oppression, and portray their heroines beyond the domestic sphere. What began with Walpole’s Isabella in a traditional Gothic Romance novel evolved into Austen’s Marianne through the Female Gothic’s representation of real terrors experienced by women. We might read that Isabella and Marianne are distorted, mirrored images of each other; they both exist in societies in which they do not need to fear the supernatural but the nature of man. Though more than two hundred years have passed since Radcliffe established and then Austen rewrote the Female Gothic, we can return to these novels to understand the necessary balance between sense and sensibility that women have continued to navigate in order to find agency in a world that often still values them for their supposedly interchangeable bodies.
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