Having a strong heart like Elinor and a latent sense similar to Marianne, Jane
Austen displayed her characteristics through her characters. Elinor and Marianne
were two main characters that Jane Austen used to display her true character.
Elinor is very devoted to her family and tries to do everything she can to
support them. Every now and then, when the family is in need of advice, they
would all look to Elinor. Marianne was the younger daughter in the family of
three sisters and she is always caught up in romantic poetry. At one time in the
novel, Marianne went through a catastrophe because the love of her life had left
her. Marianne tries to hide her fear to avoid all her distress. (Austen 288)
Both of the character’s lifestyle reflected that of Jane Austens’. In the
writing of the novel Sense and Sensibility, Austen wrote the novel according to
her own passionate feelings. People began to notice her writings towards the end
of her life. Jane Austen’s lifestyle and characteristics were revealed through
her characters Marianne and Elinor in her novel Sense and Sensibility. Jane
Austen began writing novels when she was in her early twenties, she was a very
intellectual women. She enjoyed reading many books in her life that gave her an
advantage in writing great novels. When Austen wrote the novel Sense and
Sensibility, much of her characteristics were seen through the novel. “Jane
Austen is thus a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface.
She stimulates us to supply what is not there.” (Woolf 19) After Willouby’s
sudden break up with Marianne, many deep vivid emotions are shown to the reader.
Austen lived in a society where women mostly worked on farms. Agriculture was
the largest employment for women. (Weldon 36) While other women were out working
on the fields, Austen would be at home diligently thinking about more ideas for
her novels. Later as the years passed, Jane Austen became an author for writing
novels. From then on, her occupation was to be a magnificent writer. She wrote
many books that dealt with her very own lifestyles and emotions. It was not
until her death when she began to notice her success in writing novels. One
important thing that she could put before her writing was her family. Austen,
the seventh of eight children and was ardent towards her family. Her family
needed all the help they could receive because her father had passed away. In
the beginning of the novel Sense and Sensibility, Mr. Dashwood died and had no
choice but to give his will to his first son and nothing to the rest of the
family. Although Jane Austen was not married, she had great romantic feelings
and ideas. Austen used Marianne as a character in her novel Sense and
Sensibility, to present her feelings of romanticism. Through out the novel,
Marianne usually spoke of Shakespeare’s poetry. Marianne is a lady who is very
imaginary and superficial about her dreams. She is all caught up on the romantic
part of life. (Austen 311) Always being caught up in poetry or another romantic
thought, Marianne rarely becomes inconsiderate about what is happening around
her. Marianne cares about her family a lot and does not become selfish when
there is a problem. The resemblance of Austen and Marianne was that the two of
them had romantic feelings and dreams. They also lived their lives as being
poor. Both Austen and Marianne are very dedicated to their family. Happiness
will come to the ones who wait patiently for their dreams or goals. Marianne
fell deeply in love with a man named John Willoughby. She looked at John like he
was the guy of her dreams because he shared the same interest as she did. During
the time the two were together, everything was very merry. But as soon as
John’s family discovered he was going out with a woman who was without a
dowry, they threaten to take his wealth away if he sees her again. After this
occurred, Marianne began to go in the state of depression. Being broken hearted
for the rest of her life, she thought, it was not soon until she realizes whom
she should have been dating in the first place. She started a new relationship
with an old close friend, Colonel Brandon. Marianne lived a happy life after
all, as she met the man she could learn to love and Austen discovered her joy in
her writing. (Austen 305) Jane Austen was devoted to her family all the time and
so was Elinor to hers. Elinor was the oldest sister of three daughters from the
Dashwood family, and was the most reliable one of all. Whenever there was a
dilemma, she would be the responsible daughter and handle the problem. Elinor is
a strong women, she was accountable for her duties. (Litz 78) Austen portrays
her characteristics with Elinor’s by the way they both act when there was a
crisis. Every woman has their own responsibilities that they must take care of.
Austen’s tasks were to be obedient to her family and at the same time to be a
writer. One similarity that Austen and Elinor had was, the two of them had a
great difficulty with men. Austen was never married and wrote romantic novels.
She created the character “Elinor” to display the side of her that fear for
men. Where there were parties held, Austen would be fond of dancing but never
could really speak to a man because she was too shy. (Austen 308) Even though
Austen was very smart, she never really got the chance to speak to guys because
of her family ties, but using Elinor in her novel to display her feelings toward
men, she could achieve her dreams through her writings. (Wilson 39) The lifstyle
of Jane Austen was incorporated into her writings so she may express her
feelings without saying them out loud. Austen’s lifestyle was no different
from anyone else’s life in the early 1800s. The only thing that was different
about Austen was that she became a popular author. People in her society were
very strict and were lawful. This was a big influence for Jane Austen because
she was able to see what was going on in her society. (Harding 48) She did not
live on the easy streets of life; she lived her life like a slave. Women were
not paid much working on farms because of the fact that they were females.
Growing up in a harsh society was during the early 1800s, when there were no
roads and people got hung for stealing. (Weldon 36) Austen grew up knowing what
was right from wrong. Being poor as she was, in her novel Sense and Sensibility
she related her life in the shoes of the Dashwood’s family. At the same time
when her father died, she used this idea in her novel to show how the
Dashwood’s became poor like she was. (Mercer 309) In writing a novel, Jane
Austen used many imaginative thoughts and profound feelings of her own to
describe her personality. Austen described what ever she was writing about with
a lot of meaning and sense. “Jane Austen does not expound feelings; she
conrveys it. With her artist’s instinct, she knows that exposition by the
writer destroys conviction in the reader.” (Farrer 39) If she had a character
in a field of plain grass, she would detail her scenery with many objects and
write about her character with romantic ironic information. Jane Austen thorough
describes her characters so the reader would not forget them. (Mercer 307) She
would try to expand the reader’s mind with many details so the reader does not
forget what is happening in the novel. “Jane Austen has a certain style of
writing that she kept to, ‘dealt in pictures of domestic life in country
villages.’” (Watt 42) She even had a certain way of writing that differed
from other authors. This is why she is such a great creative writer. She knows
what she is going to write about from the beginning. Austen illustrated her
feelings through her characters in her novel Sense and Sensibility. In the
beginning of Austen’s career, she was said to be a good writer, but she knew
that she could do better. Writing more and more novels, Austen went through a
maturing stage in writing the novel Sense and Sensibility. She has gone through
two different types of stages of writing and has been successful for writing the
ways she does. “ Of all great writers Jane Austen is the most evocative, doing
in half a dozen words (applied in exactly the proper measures, in exactly the
proper place) what the sedulous subtleties of Henry James are unable to convey
so clearly in as many fine-spun pages. And among the secrets of Jane austen’s
inexhaustible charm is that her work, especially in her second period, is so
packd with such minute and far-reaching felicities that the thousandth reading
of ‘Emma’ or ‘Persuasion’ will be certain to reveal to you a handful of
such brilliant jewels unnoticed before…” (Farrer 39) Growing up in a society
with morals, Jane Austen did not write novels with sex scenes in them. She wrote
a lot of her novels base on romanticism. Her writings of romanticism were center
on how she felt. In reality her love life was not there because of family ties,
but in her novel, she could go on with her hearts desires. “Jane Austen has no
passion, preaches on gospel, grinds no axe; standing aloof from the world, she
sees it, on the whole, as silly.” (Farrer 39) Many of her writings are all
from her imaginations that she constructed with her past experiences. All her
dreams came alive in the novels that she has written, but in reality she was
still a single women. Jane Austen lived her life as a great successful writer.
Before she could celebrate her glory, she passed away. “The most perfect
artist among women, the writer whose books are immortal, died ‘just as she was
beginning to feel confidence in her own success.’” (Woolf 24) Revealing her
character traits through the characters in her novel, she was able to share with
the readers her dreams and her desires of her heart. Austen is a romantic type
of women, but she does not present herself like that. By using the character of
Marianne, she is able to fulfill that spot of character trait of herself in
which she is not able to show off in reality. Also by displaying her strong will
and responsible quality, she chooses a character such as Elinor to show this
feature of her. Jane Austen’s imagination is unbelievable, because of the way
she describes her characters and the sceneries in her novel. Extremely precise,
the readers have no questions to ask what the scenery is like. She lets the
reader imagine just as if they were in the story and show how beautiful the
scenes are. (Watt 42) Furthermore, Austens uses her own writing techniques to
achieve her goals to let her readers dream about her novels. “Exactly how this
miracle is achieved is, of course, Miss Austen’s secret. It is a secret of
language and of artistry, which can be profitably explored by the reader, and of
a particular kind imagination.” Readers wonder how Austen gets her thoughts,
and the answer is, she used her past and present experiences. Moreover, Austen
portrayed her traits into her characters to show her inner feelings of how she
truly is in her heart.