Marianne

Jane Austen On Why Some Girls Get Their Heart Broken

In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Marianne Dashwood falls in love quickly and easily with John Willoughby. Readers who criticise Marianne’s foolishness and immaturity for her giving her heart too easily, would completely miss the point of the story which teaches us about the importance of the decorum of courtship rather than tell us to guard our hearts in tight fists of “sensible maturity”.

If anything, Marianne’s intimate and vulnerable nature is her a heroic quality of hers and it causes her harm only in so far as it is not protected from assault by unscrupulous and selfish characters.

This is one of the stories I will certainly read with my daughters one day because it teaches so much about the reasoning behind many social rules in an elegant and sensitive way. Marianne’s story is not a cautionary tale about falling in love too quickly, but rather about the dangers of undignified fulfilment of that love. This is a long essay, so get a good cup of tea and settle in for an in-depth analysis of the nature of heart-break in Jane Austen’s stories.

Marianne Dashwood is seventeen, beautiful, good natured, immature, and above all, passionate. For Marianne, there is nothing more important in life than intense feelings lived in fully, whether they are positive or negative. There is no greater punishment to her than to prioritise anodyne practicality. Her older sister, Elinor, is the complete opposite of this and often suffocates her emotions for practical reasons. Some people erroneously come away from this book believing Marianne to be “corrected” to become more like Elinor but those people are wrong. Elinor’s consistent suffocation of her heart harms her as much Marianne’s consistent indulgence does hers. The extreme temperaments of both sisters are corrected toward a healthier middle ground between rationality and passion.

Love Unbounded