Sensibility
Within the first two volumes of the novel, there are two embedded narratives—the stories of Jessy and Sophy. Similar in tone and theme, these tales contain “family problems and bereavements, love, poverty and isolation”. These two narratives suggest that “the truth of feeling the only valid and useful bond of society”. Jessy, Sophy, and Celestina are heroines of sensibility—characters who feel strongly and are sympathetic to the emotions of others. Willoughby is a hero of sensibility, feeling more strongly than any of the female characters. Unusually in Celestina, it is the women who show more “fortitude”, while the men are often prey to their emotions. Yet it is only the characters capable of feeling true emotion who are moral; those who cannot feel or suffer are incapable of moral good.
Jane Austen, who avidly read Smith's novels, responded to Celestina with Sense and Sensibility (begun in the 1790s) and her own Willoughby. As a teenager Austen wrote parodies of heroes of sensibility, particularly those who focused on their own feelings and ignored their familial duties. Austen's novel parallels Smith's in its structure and setting: both are set primarily in Devonshire and London, for example, both have a heroine who writes an ill-advised letter to a lover. Fletcher notes that "the party scenes are so similar it is fair to assume that Austen initially intended a recognisable critique of Smith's ". However, while Smith's Willoughby is exculpated from any wrongdoing, Austen's is not—her novel rejects the hero of sensibility, critiquing his "moodiness" and "abuse of hospitality".
Read more about this topic: Celestina (novel), Themes
Famous quotes containing the word sensibility:
“It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“There is a difference between dramatizing your sensibility and your personality. The literary works which we think of as classics did the former. Much modern writing does the latter, and so has an affinity with, say, night-club acts in all their shoddy immediacy.”
—Paul Horgan (b. 1904)
“What you’re trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You’re trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.”
—Robert Stone (b. 1937)