Review Of Patricia Meyer Spacks 'Oscillations Of Sensibility'
Oscillations of Sensibility
Author(s): Patricia Meyer Spacks
Reviewed work(s):
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 25, No. 3, 25th Anniversary Issue (Part 1) (Summer, 1994), pp. 505-520
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/469464 .
Accessed: 10/02/2012 14:02
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Suffering rather than erotic fulfillment provides gratification for onlookers within and readers outside the novel. The liberated young woman rushes to embrace a conventional female position, offering commiseration, help, and sympathy to others, luxuriating in sorrow, and anticipating her own marriage, despite her previous insistence on deferral. Does guilt at having evaded the role of victim account for her sudden compliance? At the end, the novel loudly repudiates its earlier hints that the established order of things, including conventional relations between parents and children, leaves something to be desired.
Retreating into sensibility, it implicitly denies all connection between the extravagant emotionality of Henry and Julia and their premature demise. Yet the unexamined, indeed unacknowledged, incompatibility between Lady Anne's early emotional/moral position and her final one signals strain: a familiar index of sensibility's ambiguity.
The novels and the plays I have touched upon have in common, along with their tacit interrogation of sensibility, their failure to investigate …show more content…
Belfield. All these people have more or less overt designs on Cecilia's money. Albany wants to use it for charity, everyone else wants it for his or her own ends. The wealth that constitutes Cecilia's nominal independence thus becomes the sign of her vulnerability.
Cecilia experiences herself not as changing her mind but as responding to changing circumstances, and indeed the conditions of her existence alter with dizzying rapidity. As a consequence, she revises her determinations frequently, about small matters and large: whose household she will inhabit, whether she will visit the Belfields, how Delvile feels about her, how much of her wealth she should devote to charity.
Like all Burney's protagonists, she must interpret ambiguous verbal clues, a process made inordinately difficult by the incompatible assumptions held by various characters and by idiosyncratic uses of language. A parodic sequence makes the point:
"Ishe a goodman?that'sthe point, is he a goodman?"
"Indeedhe appearsto me uncommonlybenevolentand charitable." that'sthe point, is he warm?"
"Butthat i'n't the thing; is he warm? said "Ifyou mean passionate," Cecilia,"Ibelieve the energyof his manner
Author(s): Patricia Meyer Spacks
Reviewed work(s):
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 25, No. 3, 25th Anniversary Issue (Part 1) (Summer, 1994), pp. 505-520
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/469464 .
Accessed: 10/02/2012 14:02
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. …show more content…
Suffering rather than erotic fulfillment provides gratification for onlookers within and readers outside the novel. The liberated young woman rushes to embrace a conventional female position, offering commiseration, help, and sympathy to others, luxuriating in sorrow, and anticipating her own marriage, despite her previous insistence on deferral. Does guilt at having evaded the role of victim account for her sudden compliance? At the end, the novel loudly repudiates its earlier hints that the established order of things, including conventional relations between parents and children, leaves something to be desired.
Retreating into sensibility, it implicitly denies all connection between the extravagant emotionality of Henry and Julia and their premature demise. Yet the unexamined, indeed unacknowledged, incompatibility between Lady Anne's early emotional/moral position and her final one signals strain: a familiar index of sensibility's ambiguity.
The novels and the plays I have touched upon have in common, along with their tacit interrogation of sensibility, their failure to investigate …show more content…
Belfield. All these people have more or less overt designs on Cecilia's money. Albany wants to use it for charity, everyone else wants it for his or her own ends. The wealth that constitutes Cecilia's nominal independence thus becomes the sign of her vulnerability.
Cecilia experiences herself not as changing her mind but as responding to changing circumstances, and indeed the conditions of her existence alter with dizzying rapidity. As a consequence, she revises her determinations frequently, about small matters and large: whose household she will inhabit, whether she will visit the Belfields, how Delvile feels about her, how much of her wealth she should devote to charity.
Like all Burney's protagonists, she must interpret ambiguous verbal clues, a process made inordinately difficult by the incompatible assumptions held by various characters and by idiosyncratic uses of language. A parodic sequence makes the point:
"Ishe a goodman?that'sthe point, is he a goodman?"
"Indeedhe appearsto me uncommonlybenevolentand charitable." that'sthe point, is he warm?"
"Butthat i'n't the thing; is he warm? said "Ifyou mean passionate," Cecilia,"Ibelieve the energyof his manner