Comments on: Austen’s Willoughby: Truly a Byronic Hero, or Libertine? Part One

By: Byron[ic] [&] Mr. W. in S&S08 « A Bloggering Hole

Byron[ic] [&] Mr. W. in S&S08 « A Bloggering Hole — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 01:47:23 +0000

[...] Laurel Ann blogged this morning about Sense & Sensibility’s Mr. Willoughby’s Byronishness. During part one of S&S08 I made the remark to Molly that it is peculiar and appropriate for Mr. W. to ask Marianne whether she was familiar with Lord Byron – she knew the name, by the way, but hadn’t read any works. It sort of fascinates me he’s mentioned in the present because, as the crowned Romantic–capital R–prince, Lord B. in the familiar seems somehow sacrilegious. This is a little like saying that Beowulf was effeminate (which I actually said in my twenty-ought-six writeup “Gendering Beowulf“) and warrants a double-take. After all, ain’t Lord B. an Olympian? [...]

By: Kaye Dacus

Kaye Dacus — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:53:15 +0000

Being totally snide here for a moment, but does it appear that Dominic had a little more trouble with this scene than Greg did? :-)

I love the “rake” characters that Jane wrote in her novels. Because she was such a student of human-nature, her rakes are never just a stereotypical one-note foppish flirt. They have their redeeming qualities too (well, maybe not William W. Elliot, who’s just all-around despicable). We understand why Lizzy and Marianne are smitten with their respective badboys. For me, though, Willoughby stands out above them all, because he truly DID love Marianne. He really did want to marry her.

A lesser author might have found some way to give Marianne and Willoughby their happy ending by lessening the conflict, by making the accusation of his having taken advantage of Eliza turn out to be false, by having his aunt die and leaving him a windfall of money so that he could marry Marianne and figure out how to keep her from ever learning the truth.

But Jane never gives her characters an easy way out, and proved this with Willoughby. Jane, the daughter of a minister, realized that everyone must face the consequences of his or her actions eventually. And she forces all of her characters to do so, including our beloved rascal Willoughby, which usually leads to even happier and more satisfying endings for our main characters.

By: Jennifer de Guzman

Jennifer de Guzman — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:20:06 +0000

In regards to Jane Austen influencing Romanticism — in fact, Romanticism could be said to have begun in the late 18th century, the publication of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads in 1798 being a seminal moment. (Willoughby reads from it in the Masterpiece movie.) I think Austen was satirizing the kind of Romantic sensibility that had become somewhat trendy in the early 19th century. The Romantic Movement was already fully underway when Jane Austen wrote her novels — you can see its influence in her characters’ attitudes toward landscape — and somewhat near its decline by the time Byron and Shelley took the stage.