Sense And Modernity In The Vendor Of Sweets, By Jane Austen

Throughout history, relationships between people have been questioned based off what people have heard or seen. Jane Austen writes the love story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne, that have conflicts when it comes to their relationships caused by miscommunication. In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen reveals the danger of making judgements on insufficient information through relationships between the characters. Miscommunication creates confusion and a mix of emotions from the characters.

Thesis: Throughout the text of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen challenges gender and social norms in the Georgian Era through the development of Elizabeth Bennet as she interacts with characters in the novel.

Jane Austen's groundbreaking novel Sense and Sensibility is a relationship-driven account of female protagonists. Sense and Sensibility shares much in common with other novels by and about women. Themes like autonomy versus independence and the role of women in a patriarchal society are explored in Sense and Sensibility. Using two sisters to symbolize the different directions the female spirit can be pulled, Austen shows the variable ways women respond to political, social, and economic oppression. The women of Sense and Sensibility are both trapped by, and breaking free from, the conventions of marriage and motherhood. Marriage and motherhood are portrayed ironically as the natural course of women's lives, but also as the chain that prevents their self-fulfillment. The social norm of patrilineal inheritance leaves Elinore and Marianne Dashwood, and their mother, penniless and dependent on distant male family members. Marriage and motherhood are restrictive roles for women, and yet Austen never provides a satisfactory alternative for Marianne. Marianne seems willing to break free from patriarchal social norms, but she ends up being a slave to heterosexual romance. The message in Sense and Sensibility ends up being rather bleak: women remain socially, economically, and politically oppressed because they cannot envision or enact suitable independent alternatives.

Comparisons of Emma and Clueless pose critical explorations into the importance of context and its role in shaping social values. Heckerling’s appropriation of Jane Austen’s 19thC Emma, provides contrasting social ideals regarding gender and class which can be accredited as a result of their differing contextual settings. Values surrounding the importance of social hierarchy, gender disparities and education are prevalent themes addressed within each text. Due to shifts in social standards during the 2 centuries separating these texts, there are particular distinctions between the mechanisms underlying these themes. However, a key similarity linking these texts are their critiques on the morality behind the actions of those in privileged

Ma Joad, the mother of the Joad family, was made known as “the citadel of the family”, proving to be the more adequate provider as the novel progressed, and handled every hindrance soundly. She remains this way, so her family does not fall apart like others had anticipated. When first meeting Ma Joad in the start of the novel, she was a strong-willed woman, as was she at the end of the novel. For her headstrong personality, Ma Joad served as the rock for her family.

The life of Jane Austen is a very interesting story and many would say that Jane Austen wasn’t like the rest. She was an English novelist who was not only successful but also very quiet about her writings and publishments; most of her novels were not open to the public during her lifetime. She was born on December 16th of the year 1775, and she was the seventh child to a well known clergyman and wife. Jane was not educated like most would be; she was homeschooled by her father. Her father had huge libraries in their home and this is what created the school-like feeling of the Austen estate. Jane was a normal, and a quiet young lady but also had the opportunities to live life in the greater world, by the access

Tradition is all sense and modernity is all sensibility. In Sense and Sensibility, though, the two central characters achieve a balance by blending their qualities and hence harmony reigns in their life (though we must admit that sense got the upper hand). But in The Vendor of Sweets a coordination could not be made between the opposing pulls of the strong forces of tradition and modernity and hence the characters have to retire to a world of social (Mali) and emotional (Jagan) failure. This clash between tradition and modernity is an important aspect of The Vendor of Sweets. In the novel, Jagan, the protagonist and his son Mali, represent two contradictory ends, “tradition and modernity” (25) respectively. The gap between successive generations has been an age old phenomenon; but in this case the conflict between the father and the son acquires larger proportion, signifying dichotomies at various socio-cultural levels such as “the division of East and West, of young and old, of child and parent.”

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in the small Hampshire town of Steventon, to George and Cassandra Austen. She had one sister, Cassandra, whom she was particularly close to. The Austens were often described as a close-knit family, often reading novels together and performing home theatre. The sisters were sent to Reading Ladies' Boarding School, to obtain a formal education. However, both girls contracted typhus, which nearly killed Jane. They soon returned home due to financial reasons. Austen’s education was said not to be as adequate as her brothers’, though the sisters developed their literacy through their father’s vast library.

The culture of popular girls, a fascinating concept to those willing to escape into an all too real world. This, which has been somewhat of a cult classic starting as far back as the 1800s, with Jane Austen's Emma. Emma Churchill was a twenty one year old with the most trivial problems, which, to her, seemed the world. Those of not getting a boy, or getting someone else's boy were the most troubling to Ms. Churchill, as she is known to her help. Typical of any story such as this, she had an accomplice in her daily shenanigans, Harriet Smith. Her slightly naive best friend was there to help her through all of her earth shatteringly important problems. Emma never did have a mother figure, so conclusively that is why she never learned that there are bigger things in life than boys and primping. Despite this, she was never interested in the idea of marrying for herself, but setting her friends up with their perfect match. However, she does end up finding love in the end, even if it is with a family member, extended family of course. This twisted story of love and the troubles of a rich girl is more commonly known in pop culture by the name of "Clueless". Clueless tells the story of a girl named Cher, navigating high school with her best friend Ty.

Sense and Sensibility was first published in 1811, by Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility represents the neoclassical, dualistic moral world where values and exclusion values will ultimately be successful in a painful, romantic feeling. Not only that, he was making serious cynicisms of society's eighteenth centuries in which the aristocrats were praised and indirectly influencing young people's minds, not the love of love but to betray it just for Wealth. In the novel, Lucy and Willoughby symbolize this kind of people of society

Jane Austen impacted the world of literature in more ways than one. Museums located around the United Kingdom are dedicated to her works which many people still enjoy to this day. Audiences around the world continue to read the love stories she shared many years ago. She portrayed a sense of female strength and hefty feelings of true love in her writing. Austen’s wording and her particular writing style are recognizable among those who enjoy 18th century literature, her distinct approach to the realities of the time is one reason her fan base has grown over the years. Jane Austen pioneered romantic literature because she was among the first authors to write a happily ever after type story, and she used her work to portray this feeling

The novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen explores many aspects of everyday and long term life. There are many characters that show different emotions and ideas, and cause the book to become real in the mind, because of the similarities found between the character’s lives and others. These people such as Marianne, Elinor, Willoughby, and Lucy all present different personalities and contribute differently to the composure of the book, and the way the storyline was made. One major aspect of the book is love with its benefits and downfalls, and is arguably the heart of the book, as this is almost constantly a present topic.

When Charlotte Bronte said of Jane Austen’s novels ‘I should hardly like to live with their ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses’ she was referring to the physical confinement of an interior versus an exterior setting. This confinement of the setting mirrors the social confinement of a woman versus a man in the societal structure at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. While Austen studies the societal position of women in most of her novels, her early work Sense and Sensibility, is perhaps the most interesting to take into consideration when reviewing the issue of confinement. In it Austen juxtaposes the freedom of the countryside exteriors with the confinement of the city’s interiors. These settings serve as a backdrop for the exploration of two female characters whose social status has been set back as a result of the primogeniture of the time.

Love comes in many shapes and forms, whether it’s an inanimate object or a person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Jane Austen’s novel, “Sense and Sensibility”, revolves around two sisters who try to find true love, while requiring a balance of reason and emotion. Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are viewed as two completely different people. Elinor is known to represent “sense” while Marianne represents “sensibility.” In the novel, Jane Austen emphasizes two common women’s characteristics, and shows us how Elinor and Marianne both find love and happiness only by overcoming their struggles and learning from one another’s actions and mistakes.

Jane Austen lived from 1775 until 1817, a span of four decades that saw significant changes in English social, political, and economic life. At the time her birth, England was embroiled in a bitter struggle with its American colonies, the loss of which, several years later, proved to be a tremendous blow to English political and military prestige. Under the rule of George III, England's political climate became increasingly unstable with constant struggles between the King and Whig politicians. Ireland received its independence in 1782, although the violence that had long plagued the country continued to rage. Across the Channel, the French Revolution had begun and the English aristocracy watched in horror as royal heads began to roll.