Jane Austen’s concerns with health and moral thoughts: the dashwood sisters and the successful regulation of sense and sensibility

• María Teresa González Mínguez ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

     Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

     Madrid, España

     
• Localización: The Grove: Working papers on English studies, ISSN 1137-005X, Nº 26, 2019, págs. 27-40
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • According to Cartesian principles, in the seventeenth century the body was thought to be subordinated to the mind. Later in the eighteenth - century male authors of medical treatises supported the idea that the interaction of body and mind produced passion a nd could dangerously turn into mental breakdown. In all her novels Jane Austen showed an enormous interest in all matters concerning medical treatment. In Sense and Sensibility (1811), Austen emphasized illness and suffering by mixing physical health and mental disease with moral and philosophical doctrines. My contention in this article is that moralists, philosophers and thinkers such as Dr Johnson, William Blake, William Godw in, and Adam Smith collaborated with Austen to shape the idea that sensibility was no disease and sense no virtue; instead they propose that human beings, especially women, can obtain individual and collective profit and promote changes not only in the pas t but also in the present if they regulate their reason and feeling with a practical mindset.