Portraits of perfection

the femininity ideal in A Gossip’s story (1796), by Jane West (1758-1852), e Sense and Sensibility (1811), by Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Abstract

This article compares the heroines of the novels A gossip’s story, published in 1796 by Jane West (1758-1852) and Sense and sensibility (1811), by Jane Austen (1775-1817). While the heroine created by West, a writer who was avowedly aligned with eighteenth-century conservative ideology, is that which Austen described derisively in a letter as a “picture of perfection”, Sense and sensibility’s Elinor Dashwood, despite the extreme self-control that can make her seem unlikeable to modern readers, has characteristics that do not fit into the female ideal prescribed during the period when the novel was published. This fact, as well as other features of Austen’s novel that become more evident when the work is compared with others that are unequivocally conservative, show that the author criticized incisively certain aspects of her society, in particular women’s position within it.