In class today we worked together to try and find a viable definition for both sentimentality and sensibility that applied to the eighteenth century. What we found was that the task was not quite as easy as it seemed. Some tried more modern definitions of both while looking at them through the lens of the eighteenth century. Others had their ideas planted in the correct century but did not match with the popular definitions of that time.
As one person put it “I consider sensibility as relating to the mind or the powers of intellect – sense as in “common sense” and the like. Sentimentality is a term I think is more concerned with things south of the brain: from the heart to the loins - love and caring; lust and desire.”
While this definition comes close to eighteenth century thought, it differs a bit. Some of the popular eighteenth century definitions are as follows:
Sentimentalism – used to mean only affection and excessive emotional display –---used by Sir Leslie Stephen in “English Thought in the Eighteenth Century” as “the name of the mood in which we make a luxury of grief.”
-More recently –denotes the movement discerned in philosophy, politics and art, based in the belief in or hope of the natural goodness of humanity and manifested in a humanitarian concern for the unfortunate and helpless.
Often sentiment and sensibility were thought to be synonymous- however some distinctions can be made
Definitions:
• A sentiment –
1. A moral reflection, a rational opinion usually about the rights and wrongs of human conduct
2. A thought, often an elevated one, influenced by emotion. A combining of heart and head or an emotional impulse leading to an opinion or principle. (this definition comes close to sensibility)
• Sensibility-key term of the period – little used before mid century
1. –delicate emotional and physical susceptibility, the faculty of feeling, the capacity for extremely refined emotion ans a quickness to display compassion for suffering.
2. Innate sensitiveness or susceptibility revealing itself in a variety of spontaneous activities such as crying swooning, and kneeling
3. – a nice and delicate perception of pleasure and pain, beauty or deformity, which as far as it is natural, seems to depend on the organization of the nervous system.
The meanings shift over the century
As associated with women, early in the century sensibility signaled a virtuous woman but later in the century more so with promiscuity.
We also discussed some of the conventions of sentimental literature:
- arousal of pathos through conventional situations using familial stock characters and rhetorical devices – demands emotional response
- distress rarely deserved and somehow in the nature of things
- distressed are natural victims- defenseless women, aged men, helpless infants, or melancholic youth
- Discourages multiple readings, provoke tears.
- Reactive and unstable-meanders to the point
- A lot of punctuation that slows the reading down. Tends to take forever to convey what happens in an instant.
- Vocab- conventional , mannered, repetitive, overcharged
• Prescribed for instance a heart would be described with words such as, kind, honest, Tender, melting, swelling and overflowing.
My questions are: Do the definitions that we worked out in class today enhance your understanding of the reading material, either from today or previously in the class? If they do enhance your understanding which material do you understand more clearly now? Did the author use the conventions of sentimental literature listed above to convey their message? If they did use them, which ones did they use and how did they work to enhance the message of sentimentality? Do the authors use gender specific methods?
2 comments:
The convention of sentimental literature that I thought kept popping up in the readings was: the distressed are natural victims (defenseless women, aged men, helpless infants, or melancholic youth). In this case, the distressed were women, and they were distressed because of their sensibility. It caused them to be restless, anxious, over-excited, uncomfortable, troublesome, unable to reason, unstable, unable to focus on one pursuit, and mad. These descriptions of can all be found on p. 130. Hume describes women fainting at the sight of a sword. Women, for Hume and Wollstonecraft, are more likely to be distressed because they are more affected by their senses and by emotions. Hence, sensibility causes them to by sentimental characters.
Before learning about sentimentality/sensibility in class, I had a very clear definition of both terms. Like I said before, I thought each word had to do with emotional response. The difference between the words really touched on the degree of said reaction. If you sentimentally respond to something, then you are over-exaggerating your feelings. If you sensibly react to something, then your feelings are within the realm of an acceptable reaction to the situation at hand. After the group presentation on Wednesday though, I found out that there was nothing sensible about sensibility. In fact, the terms seemed more alike than ever. Acting on an "emotional impulse" [a sentiment] seems to be something done only by the "physically and emotionally susceptible" [the sensible]. In fact, the only conclusion I can confidently make about both these terms is that sensibility leads to sentiment, that they are a cause-and-effect pairing. That cause-and-effect then works as a key descriptor for females of the 18th century. In a way, I find sentimentality and sensibility the answer to the ever persisting women question (of the time period of course). Even Wollstonecraft's A Vindication to the Rights of Women, a piece written to argue for females' right to education, labels those females as sentimental and sensible products of society. If these terms have so affected eighteenth century women, I can only wonder how Wollstonecraft addresses sentimentality and sensibility in her Vindication to the Rights of Man. How genderized is this theme really?
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