NOTE: I'm having a hard time getting a handle on this week's readings. I'm not sure I'm on a track, much less the right one.
"Where sensibility was the basis for civic harmony, imagination, loosening the hold of the five senses, made people vulnerable to demagogues and was therefore responsible...for...all manner of fanaticism" (14)
So, I'm understanding this chapter (Sensibility and Enlightenment Science) as arguing for an 18th century thinking of morality, emotion, and empathy as something related or the same as the sensations (sentiments) people experience from the external world on their senses (seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling). And, that not having/experiencing these sentiments would hinder a person's social functioning. Then, thinking about Persuasion I was trying to place different characters within this framework.
There's significant talk of the Elliot pride and Sir Walter's "vanity of person and of situation" (6). Most of the Elliots, with the exception of Anne, are portrayed as merely tolerated, but also complained about behind their backs (usually to Anne). Though they are invited, due to their stations, to various households, Anne gets the hints that "it would be a great deal better if she [Mary] were not so very tenacious [during these visits]" (43-44). Anne, however, seems to be the only one who has the ability to interpret her five senses' information to give her educated guesses on the mental states of others (i.e. has empathy/ToM) with any sort of regularity. I guess I'm trying to get at the question of if the other, non-empathetic characters in the novel are 'imagining' what people think about them to contribute to their vanity or sense of self-importance? I know Mary imagines herself sick to get attention, but I don't think that's the same thing.
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