여성의 몸과 히스테리: 『지성과 감성』 = The Female Body and Hysteria: Sense and Sensibility

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In this article, I try to analyse Jane Austen`s Sense and Sensibility from the view of the female body and hysteria. There are the similarities with hysteria in Marianne`s disease, and discourses of the female body and hysteria are related with a proper lady of the contemporary conduct-book. Though detailed descriptions of the dilemma of the two sisters by the heritage of Norland Park in the first three chapters, pose the feminist issues such as economic·social status of women and the exclusion of women from inheritance, they lead to their love stories. While Elinor seems to be both a heroine and a proper lady, both positive and negative aspects in Marianne`s sensibility are suggested in several episodes. Marianne`s disease can be compared with the case of Anna 0., Freud`s famous female hysterical patient in that they show the cause of hysteria which comes from the strong intelligence and the desire of self-achievement. In this sense, Marianne`s disease can be explained as both a language of her conflict inscribed on her body and a signifier between Marianne`s personal desire and the social demand of a proper lady. The ideal cure of female hysterical patients in the contemporary society, the return to her family as the Angel in the house, is suggested in the ending, also, despite criticism of most critics. Thus Marianne`s disease reflects not only the conflict inscribed on her body and the social control of the female body and sensibility but the cause and the ideal cure of hysteria. We can see the cultural topography in the 19th-centuly society reflected through her disease.