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Sentimentalism is to have all emotion without reason.

Stoicism is in contrast representative of a sensible person who has a good sense of perception and is more
physically and mentally aware of their exterior surroundings. This is not necessarily a good thing, since they
lack emotions such as compassion.

Compassion is an innate quality in humans and essential for the good of humanity as a whole. It is the
ability to recognize another's pains and have genuine empathy or concern for their well being. In literature
of sensibility a heroine/hero will champion the necessity of compassion and sensibility as a virtue.

Heroine/Hero of Sensibility- Sensibility is not restrained by gender. Although sensibility is a trait
traditionally attributed to women, there are many literary depictions of male heroes of sensibility. The
heroine/hero of sensibility find their physical problems less of a concern than their mental problems. They
have strict morality and honour, although they crave attention. They have copious emotions and a
sympathetic heart and will hold onto these despite consequences of humiliation and failure. Although most
heroines of sensibility are taught to keep their feelings private, they are often overcome by emotions. Virtues
of mind are always preferred to charms of beauty. Often, the heroine will be greatly effected by the Gothic
and the sublime since they tend to intensify things, making them appear larger than they actually are.

Sensibility as an untaught copious emotion, also referred to as Passion, is greatly influenced by the sublime,
the Gothic, landscape, beauty, melancholy, compassion, terror, empathy and imagination. Many 18th
century writers dedicate their works to capturing how these effect one's sensibility and therefore heighten
one's passions.

Here are just some of the many 18th century writers that use sensibility as
  as inspiration in their works...

                   Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806)
Elizabeth Carter's poem "Ode to Melancholy" (1739)
         ~A poem about sensibility being heightened by
          the narrator's melancholy mood. She indulges
          in her melancholic mood in order to escape the
          dark realities of the world.

    Mary Molesworth Monck(1677?-1715)
"On a Romantic Lady"
~"Although most women of 18th century were denied advantages of learning...it    took sheer determination for a
woman to learn classical languages and accumulate other literary capital...she was adept at Latin, Spanish and
Italian. In her poem "On a Romantic Lady", she looks askance at the kind of romance reading that was considered
ladies' fare" (Robert Demaria, Jr. British Literature 1640-1789: An Anthology, Second Edition).

Edmund Burk (1729-1797)
"from A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of                                Sublime and the Beautiful (1757)"
                                  ~Burk's "from A Philosophical Inquiry..." demonstrates
                                    how one;s passions in sensibility are heightened by issues
                                    of the sublime, terror, obscurity, clearness, beauty,
                                   smoothness, variation and delicacy.


                                 Hannah More (1745-1833)
                                    "from Sensibility" (1782)
           ~More praises sensibility as the virtue of all virtues:
                      "Sweet Sensibility! Thou keen delight!
                   Unprompted moral! sudden sense of right!
                     Perception exquisite! fair virtue's seed!"


                         Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
                          "An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard " (1751)






	Sensibility and the Transition into the Romantic As we know, literature captures and demonstrates the social situation of the time. As the end of the 18th century approached, the idea of sensibility as a virtue had made tremendous impact on society, especially on women. Sentimental novels gained the reputation of women's literature due to the "soft" content. As women devoured these tales of heroines of sensibility, men urged them to uphold the sentimental persona. There was one problem with this: women could successfully have both sensibility and reason. During the early 19th century, with the emergence of the Romantic Era,and the French Revolution, so too was there an emergence of feminism! A New Found Sensibility... People began to see the hazardous effects on women due to their intensified feelings of pleasure and pain. Fainting is a common characteristic of sentimental women, thus when a character faints in a novel it serves to indicate heightened emotions and lack of control over first impulses. Due to the effects on one's physical stability and health, it becomes crucial to abandon first impulses and resist succumbing to sensibility. A heroine of sensibility must acknowledge that they possess a dangerous gift requiring self-cultivation. Self-Cultivation is acquired threw education. It involves a mastering of the intellect of reason, having knowledge of proper propriety and having a virtuous soul in attempts to best control one's emotions and imagination. The person who is guided by reason more than emotion, yet is not void emotion and sentiment will be most beneficial to society and the individual. The greatest lesson a heroine of sensibility will learn is to abandon excesses and deficiencies to achieve a moderation of emotional restraint...temperance. Education... Many feminist Romantic writers strongly advocated the need for women to be educated. Mary Wollstonecraft spent her life devoted to improving the quality of women's lives. She believed that the initial step in the process of improvement was for women to educate themselves in all aspects, not just by reading sentimental literature. This is not to say that she was oppose to sensibility. In fact, she greatly urged the necessity for all humans to be sentiment beings, yet reason had to be implemented. Lack of self-discipline is most destructive to women, because in a world which gave women little choice over their private or public lives, only rational, sensible and prudent women have the ability to use their sensibility for improving society and their own lives. Sir James Thornhill's "Temperance" Related Texts Article Bibliography Contact Me