THE MAN OF TASTE AS SOCIAL MODEL, OR, 'SENSE AND SENSIBILITY'

In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility , Marianne finds that Edward Ferrar's eyes want all that spirit, that fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence. Marianne sees only a gentleman; Elinor discerns a man of taste. There are two opposed views of taste applied, one based on sensibility, one based on sense, and one might add, keeping in mind the whole English eighteenth century until the decade before the French Revolution, one feminine and one manly. Taste became necessary to distinguish qualities superior to the mere rank of gentlemen. Shaftesbury certainly presents the virtuoso as a social model, assigning the artists not only an aesthetic role, but an ethical one; for it is they who formed their audience; polished the age; refined the publick ear, and framed it right; that in return they might be rightly and lastingly applauded. Keywords: French Revolution; Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility ; man of taste; social model; virtuoso