The research paper included below was an Honors paper in my Practical Grammar course that required an exploration of grammar in an author or a piece of writing. During the same semester, I was taking a Single Author course on Jane Austen, which inspired me to explore Austen’s purposeful use of poor grammar to demonstrate social class and education level in Sense and Sensibility. This topic was discussed in class, and I was eager to dive deeper into the subject. I learned not only about grammar do’s and don’ts while writing this essay but also the rhetorical ability Austen possessed in using grammar to better describe her characters.

Laura Apperson
November 27, 2012
Practical Grammar
Dr. Melinda Snow

Honors Research Paper: Poor Grammar in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

For Jane Austen, social status was essential in determining marriage, wealth, and education. In her six novels, Austen defines the social class of her characters through their personal wealth (and how they became wealthy), their level of education, and the quality of their connections. One of the most effective ways Austen allows the reader to discover these factors is in the way a character speaks. In Sense and Sensibility, Austen demonstrates this in two different characters—a servant, Thomas; and a character of higher social class, Lucy Steele. Throughout the text, Austen uses these characters’ grammatical constructions to effectively illustrate both their social class and level of education to the reader.

K.C. Phillipps’ claims in his book Jane Austen’s English that Austen often deliberately breaks grammar rules, which is “generally intended to reflect want of education in the speaker or letter-writer guilty of such usage” (158). Austen’s prose also contains minor unintentional grammar errors which readers can identify in her narrative text. She intentionally uses bad grammar in the conversations and dialogues of both Thomas, the Dashwood family’s servant, and Lucy Steele, a cousin of Lady Middleton, and contrasts these vulgar uses of language with the refined language of other characters. However, Austen uses this bad grammar to demonstrate two entirely different things in these characters: social class in Thomas and education in Lucy. Austen establishes Thomas as a servant of the Dashwood household in Chapter 5 (though his name is not established until Chapter 47), while Lucy enters the story as a well-bred woman of a higher social class than Marianne and Elinor Dashwood. The apparent difference in speech between the Lucy and Thomas thus serves to reinforce their differing in social class. Lucy makes mistakes less often than Thomas since she lives and speaks with people of a higher class and education. Austen makes the distinction that Lucy is less educated than Elinor and Marianne because she does make grammar mistakes, while Elinor and Marianne do so very rarely. Whereas Lucy often combines words into an ungrammatical contraction, loose uses of participles, and mistakes adjectives for adverbs, Thomas speaks in run-on sentences, adds letters to words, and uses incorrect prepositions. Both characters sometimes speak with poor subject-verb agreement and use verb tense incorrectly.

In conversation, Lucy says that “it was there our acquaintance began, for my sister and me was often staying with my uncle…” (Austen 120). Since “my sister and me” is a compound structure, it requires a plural verb (Vitto 180). Lucy incorrectly uses the verb “was” when she needed to use “were.” In a similar case, Thomas gives a report: “They was stopping in a chaise at the door of the New London Inn, as I went there with a message from Sally at the Park to her brother, who is one of the postboys” (Austen 294). Just like Lucy, Thomas incorrectly uses “was” instead of “were.”

Another common error Lucy and Thomas make is the incorrect use of verb tense. Lucy says, “I…have been quarreling with myself ever since for having took such a liberty as to trouble you with my affairs” (Austen 131). Though “took” is the correct conjugation of the verb in the present tense for the implied subject “I,” here Lucy references a previous conversation she had with Elinor. This conversation happened only once in the past, so the verb needs to communicate that. Here, the verb “took” should be changed to “taken.” This is correct because “taken” is a past participle—a word created from a form of a verb that refers back to a noun or pronoun (in this case, the implied subject “I”), and can appear in the present or the past form (Vitto 238). “Having” functions as a helping verb in this sentence. “Took” is only a present conjugation of the verb that cannot function as a modifier. Thomas very often utilizes the present tense when he needs to use past tense: “. . . I just see him leaning back in it” (Austen 294). Here, the appropriate verb would be “saw,” the past tense, instead of “see,” the present tense, since Thomas refers to an event that happened one time in the past. These similarities indicate that both characters possess less education than the other characters. However, Lucy’s status as a friend of the Dashwoods’ and a cousin of Lady Middleton indicates that she, though uneducated, possesses a higher social rank than Thomas.

Because of this distinction in social class, we do see several differences between the poor grammar of Lucy and Thomas. A common mistake is a poor combination and contraction of words, such as “t’other” for “the other” and “an’t” for an abbreviated version of “are not.” Lucy says that “. . . I am sure I was in the greatest fright t’other day when Edward’s name was mentioned by Sir John,” (Austen 122). This contrasts with Marianne’s statement that “to me it would seem only a commercial exchange in which each wished to be benefited at the expense of the other” (Austen 49). Lucy uses this contraction several more times throughout the novel. This contraction is ungrammatical in terms of the Standard English of the time. Though it may be (or have been) appropriate in certain discourse communities, Austen demonstrates that it shows a lack of intelligence in the community Lucy lives.

Lucy also has trouble using adjectives in place of adverbs. For example, Lucy says that “I shall have no fortune, and I fancy she is an exceeding proud woman” (Austen 121). The term “exceeding” is modifying “proud,” which is an adjective describing “woman,” a noun. However, “exceeding” is the adjective form of the word, and, since an adjective can only describe a noun and “exceeding” is describing “proud,” the term is incorrect. The correct term would be “exceedingly.” Lucy also uses participles loosely, writing in a letter that “my paper reminds me to conclude, and begging to be most gratefully and respectfully remembered to her, and to Sir John” (Austen 234). Here, Lucy tries to write that she is “begging to be most gratefully and respectfully remembered,” but the placement of the participle “begging” implies that the paper is begging.

In her writing, Austen clearly demonstrates that Lucy is not as educated as the rest of the women in her social class because of her poor grammatical choices. However, her mistakes are not as frequent as Thomas’. Thomas has several cases of incorrect subject-verb agreement, two cases of incorrect verb tense, an incorrect preposition, and a very long run-on sentence in the following passage. He also uses the apparently more colloquial term “howsever” instead of “however” (Austen 294).

“I see Mr. Ferrars myself, ma’am, this morning in Exeter, and his lady too, Miss Steele as was. They was stopping in a chaise at the door of the New London Inn, as I went there with a message from Sally at the Park to her brother, who is one of the postboys. I happened to look up as I went by the chaise, and so I see directly it was the youngest Miss Steele; so I took off my hat, and she knew me and called to me, and inquired after you, ma’am, and the young ladies, especially Miss Marianne, and bid me I should give her compliments and Mr. Ferrars’s, their best compliments and service, and how sorry they was they had not time to come on and see you — but they was in a great hurry to go forwards, for they was going further down for a little while — but howsever, when they come back, they’d make sure to come and see you.” (Austen 294).

Overall, Thomas’ speech is not as formal as Lucy’s, reinforcing the already previously stated fact that Thomas is of a much lower class than Lucy. The last sentence contains two separate sentences, as indicated by the semicolon, which functions as a period and avoids a run-on or comma splice error (Vitto 167). Austen punctuates Thomas’ sentence very well, adding commas mostly where they are appropriate. They are used incorrectly, however, for the phrase “their best compliments and service.” Instead of commas, an em dash would be more appropriate, since it is an interruption of thought (Vitto 291). Overall, Thomas loses the reader with his almost constant flow of thoughts without any pause at all. Except for the semi-colon at the beginning, Thomas does not stop to separate the actions to whom he refers.

Though Austen defines the education and social class of her characters in several different ways, she skillfully shows her readers that “more often . . . it is with loose syntax and vulgar turns of phrase that less admirable characters reveal themselves in speech” (Phillipps 20). In Sense and Sensibility, the characters of Thomas and Lucy Steele serve as excellent examples of the ways in which Austen uses grammatical choices to bring additional depth and insight to a character and their surroundings. Their grammar exposes their differences in both social class and education when compared to that of the more refined characters in the novel.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. New York: The Penguin Group, 1995. Print.

Phillipps, K.C. Jane Austen’s English. London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1970. Print.

Vitto, Cindy L. Grammar by Diagram. Toronto: Broadview Press, 2006. Print.