Making sense of sensibility

Is it possible for me to describe an experience someone else has not felt in a way that makes sense to them?

In some sense, the answer is yes. People who were born blind can come to have some understanding of colour. They can, for example, use expressions such as "red hot" or "cool blue" in a meaningful way. They can even grasp a whole lot of the meanings for "black" and "white" such as meaning opposites, a clear distinction or in racial terms.

But we would still say, for all that, they cannot know what it is to be conscious of redness.

So I can imagine meeting someone whose ability to experience things is more profound than mine and still have a meaningful conversation with her about her experiences. But what is that ability? The Serpentine One can hear nuance in music that I cannot. I know this because she will sometimes say something about a piece and I will go look up the score and find out she is right. I trust that sort of claim by her and others because I know there is such a thing as musical expertise. Maybe if I'd been a more determined student of music I might have developed a similar expertise.

But is there anything else? I mean, is there general quality called consciousness that we can speak of in degrees. Everyone can be conscious of course and some people can be conscious of things that others are not. But does it make sense to say that one of two people looking at the same red blanket experiences it more profoundly because of their greater consciousness?

If we could then it would make sense to say the following, as Harold Bloom does:

Hamlet appears to immense a consciousness for Hamlet ...

I read that and I keep thinking, how could this be? What is an immense consciousness? And isn't this just appalling vanity on Bloom's part? How could he know this unless he too had an "immense consciousness"?

And this is important because it is Hamlet's consciousness that justifies the man in the eyes of Bloom (and others). As I've said before, if we judge him the way we would judge anyone else, Hamlet is villain.

1. His treatment of Ophelia is appalling.
2. He stabs Polonius in a fit of mad rage and later feels no remorse for having done so.
3. He abuses all sorts of minor figures he runs across for no reason other than because they toady up to him when they don't have much choice but to do so.
4. He not only wants to kill Claudius, he wants to do so at a time that will ensure his damnation.
5. He jumps into Ophelia's grave and fights with her grieving brother because, get this, he is unhappy with the way Laertes is expressing himself.
6. He not only has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed he insists that they be killed before they can make any confession of their sins. Not only does he have two people whom he has no reason to believe guilty of anything killed, he has it done in a way that is calculated to ensure their damnation. And when he tells us of this, he tells us that they are nothing to him.

And there is more that I could cite. And yet Hamlet is seen as a hero. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aren't just nothings to Hamlet, they are nothings to modern audiences. Some productions have the men playing two characters switch roles confident that no one will notice.

It's not just Hamlet by the way. We all take Achilles to be a hero and yet if you list the actual acts of Achilles he is an appalling villain. Don't believe me? Well, read a summary yourself and see what you think.

You could do an equally damning chronology for the Bible's Kind David.

So, to get back to Sense and Sensibility, in what sense could the greater sensibilities of Marianne and Willoughby justify them given that both do things normally would be taken as moral evils. Does their greater sensibility someone change the significance of these acts?


We should keep an eye out for the words "significance" and "signify" by the way, particularly signify. Only two characters in the novel use the word signify but every time they do use that word it is terribly important. And yes, one of the two is Mrs. Jennings. No, the other one is not Elinor.