Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen (1811)
“Two sisters, one heart of sense, one of sensibility — and Austen wants you to question which is worse.”
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Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen (1811) · 409pages · Romantic / Regency · 8 AP appearances
Summary
After their father dies and leaves the family estate to a half-brother, the Dashwood women — Elinor, Marianne, and their mother — are forced from Norland Park to a modest cottage in Devonshire. Elinor falls quietly in love with Edward Ferrars while hiding her feelings with admirable restraint. Marianne falls passionately in love with the charming John Willoughby, who abandons her to marry money. Both sisters are devastated. Edward turns out to have been secretly engaged to the mercenary Lucy Steele for four years; Willoughby turns out to be a seducer who ruined a young girl. The novel ends with Elinor marrying Edward and Marianne eventually — after nearly dying from heartbreak — marrying the steady Colonel Brandon.
Why It Matters
Sense and Sensibility was Austen's first published novel, though not her first written. It appeared anonymously in 1811 and sold out its first edition of 750 copies within fourteen months, earning Austen £140. It established the terms of what would become 'the Austen novel' — ironic narrator, soc...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: Formal Regency prose — balanced periodic sentences, Latinate vocabulary, irony embedded in syntax rather than declared
Narrator: Third-person limited omniscient, drifting primarily through Elinor's consciousness, with omniscient ironic commentary...
Figurative Language: Low-to-moderate
Historical Context
Regency England (1811) — Napoleonic Wars, enclosure movement, rise of Evangelical Christianity: The novel's entire plot is generated by one law: primogeniture entail. If women could inherit property, the Dashwood sisters would have Norland and there would be no novel. Austen is not writing ab...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- The novel's title promises a debate between 'sense' and 'sensibility' — but by the end, does either sister win the argument? What does the resolution suggest about Austen's actual view?
- Willoughby's confession scene to Elinor at Cleveland is the most morally complex passage in the novel. Does it exculpate him? Partially? Not at all? Use the specific language of his speech to defend your reading.
- Elinor suffers in silence for most of the novel while Marianne's grief is public. Whose pain is treated more seriously by the narrative? By the other characters?
- The entire plot is triggered by a law (the entail) that prevents women from inheriting property. Is Sense and Sensibility a feminist novel? Does Austen critique the system or accept it?
- Mrs. Jennings begins as a figure of comedy and ends as one of the novel's most genuinely good characters. How does Austen manage this transition, and what does it argue about social class and character?
Notable Quotes
“How could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too, of so large a sum?”
“And to say the truth, when he thought over the matter it seemed to him that his father had meant nothing more than what she said.”
“She was generous, amiable, interesting; she was everything but prudent.”
Why Read This
Because the question the novel is really asking — how do you stay emotionally alive in a world that punishes you for it? — is not a Regency question. And because Austen is funnier than you have been told, sharper than the adaptations suggest, and ...