Key themes
- Reason versus feeling
- Social constraint on women
- Heartbreak and recovery
About this book
Elinor and Marianne Dashwood embody two opposing temperaments — sense and sensibility — as they navigate love, heartbreak and financial precarity after their father's death leaves them dependent on others' goodwill. Austen's first published novel is a sophisticated study of what it costs women to feel and what it costs them not to.
Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility appeared in 1811, a revised version of an earlier epistolary draft called Elinor and Marianne.
Discussion questions
- Austen sets Elinor and Marianne against each other as embodiments of reason and sensibility — but by the novel's end, have they exchanged positions, or has the dichotomy itself broken down?
- How does the novel treat the idea that emotional restraint is a virtue? Does Elinor's self-control cost her anything, or does it ultimately protect her?
- Willoughby's late-night confession is one of the most ambiguous scenes in Austen. Does it change how you judge him, and does Marianne's response surprise you?
- The economic realities facing the Dashwood women are never far from the surface. How does money — its absence and its pursuit — shape every relationship in the novel?
- The novel was published in 1811, when a woman's social options were very narrow. What aspects of the sisters' situation feel historically remote, and which still resonate?
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Sense and Sensibility appears on the following curriculum reading lists.
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