Essay on An Introduction to Sense and Sensibility

Throughout history, relationships between people have been questioned based off what people have heard or seen. Jane Austen writes the love story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne, that have conflicts when it comes to their relationships caused by miscommunication. In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen reveals the danger of making judgements on insufficient information through relationships between the characters. Miscommunication creates confusion and a mix of emotions from the characters.

Like Marianne, Mrs. Dashwood is romantic and whimsical, more prone to act on feelings than reason. Also similar to her youngest daughter, she often misjudges both the characters and situations of individuals. When Elinor tells Marianne of the difficulties Mrs. Ferrars presents in marrying Edward, "Marianne was astonished to find how much the imagination of her mother and herself had outstripped the truth" (18). Furthermore, Mrs. Dashwood's reaction to Willoughby is just as naïve as Marianne's. "In Mrs. Dashwood's opinion, he was as faultless as in Marianne's" (43). It is only Elinor, acting with the maternal caution her mother does not possess, who has reservations about Marianne's suitor.

Jane Austen's 1811 novel "Sense and Sensibility" puts across an account involving two English sisters who come across a series of hardships in their endeavor to find their personal identities in a relatively hostile environment. Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are forced to leave their home, the estate at Norland Park, consequent to their father's death. The two experience economic problems and come to see the world with different eyes as they move in a small house and as they interact with people who are primarily motivated by finances. Even though the two sisters have diverging personalities, they go through similar experiences and they come to have similar perceptions of society.

The awkwardness that transpires as both Elinor and Edward attempt to write letters in the same room shows both Elinor’s and Edward’s reluctance to show their feelings because of society’s judgements and develops their individual characters. Elinor is aware of the impact that her lack of wealth has on her marriage prospects, so she does not admit her feelings for Edward explicitly to him nor her family despite their existence. She is sensible and does not allow her love for a man make her vulnerable. Edward also has difficulty expressing his emotions. His feelings are complicated by his family’s desires and his engagement to Lucy Steele (Sarah Elizabeth Keyes). Despite his feelings for Elinor, he is characterized by his loyalty to his prior commitments. His loyalty, while admirable, is also the hamartia that nearly keeps him away from Elinor forever. Marianne Dashwood’s passion and spontaneity is evident through her actions; she cuts off a lock of her hair for her suitor, John Willoughby, without an engagement and weeps openly when he leaves town. Her excessive sensibility is a critique of women’s dependence on men for happiness. Willoughby is characterized as the perfect man, yet develops into a very problematic and unfaithful character. He draws Marianne in only to break her heart and it is eventually revealed that she is not the only girl

Jane Austen's groundbreaking novel Sense and Sensibility is a relationship-driven account of female protagonists. Sense and Sensibility shares much in common with other novels by and about women. Themes like autonomy versus independence and the role of women in a patriarchal society are explored in Sense and Sensibility. Using two sisters to symbolize the different directions the female spirit can be pulled, Austen shows the variable ways women respond to political, social, and economic oppression. The women of Sense and Sensibility are both trapped by, and breaking free from, the conventions of marriage and motherhood. Marriage and motherhood are portrayed ironically as the natural course of women's lives, but also as the chain that prevents their self-fulfillment. The social norm of patrilineal inheritance leaves Elinore and Marianne Dashwood, and their mother, penniless and dependent on distant male family members. Marriage and motherhood are restrictive roles for women, and yet Austen never provides a satisfactory alternative for Marianne. Marianne seems willing to break free from patriarchal social norms, but she ends up being a slave to heterosexual romance. The message in Sense and Sensibility ends up being rather bleak: women remain socially, economically, and politically oppressed because they cannot envision or enact suitable independent alternatives.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice examines and critiques a society built upon gender roles. Austen does this by examining the obstacles women experienced in the Regency Period. Austen expresses how women were controlled, and objectified by men through their need to get married to a man. Additionally, the novel ridicules how women who could not afford to live without men were shadowed by their partner. This commentary is seen through the portrayal of the Bennet sisters. The females of the family are forced to marry because they do not inherit any wealth. The family is forced to comply with the same boundaries Austen was governed by. Therefore, Austen focuses on how the Bennet sisters overcome a society that suppresses them. This allows the reader to comprehend the strength, perseverance, determination, and assertiveness of the women in this time. Overall, Jane Austen addresses gender issues throughout the story. This is seen in the progressive image of Elizabeth, as she combats the inequality women experience. Although it was not common for women to criticize the patriarchy, the overall depiction of females is progressive. Elizabeth represents Austen’s feminist views, and the depiction of women in the novel is seen through her feminist image as she deals with Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy.

Generous, willing, and proficient—are all qualities of Elinor Dashwood. Creators regularly utilize attributes of characters to depict them as basic bits of the plot. In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Elinor is appeared as a vital character through her sympathy towards others and her eagerness to help her family through troublesome circumstances.

We can find in this piece of literature work that Marianne Dashwood is guided by too much passion and acts inappropriately, while her sister, Elinor reacts with too much prudence. Eventually, both sisters are rewarded with marriage once they learn how to regulate the appropriate amount of emotional response and gain knowledge through experience. Moreover, we can observer that both concepts are necessary in order to act in a correct way. The author tries to show the readers how important sense is in our lives. Not only can we act through our reason but also we need to take into account our

Sense and Sensibility was first published in 1811, by Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility represents the neoclassical, dualistic moral world where values and exclusion values will ultimately be successful in a painful, romantic feeling. Not only that, he was making serious cynicisms of society's eighteenth centuries in which the aristocrats were praised and indirectly influencing young people's minds, not the love of love but to betray it just for Wealth. In the novel, Lucy and Willoughby symbolize this kind of people of society

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin was a moralistic novel depicting the two main forms of attitudes at that time; the neo -classics and the romantics. The period in which it was written, nineteenth century England, was laden with social etiquette and customs imposed on people of that time; and thus the characters of Jane Austin's novels. The novels' two main protagonists; Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, exemplify the Neo classical era and the romantic era, respectfully. Jane Austin instils Neo-classic and romantic ideals in Elinor and Marianne as to present a view of each attitude and to further enhance the discrepancies of social nineteenths century England.

Edward on the other hand lives happily with Elinor: "... she found in Elinor and her husband.., one of the happiest couple in the world." Marianne's views of the two gentlemen in "Sense and Sensibility" change throughout the novel. At first Willoughby is her perfect knight in shining armour. Eventually Willoughby's character is revealed to the family.

Jane Austen puts an emphasis on both loyal and rival sibling relationships in all of her works, and these relationships prove to be as important, if not more important, than those relationships of marriage. Pride and Prejudice offers insight on many sets of siblings. Sibling pairs each present different ways in which they interact with each other, and the dynamic of their relationship. The way in which Austen portrays certain sets of siblings may be a mirror of the way she was with her sister Cassandra, whom she was very close. Inspiration for these relationships may have come from ones she experienced first hand, or witnessed throughout her years. Pride and Prejudice expertly highlights the significance of sibling bonds, and how important

Finally, in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility the idea of Innocence is embodied in the figure of Marianne, as we can see in several passages of the text:

Often, two people who have endured similar life experiences and share an unmistakable parallel in lifestyles can be viewed as duplicates of one individual. In Sense and Sensibility, the two main characters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood can be seen as two extensions of the same character. The sisters are relatively close in age, grew up with the same social expectations of the same time period and household, and they evidently experienced similar childhood and family trauma and problems. Although it could be argued that they are the same character, these young women are very different from each other, in respects to their roles and practice of responsibility, their display of emotions, and openness to love. Jane Austen has cleverly titled

When Charlotte Bronte said of Jane Austen’s novels ‘I should hardly like to live with their ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses’ she was referring to the physical confinement of an interior versus an exterior setting. This confinement of the setting mirrors the social confinement of a woman versus a man in the societal structure at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. While Austen studies the societal position of women in most of her novels, her early work Sense and Sensibility, is perhaps the most interesting to take into consideration when reviewing the issue of confinement. In it Austen juxtaposes the freedom of the countryside exteriors with the confinement of the city’s interiors. These settings serve as a backdrop for the exploration of two female characters whose social status has been set back as a result of the primogeniture of the time.