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Character Analysis Of Sense And Sensibility

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Directed by Taibi Magar, the Playmakers Repertory Company’s production of Kate Hamill’s play Sense and Sensibility, adapted from the novel by Jane Austen, portrayed individuals in the late eighteenth century with great emphasis on their family, money, power, prestige, and social obligation and how these factors shaped their lives. Sense and Sensibility centered around the idea of rationality versus emotionality, especially when it came to battling with the choice between duty and desire, which helped to develop the theme that you should allow yourself to embrace all your qualities, you do not have to act in only one manner and limit yourself to only strict reason or excess emotion, being yourself is not a weakness. The stark contrast in …show more content…

However, by the end of the play a subtle shift in each of their character occurs. Elinor begins to allow herself to entertain the thought of loving and finding happiness, she shares more of herself, and Marianne starts to reason with herself that she can love Colonel Brandon (Jeffrey Blair Cornell) because it makes sense and still allow it to make her happy. This character development for both Dashwood’s shows how they learn to embrace the parts of their personality they would not initially acknowledge, sensibility for Elinor and sense for Marianne, and in doing so discover that they can be happy. The costumes in Sense and Sensibility contribute to the development of the theme by highlighting the obvious difference in the personalities of Elinor, the representation of logic and propriety, and Marianne, the representation of emotion and feeling, that help to make the shift in their behavior subtler, less obvious because the focus is on what the costumes make it seem like they stand for. The costumes are unchanging, making it seem like the characters are too, which makes the fact that they learn to be more than one thing in the end more significant and surprising. The two Dashwoods’ costumes, designed by Olivera Gajic, each uniquely embody the quality they represent. Elinor Dashwood wears a light purple colored dress,

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