Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen

"I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her suckling child". Jane Austen wrote these words about her novel, Sense and Sensibility, in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1811. Such a maternal feeling in Austen is interesting to note,...

Female speech in Jane Austen's novels is heavily dictated by the whims of her male characters, and although "[f]emale speech is never entirely repressed in Austen's fiction, [it] is dictated so as to mirror or otherwise reassure masculine desire"...

"To His Royal Highness The Prince Regent, This work is, by his Royal Highness's Permission, most respectfully dedicated, by His Royal Highness's dutiful and obedient humble servant, the author" (Austen, Emma ii).

The preceding is the dedication of...

Human nature undeniable has many facets is undeniable. Whether or not some character traits are superior to others, however, is debatable. One such deliberation is whether sense invariably triumphs over sensibility. Through her characters...

Elinor Dashwood’s famous speech in Volume III of Sense and Sensibility, in which she gives vent to emotions long-repressed, is in many senses the heart and soul of the novel. Having suffered through months of silent disappointment, endured for the...

At its core, Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is the story of two girls and the differing ideologies by which they live and view the world. Elinor, the oldest of the Dashwood girls, is a calm and rational thinker who always tries her best to be...

Reading the novels of Defoe alongside those of Austen or Brontë feels very different, even though they wrote less than a century apart. In Austen’s novels, the formal delineation of chapters increases distance in the reading experience that a...

Jane Austen's books are too often reduced to simple two-sided issues, and are often seen in a narrow and restrictive light. Instead of being a novel primarily concerned with romantic attachments or the close sisterly bond between Elinor and...

Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility and Ang Lee’s film interpretation of the same name share many key similarities. Important transferred elements and cardinal functions are sustained in the jump from novel to film, rendering the plot,...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epistolary novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, made waves in the German literary scene almost immediately upon its publication in 1774. Just five years later, the novel was translated into English, attaining a...

Although she only lived to forty-one years of age and published a mere six works, Jane Austen was one of the most profound authors of the nineteenth century. Her first published work, penned when she was but nineteen years old, was Sense and...

“In what sense is a child of that age a philosopher?” - Coleridge

If philosophy is defined as ‘advanced knowledge or learning’, it can be argued that age is not central to this definition, but the idiosyncratic experiences that are felt by each...

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811) is a novel of society and manners, following two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, in their bids for love and marriage. Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth (1905) focuses on New York’s high society and...

Marriage is at the heart of every Jane Austen novel, or, at the very least, at the end of them, as every one of Austen’s heroines find themselves at ‘The End’ with a husband, a fortune and lifelong happiness. In reality, however, women often had...

In the novel Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen employs various thematic elements in order to educate the reader on the nature of higher British society in the 19th century. One of the most impactful motifs in the book is the notion that class...

Jane Austen’s novels perform multiple functions individually as moral tales. However, they also occasionally work together to explore propriety in early nineteenth century England. Proper behavior for women often centered on their interactions...

Elinor’s mind is pulled in conflicting directions by her desires and obligations. Elinor loves Edward and wants to be with him, but after hearing about Lucy’s engagement to him, she withdraws her feelings. However, Elinor is aware of Lucy’s...

As a novel of manner, ‘Sense and Sensibility’ perfectly encapsulated the paradoxically frivolous yet ruthless zeitgeist of Regency England. Austen periodically manipulates the aura of gossip and secrecy that pervades the novel not only to...