Sense and Sensibility

Two sisters of opposing temperaments who share the pangs of tragic love provide the theme for Jane Austen’s dramatically human narrative Sense and Sensibility. Elinor, practical and conventional, is the perfection of sense. Marianne emotional and sentimental, is the embodiment of sensisbility. To each comes the sorrow of unhappy love.

Their mutual suffering brings a new understanding between the two sisters, and true love finally triumphs when sense gives way to sensibility and sensibility to sense. Jane Austen’s authentic representation of early-nineteenth-century middle-class provincial life, written with forceful insight and gentle irony, makes her novels the enduring works on the mores and manners of her time.