Two sisters, but with two very different practical approaches to life, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood react to their trials and disappointments in characteristically different ways—Elinor, sensible and steady, is calm, reasonable, and self-controlled; Marianne, sensitive and impulsive, would despise herself if she could be calm or self-controlled in the face of her own joys or sorrows. How will she learn her mistake—and will learning it change her or crush her?
Sense and Sensibility is a moderately long book; it’s not impossible to read it in a day, but you probably won’t get a whole lot else done. It’s about the same length as Pride and Prejudice, probably a little shorter than Little Women.
It hasn’t got a very exciting plot in any adventurous way and I can’t imagine a very young reader would be able to understand it too well. I rank it at 15+.
Jump to the end for a short concluding analysis, or read straight on through for more detail!
The Plot [spoiler alert!]
Jane Austen has a fairly succinct way of writing; I always have trouble keeping summaries of her books brief, but this time I’m determined to stick to the bare bones, though the story will surely lose a great deal in such a retelling.
Sense and Sensibility’s main characters are sisters, one full of sense, the other of sensibility—Elinor Dashwood, the older girl, is the sensible one; Marianne, a year or two younger, is the sensitive one.
Elinor likes Edward Ferrars, a shy young man but an unselfish one—in short, a nice guy, but not with an instantly attractive personality. Unfortunately, Edward is financially totally dependent on his mother, and said mother would certainly not approve his marriage to relatively poor Elinor Dashwood. Elinor knows this, and suspects that the preference she’s pretty sure Edward has for her might not be enough for him to decide to ignore his mother’s threats and wishes. Therefore, she reasonably endeavors not to be carried away.
This procedure is far too level-headed for Marianne’s liking; she hardly understands Elinor’s motives at all. Marianne does not believe in self-control; either one’s feelings are too strong to be controlled, or else they are so weak that self-control is valueless. When dashing young Mr. Willoughby appears on the scene, Marianne has no shyness in expressing her admiration—and Willoughby is apparently just as enthusiastic on his side. Their friendship rapidly deepens, and Marianne is wildly happy.
Meanwhile, Elinor discovers that she was mistaken in thinking that his mother’s disapproval would discourage Edward from contracting an engagement—and she discovers this when she is told by a certain Lucy Steele, of her (Lucy’s) engagement to Edward Ferrars four whole years ago. Lucy is the daughter of Edward’s old tutor—and though she’s smart and pretty, she’s insincere and duplicitous. Elinor does her best to express no more than natural surprise; though in the background, she’s at first disappointed and rather angry with Edward, and then sorry for him as she gradually realizes that Lucy has no love for him and only sticks to the engagement in the hopes that eventually his mother will settle an estate on him and then they can marry and she’ll be as rich as she wants to be.
Willoughby leaves suddenly for London, and Marianne is devastated. But although Marianne’s devastation is nothing more than the pain of having to do without him for a while, Elinor is seriously uneasy—as far as she knows there is no explicit engagement between them, although sometimes Elinor is tempted to think they must be engaged secretly; but that seems so out of character—in short, Elinor is puzzled to know what’s going on and very unwillingly finds herself doubting Willoughby. But the sisters have an opportunity to go to London and spend an extended visit with a friend there, and Marianne, dying to see Willoughby again, jumps at the chance.
Although Marianne is dying to see Willoughby, it soon appears that Willoughby is not dying to see her. He is in town, but he seems to be avoiding Marianne, until the sisters finally catch him at a party. Willoughby, in the company of a stylish young lady, is thoroughly embarrassed—treats Marianne as coolly as he can—and Marianne, always impulsive and open, makes her astonishment and hurt perfectly clear, which doesn’t tend to make Willoughby less embarrassed. He excuses himself and disappears as fast as he can get away.
Marianne demands an explanation by letter, and Willoughby’s letter in return is cruel, completely denying that he ever particularly loved her, and explaining bluntly that he is engaged to someone else. Marianne, thoroughly heartbroken, is wildly wretched and inconsolable.
The next big thing is the public discovery that Lucy is engaged to Edward Ferrars. This creates a sensation everywhere, because Edward’s mother’s reaction is vehement—Edward is immediately disinherited and not only that, his younger brother is given the estate that was meant to someday be his. Edward braves it all, and Elinor is sorrier for him than ever, knowing as she does that Lucy doesn’t really love him. Edward goes into the church, a profession he has always inclined towards and only been kept from by his mother’s desire that he distinguish himself, and after the unexpected gift of a position by a friend of Elinor’s, everything seems to be on track for Edward and Lucy to marry—though on a pitifully small income. Elinor tries to be reconciled to the idea.
Marianne, at first, is disposed to give Elinor little credit. The stark difference between Elinor’s behavior and hers makes Marianne ready to shrug Elinor off as not really suffering much. But Elinor, hoping to encourage Marianne to greater exertions, is frank about what she really feels, and Marianne, struck by her own injustice, becomes repentant and begins to realize that she has brought much of her own suffering on herself by being violently uncontrolled. This knowledge, however, instead of spurring her to greater determination, makes her more miserable than ever. Eventually she catches a bad cold, which gets worse and worse.
Willoughby (by now married) happens to hear that she is dying, and rushes to pay a visit of remorse. Although half tempted to go when he hears on arriving that Marianne is better, he stops to explain to Elinor that he married his current wife for money—that he did love Marianne—but that he was so in debt, he decided to toss her anyways. Elinor is indignant of course, but can’t help feeling sorry for him too. But exit Willoughby, and exit Willoughby from Marianne’s heart as well; by now she’s quite lost all her respect for him. Gradually enter Colonel Brandon into Marianne’s heart—never mind who he is, just know that he’s been in the background all along—was in fact the friend who gave Edward the living—and Marianne, recovered, live happily ever after.
To return however to the present, just after Marianne recovers and before she marries the Colonel. Miss Lucy Steele, now Mrs. Ferrars, drives through town on her way to her honeymoon and sends the Dashwoods her greeting. Elinor, though she has tried to expect Lucy and Edward’s marriage, is still most unpleasantly surprised. For a few days no more news reaches her; and then unexpectedly Edward himself arrives.
Well, this is probably the best scene, and it’s a shame to spoil it—but I can hardly finish my summary without spoiling it, so here is your very last spoiler warning. Proceed at your own risk!
Brave as ever, Elinor tries to do the polite thing, says how do you do, and so forth, and asks how Mrs. Ferrars is doing. Edward making some irrelevant remark about his mother, Elinor is compelled to be specific and ask about Mrs. Edward Ferrars.
This genuinely takes Edward by surprise—but instantly seeing where the mistake lies, he exclaims that she must not have heard the news—that she must be asking about Mrs. Robert Ferrars—for his brother Robert, he explains, has just recently married Lucy Steele.
Obviously these are no unwelcome tidings. Also obviously, from the fact of Edward being there at all, he came to propose to Elinor, as soon as he found himself free thanks to Lucy’s duplicity in running off and marrying his rich younger brother (you remember that Edward’s mother, in an excess of stupidity, endowed Robert with the estate she had earlier intended to give to Edward).
Wrapping it all up, Edward obtains his mother’s rather ungracious consent—Elinor, though far less than ideal, is not nearly as bad as Lucy would have been—and they marry. And although Mrs. Ferrars is at first furious with Robert, she can’t help but forgive her favorite son—and she is even brought, in time, to forgive Lucy, thanks to Lucy’s incessant flattery and false humility. So that while Edward is never really forgiven for having meant to marry Lucy, Robert and Lucy are quite forgiven for having married each other.
But so what, who wanted to be in Mrs. Ferrar’s good graces anyway?
All right, my summary got a little long, but that’s nothing compared to my first try. That one was almost this long and it had only covered the first two paragraphs of this one!
Now to analyze and critique the plot a little. First off, I have to admit that I like Sense and Sensibility a ton—and for almost no reason other than the fact that I really like Elinor. Probably anyone would find her fairly likeable, but she just happens to be my kind of character, so I’m unreasonably fond of the book.
I say unreasonably, because whenever I come to really think about it, there’s a lot that I don’t like so much. It’s a pretty good plot in terms of being interesting and relatively unpredictable. But if Elinor is my kind of character, the triangle she’s in is decidedly not my kind of triangle, with Edward already engaged to Lucy but falling in love with her. However realistic and mostly pardonable that is (considering Lucy), it’s still distasteful to me. Willoughby, Marianne, and Brandon’s triangle is more to my liking, though I thought Colonel Brandon was never quite as cool as he should have been.
So when it comes to giving it a score, or even ranking Sense and Sensibility among others of Austen’s works, I’m pretty conflicted. In the end, I go for a 6/10, where in good Elinor fashion, my calm judgement on the less than totally likeable plot outweighs my liking for the main character.
6/10 for plot.
The Point
No one will be surprised to hear that the point of Sense and Sensibility is to contrast sense and sensibility. Elinor, of course, is the epitome of good sense—Marianne, of sensibility carried to an extreme. One thing to point out here is that although Marianne takes her ideas of being sensitive to an extreme, she does so in the most tasteful way possible; she’s never too ridiculous to sympathize with. Even when you most disapprove of her conduct, you still have to appreciate her motives and feel sorry for her rather than scornful. That enhances the point of the book; sensibility is presented in its very best light and you can still see how much it is in need of being controlled by common sense.
The word sensibility isn’t quite as clear as it could be—essentially what it means in this book, is an overly romantic view of the world that leads to a lack of self-control. What Marianne feels, she feels strongly and she expresses strongly—never mind politeness, or reserve, or suspicion, even when common sense would dictate minding one of the three. It seems an open-hearted fault—but it’s a fault nonetheless.
Elinor on the other hand, while not less quick in feeling and taste than Marianne, has far more self-control, because she sees the value of that self-control. And although she doesn’t fly to the extremes of uncontrolled joy that Marianne can fly to, neither does she descend to her level of despair. This may sound like simply an individual choice between living life on an emotional roller coaster or on a level train track—but it’s more than that, it’s living life selfishly focused on one’s own feelings, or living life thinking and considering others, realizing that your own feelings are not all there is. And this, at the end of the day, is the reason to choose sense over sensibility.
I appreciate this point so much, it’s such a useful one, it’s so well integrated, and so insightful, that I can’t help making the unprecedented decision to give Sense and Sensibility 10/10 for point.
The Style
Jane Austen is well known for the irony of her books; Sense and Sensibility has its fair share, mostly poking fun at the Ferrar family (outside of Edward) and, in a less humorous way, Willoughby’s fate is also ironic. I definitely enjoyed the dashes of humor injected into an otherwise fairly serious plot.
One thing that always strikes me when I think about Austen’s style is how well she uses an impartial narrator voice—unlike many authors, who drum up emotion, Austen gives you the facts (of the fiction) without playing unnecessarily on your sympathy. There’s nothing wrong about drumming up the reader’s emotion, by any means—I’m impressed when a book can make me sad or scared, and even more impressed if it can make me happy—but at the same time I admire the fact that Austen pulls off such a detached style and still presents a compelling and intriguing story. It gives you the feeling that the story is standing on its own, without help from the author’s art.
8/10
Conclusion
8/10
Though the plot of Sense and Sensibility isn’t my favorite, I do really enjoy the main character Elinor, and the overall moral of the book is both really good, and also really well illustrated. As for the writing style—it’s by Jane Austen, what more is there to say? I definitely recommend making time to read the book—maybe even more than once!
You can find a free ebook version of Sense and Sensibility on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/161
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Geneva D 
What do you think?