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Sense and Sensibility follows two sisters whose temperaments represent the opposed values of its title. When Henry Dashwood dies, Norland Park in Sussex passes to John, his son by a first marriage, who promises to provide for his stepmother and half-sisters but is talked out of any real generosity by his grasping wife Fanny.
Author
Jane Austen
Frequently Cited
“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery”
“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine”
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid”
“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands”
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”
“the more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love”
Pride and Prejudice turns courtship into a discipline of moral interpretation. Elizabeth Bennet first judges Fitzwilliam Darcy by his proud refusal to dance and by Wickham's persuasive account of injury, while Darcy judges Elizabeth through the embarrassment of her family, the inferiority of her connections, and his own rank.
Mansfield Park follows Fanny Price, the timid daughter of a poor, overburdened family in Portsmouth, who at ten is taken in by her wealthy aunt and uncle, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, at Mansfield Park in Northamptonshire. Her other aunt, the officious and mean Mrs Norris, never lets her forget her dependent status, and her cousins Tom, Maria and Julia treat her with indifference.
Northanger Abbey follows Catherine Morland, the unremarkable seventeen-year-old daughter of a country clergyman, whom the narrator teasingly insists no one would have supposed born to be a heroine. Catherine is a devoted reader of Gothic novels, especially Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho.
Persuasion is Austen's last completed novel, a story of second chances. Anne Elliot is the overlooked middle daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, a vain and extravagant baronet of Kellynch Hall in Somerset.