Sense and Sensibility

Summary

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. Mrs Dashwood and her daughters, Elinor, Marianne and young Margaret, move to Barton Cottage in Devonshire, offered by a cousin, Sir John Middleton. Elinor, nineteen, is sensible and self-controlled, and has formed a quiet attachment to Fanny's diffident brother Edward Ferrars. Marianne, seventeen, is passionate, romantic and contemptuous of convention. At Barton, the grave, older Colonel Brandon falls in love with Marianne, who dismisses him as too old, while she falls headlong for the dashing John Willoughby, who carries her home after she twists her ankle in the rain. Their open intimacy convinces everyone they are engaged, until Willoughby leaves suddenly for London. Elinor, meanwhile, learns from the sly Lucy Steele that Lucy has been secretly engaged to Edward for four years, and bears the secret in silence. In London, with the vulgar but kind Mrs Jennings, Marianne finds Willoughby cold and is publicly snubbed; he returns her letters and announces his engagement to a rich heiress, Miss Grey. Colonel Brandon reveals that Willoughby seduced and abandoned Brandon's young ward, Eliza Williams. Lucy's engagement becomes known, and Edward's mother disinherits him in favour of his brother Robert; Edward resolves to honour the engagement and take orders, and Brandon offers him a living. On the journey home, at the Palmers' house at Cleveland, Marianne, who has walked in wet grass and neglected herself in her grief, falls dangerously ill with a fever. Elinor nurses her through the crisis, and Brandon fetches their mother. Willoughby arrives, having heard she is dying, and gives Elinor a confused account of his regret and his mercenary marriage. Marianne recovers, chastened, and resolves to govern her feelings. Then news comes that Lucy has married Robert Ferrars instead, now that he holds the fortune. Edward, released, proposes to Elinor and is accepted. Marianne, in time, marries Colonel Brandon, coming to love him as wholeheartedly as she once loved Willoughby. The novel thus tests both sensibility and sense, finding Marianne's spontaneity dangerous and Elinor's self-command costly, and rewards a balance of feeling and judgement.

Top Lessons

• Feeling needs judgement, and judgement needs feeling

  The novel does not simply side with sense; it shows Elinor's suffering in silence and Marianne's growth into self-command. Each sister learns something from the other.

• Money shapes every relationship

  Inheritance law, dowries and disinheritance drive the plot from the first chapter. Austen exposes how economic dependence constrains women's choices and corrupts men like Willoughby.

• Grief can become self-destruction

  Marianne's indulgence of grief, refusing food, sleep and caution, leads directly to her near-fatal illness. Austen treats the cult of sensibility as a real danger to health.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Marianne's collapse is a textbook Regency case of emotion acting on the body: grief, loss of appetite and sleep, and long solitary walks in wet grass precede a 'putrid' fever that the apothecary Mr Harris treats and that the household fears is infectious. Elinor's vigil at the bedside is one of Austen's most sustained nursing scenes. The novel's satire of sensibility treats the deliberate cultivation of grief and sleeplessness as a health risk, aligning with contemporary medical worries about novel-reading and nervous sensibility. Colonel Brandon's flannel waistcoat, mocked by Marianne as a sign of rheumatism and age, and his story of Eliza, dying in poverty of consumption, extend the medical texture. Modern readings of Marianne as clinically depressed should be presented as interpretation.

• Vol. I, Ch. 8

  Marianne mocks Colonel Brandon's complaint of rheumatism and his flannel waistcoat as signs of decrepitude.

• Vol. II, Ch. 7–9

  Marianne's grief after Willoughby's letter: refusal of food, sleeplessness and hysterical weeping, while Elinor attends her.

• Vol. II, Ch. 9

  Brandon's account of the first Eliza, whom he found dying of consumption in a sponging-house.

• Vol. III, Ch. 6–7

  Marianne's fever at Cleveland after walks in the wet; Mr Harris the apothecary attends, fears of infection send the Palmers' baby away, and Elinor nurses her through the crisis.