Sense And Sensibility In Jane Austen's Sense And Sennsibility

How should we try to live? This question has baffled mankind for millennia. Jane Austen, one of the world’s most beloved authors, wrote extensively on this question, not only portraying characters struggling with it but also answering it through examples. Furthermore, she strove to act in a manner consistent with her principles. Jane Austen used her characters’ interactions in Sense and Sensibility, as well as her own temperament, to promote sense moderated by sensibility.

Sense and Sensibility’s two main characters clearly demonstrate the interplay of these opposing characteristics. Elinor, who embodies rational sense, and Marianne, who personifies emotional sensibility, combine to temper each other’s extremes. “Elinor… possessed a strength

The older, more mature Col. Brandon has already trod that path. When confiding in Elinor about his youth, he reveals an emotional, impulsive young man who loved his brother’s wife. In fact, he tells her that at one point they were “within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland” (Austen 168). By the time Sense and Sensibility is set, however, he has achieved a good balance of passion and wisdom. He possesses the sense to keep a level head and a logical judgement, but the sensibility to care for his lover’s child and to duel Willoughby when he has an affair with her. Col. Brandon contrasts with both the younger characters who have not yet achieved a balance of sense and sensibility and the older characters who never gained that

Through remarkably realistic characters like Elinor, Marianne, Fanny, Lucy, and Col. Brandon, Austen brings our attention to the way we should and should not act. She highlights sense’s importance, but insists that sensibility must temper it. These lessons, as much as the compelling stories, explain why Austen’s work is still relevant today. Read her works; learn what she teaches; strive to live your life in a way that unites sense and