Sense and Sensibility

At first glance, Jane Austen’s debut novel Sense and Sensibility mixes the familiar ingredients of a romantic comedy: the two pretty but almost penniless sisters Elinor and Marianne sail into the safe harbor of marriage after countless trials and tribulations. The nasty mother-in-law, the eager matchmaker and the charming good-for-nothing are also involved. Beneath the amusing surface, however, is a ironic reckoning with the constraints to which the women of upper-class English society were subjected at the beginning of the 19th century: They rarely had incomes of their own, were expected to be presentable but – god forbid – not too smart, and spent most of their time in society gossip, arranging marriages and such. It’s a time, when women had no choice but to submit and marry advantageously. Gröls-Classics – English Edition