Jane Austen · 1811
Read Sense and Sensibility with context
The Dashwood sisters lose their home before they have much power to direct their futures. Elinor’s restraint and Marianne’s openness invite comparison, but neither supplies a complete rule for reading other people. Follow the difference between having strong feelings, displaying them, and assuming that another person must feel as one does. Austen asks us to revise judgments as conversations disclose the material interests and private histories behind them. You can read the text, save notes and quotes, and follow the passage paths below.
Key Reading Paths
- Generosity argued out of existence: Fanny redescribes a gift to the sisters as a theft from her child. Identify the change in vocabulary that lets self-interest sound like duty.
- How should a lover read poetry?: Marianne measures Edward by his reading of Cowper. Does his manner establish a poverty of feeling, or expose the narrowness of her test?
- A confidence that exerts pressure: Lucy’s disclosure changes Elinor’s position. Ask how a request for secrecy can establish power over the person trusted with it.
- Letters and the return of a lock of hair: Willoughby’s formal courtesy accompanies the return of intimate objects. Attend to the violence a conventionally polite sentence can perform.
- Willoughby explains himself: Willoughby answers an accusation of neglect by invoking what the woman should have known. How does his explanation distribute responsibility?
Questions for comparison
- Compare Lucy’s confidence with Frank Churchill’s concealment in Emma. Who bears the cost of preserving someone else’s secret?
- Is Marianne’s reading of Edward merely mistaken, or does it reveal a real difference about how feeling should become public? Support both possibilities before choosing.
Teaching with these readings
Start with the description of Elinor before assigning either sister an abstract position. Have students mark words for feeling separately from words for its expression. Revisit the distinction when Marianne discovers the four months of silence.
Read Fanny’s argument about money beside Willoughby’s account of neglect. Ask students to follow a sentence in which an obligation becomes someone else’s fault. Their comparison should preserve the different situations and narrators involved.