"Sense and Sensibility" is a novel by Jane Austen that was published anonymously in three volumes in 1811 and became a classic. The story follows the impoverished Dashwood family, focusing on the sisters Elinor and Marianne, personifications of good sense (common sense) and sensibility (emotionality), respectively. After the death of their father, they become destitute and are forced to leave their family estate and move to a cottage in rural Devonshire with their mother and younger sister. The novel charts their experiences in love, loss, and a growing understanding of the world, themselves, and each other, playing in particular on the internal conflicts between the qualities of sense and sensibility that each sister displays.
The novel has attracted a large body of criticism from many different approaches, with early reviews focusing on the novel as providing lessons in conduct, as well as reviewing the characters. However, more recent readings have offered new, complex interpretations of the novel, with some scholars viewing it as a "dark and disenchanted novel" that views institutions of order such as property, marriage, and family in a negative light.
