Jane Austens Novel Sense and Sensibility An Analysis

Jane Austens groundbreaking novel Sense and Sensibility is a relationship-driven account of female protagonists. Sense and Sensibility shares much in common with other novels by and about women. Themes like autonomy versus independence and the role of women in a patriarchal society are explored in Sense and Sensibility. Using two sisters to symbolize the different directions the female spirit can be pulled, Austen shows the variable ways women respond to political, social, and economic oppression. The women of Sense and Sensibility are both trapped by, and breaking free from, the conventions of marriage and motherhood. Marriage and motherhood are portrayed ironically as the natural course of womens lives, but also as the chain that prevents their self-fulfillment. The social norm of patrilineal inheritance leaves Elinore and Marianne Dashwood, and their mother, penniless and dependent on distant male family members. Marriage and motherhood are restrictive roles for women, and yet Aus ten never provides a satisfactory alternative for Marianne. Marianne seems willing to break free from patriarchal social norms, but she ends up being a slave to heterosexual romance. The message in Sense and Sensibility ends up being rather bleak: women remain socially, economically, and politically oppressed because they cannot envision or enact suitable independent alternatives. Like the female protagonist in Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper, Marianne drives herself insaneShow MoreRelatedEssay on Jane Austen Novels: Success After Death1679 Words   |  7 PagesJane Austen Novels: Success after Death Chuck Leddy, a notable critic, stated Upon her death in 1817, English novelist Jane Austen was completely unknown in the literary world. Why would someone as brilliant as Jane Austen not be world known? 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