Comparing Austen's Sense And Sensibility

Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.” Those powerful words spoken by James Allen in, As A Man Thinketh, are validated in Jane Austen’s, Sense and Sensibility. The novel takes the readers on an adventure through the lives of Marianne and Elinor Dashwood on their quest for happiness. Both Marianne and Elinor are faced with challenges in relation to love. Elinor is the mature, eldest sister who is associated with sense, while Marianne is more sentimental and is linked to sensibility. Sense is representative of self-governance, reason, and acute analysis, whereas, sensibility correlates to the “emotional response to feelings and experiences, “as Claire Lamont puts in her notes to the Oxfords World’s Classics edition …show more content…
In other words, Elinor’s sense is less favored by Austen while Marianne 's sensibility is praised. She continues and argues that Austen is more approving of Marianne rather than Elinor because Marianne displays her emotion more often than her sister. Although Folsom’s argument is understandable, I disagree that Austen’s text tries to denounce Elinor 's sense. As Folsom mentions, neither Marianne nor Elinor is portrayed as perfect, but I would claim that in fact, Austen portrays Elinor in a better light. This would mean that Austen would be more favorable to sense than sensibility because Elinor contains more reason while Marianne is more emotional. This does not mean that Elinor is not capable of feeling or that Marianne has no control, but that those traits are more prominent in their personalities. Elinor is represented as superior because she can govern her emotions, while always being polite and cautious, even during the most difficult circumstance. In contrast, Marianne’s incapacity to control her emotions lead to her lack of sense and therefore inferiority to