Write your own Sense and Sensibility story

Elinor Dashwood

The eldest Dashwood daughter, aged nineteen, who serves as the voice of reason and restraint within her family. She possesses strong feelings but disciplines them with judgment and composure, often acting as counsellor to her more impulsive mother and sister. She harbours a quiet, uncertain attachment to Edward Ferrars. Her defining quality—'sense'—makes her the moral anchor of the story.

Marianne Dashwood

The second Dashwood daughter, spirited and intensely emotional, whose passionate nature leads her to embrace sorrow and joy to their fullest extremes. She values romantic sensibility above practicality and judges others—including Edward Ferrars—by their aesthetic and emotional responsiveness. Her defining trait is 'sensibility,' often tipping into excess. She is somewhere in her mid-teens at the story's opening.

Mrs. Dashwood (widow)

Mother to Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret, she is warm-hearted and generous but prone to the same emotional extremes as Marianne. She places great faith in feeling over prudence and is fiercely protective of her daughters' happiness. After the death of her husband she must rely on the goodwill of her stepson and eventually removes her family to Barton Cottage in Devonshire.

Margaret Dashwood

The youngest of the three Dashwood sisters, aged thirteen, good-humoured and well-disposed but already absorbing Marianne's romantic tendencies without her intellect. She plays a minor role in the opening chapters but is part of the household that relocates to Barton Cottage.

Mr. John Dashwood

Henry Dashwood's son by his first marriage and legal heir to Norland Park. He is not actively malicious but is cold-hearted and selfish, easily manipulated by his wife into abandoning every intention of generosity toward his half-sisters and stepmother. He represents the way social and domestic pressure erodes moral obligation.

Mrs. Fanny John Dashwood

Wife of John Dashwood and sister of Edward Ferrars, she is a stronger caricature of her husband's selfishness—narrow-minded, calculating, and socially ambitious. She systematically talks her husband out of every promised act of charity toward the Dashwood women and installs herself as mistress of Norland with unseemly haste. She represents selfish gentility at its worst.

Edward Ferrars

Elder son of a wealthy family and brother to Fanny John Dashwood, he is shy, unassuming, and lacking in the social brilliance his mother and sister desire. He is quietly drawn to Elinor Dashwood and visits Norland extensively, but his fortune is entirely dependent on his mother's will. His attachment is uncertain and complicated by family expectations that he marry wealth or rank.

Sir John Middleton

A wealthy, good-natured baronet in Devonshire and distant cousin of Mrs. Dashwood, he offers Barton Cottage to the Dashwood women at a very modest rent out of genuine friendliness. His horror of solitude drives him to gather company constantly around him. He represents the hearty, unpretentious English country gentleman.

Mrs. Jennings

A cheerful, vulgar, and warm-hearted widow who delights in matchmaking and gossip. She is associated with the Middleton circle at Barton and takes a lively interest in the Dashwood sisters' romantic prospects. She is fond of home remedies and old Constantia wine, and despite her lack of refinement proves genuinely kind in a crisis.

Colonel Brandon

A middle-aged, steady, and somewhat stiff military man connected to the Barton circle, regarded by Marianne as too old and lacking in romantic fire. He is described as wearing flannel waistcoats—a comic shorthand for settled middle age—but is presented as a man of genuine worth. His role grows in importance as the novel progresses.

Willoughby

A charming and dashing young man associated with the Devonshire neighbourhood whose manner and tastes seem to perfectly match Marianne's romantic ideals. He is referenced in the introduction as a key figure in a celebrated conversation with the Dashwood sisters in Chapter X. His ultimate role in the plot involves romantic betrayal.

Mr. and Mrs. Palmer

A couple in the social circle around Barton and London; Mr. Palmer is dryly satirical and Mrs. Palmer cheerfully foolish. They are described as 'excellent' figures of comedy, offering a portrait of a mismatched but functioning gentry marriage.

The Miss Steeles

Two sisters—one of whom, Lucy, becomes particularly significant—who represent self-seeking calculation beneath a veneer of good manners. They are described as figures of 'sordid veracity' in their social climbing.

Robert Ferrars

The younger brother of Edward Ferrars, described as an 'egregious amateur in toothpick-cases' and the comic villain of the piece. His pretensions, vanity, and famous monologue about life in a cottage make him one of the novel's satirical highlights.

Mrs. Ferrars

The formidable and socially ambitious matriarch of the Ferrars family, whose iron control over her sons' fortunes shapes the central romantic obstacles of the plot. She desires her sons to marry well and is capable of disinheriting them to enforce her will.

Henry Dashwood (deceased)

Father of John Dashwood by a first marriage and of Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret by his second wife. He died leaving only £10,000 to his widow and daughters after Norland Park passed legally to his son and grandson. His deathbed request that John provide for the family is the moral engine of the opening chapters.

Norland Park

The ancestral Sussex estate of the Dashwood family, a large and long-respected property that passes by entail from the elderly great-uncle through John Dashwood to his infant son Harry. It is the emotional home the Dashwood women are forced to leave and represents lost security, status, and belonging. Mrs. John Dashwood assumes its mistress-ship with unseemly haste.

Barton Park

The Devonshire estate of Sir John Middleton, situated about four miles north of Exeter, which becomes the social hub for the Dashwood women after their removal from Norland. Sir John's hospitality makes it a lively gathering place for the local gentry. It sits in the same parish as Barton Cottage.

Barton Cottage

A modest cottage on Sir John Middleton's Barton estate offered to Mrs. Dashwood at very reasonable rent. It becomes the new home of the Dashwood women and the primary domestic setting for much of the novel. Though simple, Sir John promises to make any alterations necessary for their comfort.

Delaford

Colonel Brandon's country estate, described by Mrs. Jennings as a charming, old-fashioned place with high garden walls, fine fruit trees, a mulberry tree, dovecote, stew-ponds, a pretty canal, and a yew arbour overlooking the turnpike road. It is close to a church and represents comfortable, unpretentious country living.

London

The city where several key social and plot events occur, including Elinor and Marianne's visit under Mrs. Jennings's chaperonage. It is the world of fashionable society, milliners, barouches, and the Ferrars family's ambitions, contrasting with the quieter rural settings.

Inheritance and Entail Laws

Under the property laws of the period, estates could be entailed to pass only through male heirs, leaving widows and daughters financially vulnerable. The Norland estate is secured entirely to John Dashwood's infant son Harry, giving the Dashwood women only a small legacy of £1,000 each and leaving their mother with roughly £10,000 total. This legal reality drives the entire plot and reflects the precarious social position of genteel but impoverished women.

The Theme of Sense vs. Sensibility

The novel's title encodes its central thematic contrast: 'sense' (reason, self-governance, prudence) embodied by Elinor, and 'sensibility' (emotional intensity, romantic feeling, aesthetic passion) embodied by Marianne. Austen uses the sisters to explore whether either quality alone is sufficient and suggests that both extremes carry costs. The original working title was Elinor and Marianne, written in epistolary form around 1792 before being recast as a third-person narrative.

Female Accomplishments and Genteel Culture

Young women of the gentry were expected to cultivate accomplishments such as drawing, music, needlework, and reading aloud. Marianne judges Edward harshly for reading poetry without feeling; Elinor is a skilled draughtsman. Charlotte Palmer's 'landscape in coloured silks' worked at school illustrates the decorative arts expected of respectable young women. These accomplishments signal education and social standing but also emotional and aesthetic character.

Social Economy of Marriage

In Regency England, marriage was the primary means by which women of the gentry secured their financial futures. A woman without fortune depended on marrying well; a man's mother could withhold inheritance to control his matrimonial choices. The novel tracks the negotiation between affection and economic necessity, with Mrs. Ferrars threatening disinheritance and Mrs. John Dashwood reducing promised charity to nothing through social reasoning.

Coaching-Era Travel and Rural Isolation

Travel between Sussex and Devonshire is presented as a significant undertaking placing the Dashwoods genuinely far from their old acquaintance. The turnpike road near Delaford and the image of watching stage-coaches pass from a yew arbour evoke the coaching-age world of slow, expensive travel that shaped social geography. Proximity to a turnpike road was considered a convenience, not a nuisance.

Dashwood Family Crisis

The elderly owner of Norland Park dies, leaving the estate to Henry Dashwood's son John and John's infant son Harry under entail, with only £1,000 apiece to the three daughters. Henry Dashwood himself dies within a year, leaving the family with only £10,000 total. John Dashwood, manipulated by his wife Fanny, retreats from his deathbed promise of generous support. Mrs. Dashwood accepts Sir John Middleton's offer of Barton Cottage and the family removes to Devonshire, marking the end of their old life and the start of the novel's main action.