Sense and Sensibility

In its marvelously perceptive portrayal of two young women in love, Sense and Sensibility is the answer to those critics and readers who believe that Jane Austen's novels, despite their perfection of form and tone, lack strong feeling. Its two heroines-so utterly unlike each other-both undergo the most violent passions when they are separated from the men they love. What differentiates them and gives this extraordinary book its complexity and brilliance, is the way each expresses her suffering: Marianne-young, impetuous, ardent-falls into paroxysms of grief, while her sister Elinor-wiser, more sensible, more self-controlled-masks her despair. All, of course, ends happily, but not until Elinor's "sense" and Marianne's "sensibility" have equally worked to reveal the profound emotional life that runs beneath the surface of Jane Austen's immaculate and irresistible art.