Sense and Sensibility, the first novel written by Jane Austen, was a female novelist during the Victorian era and was famous because of another novel called Pride and Prejudice. The story is about the Dashwood family, focusing on Elinor and Marianne showing a good sense of sense and sensibility respectively. After their father’s death, they became very poor since their brother John gained all the inheritance and didn’t perform his commitment to his father that he would help his sisters with finances and other things when they needed help. After some events, and some contact between different people, finally, Elinor finally marries Edward Ferrars and Marianne marries Colonel Brandon. Overall, this book talks about these sisters and reflects the culture during the Victorian era.
One of the major features in this novel that causes these “conflicts” is the social status, which most people really care about and are motivated about. Social status is usually the foundation of how rich or how much authority you have and is usually classified into three classes, which is rich, middle, and poor. Rich families like The Dashwood family, The Ferrars family, The Middleton family, The Brandon family, The Morton family, and The Grey family. They are the ones who were born rich and inherited their fortune from their elders. The poor are the females in the Dashwood family because they don’t have any fortune, and The Steel girls, Eliza Williams, and John Willougby were born poor. Also, the middle are the Jennings family and the Palmer family, as well as Edward Ferrars, but only when he gains the part of inheritance. In the story, the social status also somehow changes. Instead of the people who were born rich or poor and didn’t change, John Willougby and Lucy Steele achieved social climbing by marrying someone of a higher status. The author described the strict hierarchical system during the 18th-19th century in England and showed how this severe system limited people’s behavior in the relationships between people. However, it’s quite obvious that social status mostly decides a person’s fate.
To stabilize their social status, rich people try to use marriage to connect with each other so as not to go down, and poor people want to marry someone in an upper social class to dream of social climbing. As people think no end to social status, they are obsessed with maintaining their place, so people think of marriage to stabilize their position. Some of the marriage matches, but some just use marriage as a tool of social immobility. Lucy Steel, who married Robert Ferrars, had secretly engaged Edward before and waited for marriage for a long time. However, when he can’t gain the inheritance and his brother Robert gains the inheritance, she finally marries Robert. This seems ridiculous but this also shows that Lucy’s wishes are fulfilled and she’s quite a self-interested person. To keep social immobility, Mrs. Ferrars forces her sons to pursue Miss. Morton didn't care if love or not; John and Fanny Dashwood stopped giving away family money and pushed Elinor to go after Colonel Brandon. All the things they do to force marriage is to bring themselves benefits and most of them are trying hard to have a good marriage to gain a higher social status, but not all about love. Therefore, love is not the only factor in building up marriage in people’s concepts and it’s more about how many advantages they could have.
Apart from the social status, another part of the story that was obviously shown is the female role during the Victorian era. For a long time in history, even nowadays, females played an essential role that might have a large effect on the whole society. During the 18th-19th century, women usually didn’t have a job, which meant they had no income. Thus, they need to rely on males, who before marriage relied on the father and after marriage relied on the husband. When young females are waiting for marriage, they often have no choice. For example, Lucy didn't have any choice because after she married Robert, her sister Nancy might have a good chance, and so did Elinor. What they do benefits their families, is helpful to other family members, and can satisfy the greediness of people. So that’s the reason why John pushes Elinor for marriage. Besides being controlled, some females such as Fanny, Mrs. Ferrars, and Mrs. Smith have the power to control others, by controlling their husbands or deciding inheritance. They have more authority than other females, and they don’t need to be like a marionette to be controlled by others. Consequently, females can influence the family from different parts and can be both powerful and weak, if weak, they can be easily abandoned, but powerful, they do whatever they like.
In conclusion, the book Sense and Sensibility, tells the story of different families and diverse social statuses and how they relate and communicate with each other. Most of the circumstances happened because of the rigorous hierarchical system since people very attached importance to the classes they were in, then they used marriage as a tool for maintaining their status or climbing up a position. As people contemplate how to be richer and integrate into upper-class society, they are also considering their roles in society, especially young women. They must consider more about their family but not themselves, bringing more advantages. Hence, I think that this book is more about the complicated interpersonal relationship in society at that time.
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