Sense and Sensibility. How the Dashwood Sisters Change Each Other
This article explores Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, the men they love, and how two very different sisters learn from each other.
Before They Became Sense and Sensibility
Elinor and Marianne: Two Very Different Mindsets
Willoughby, Edward and Brandon
What the Sisters Learn From Each Other
Jane Austen gives us two sisters who could hardly approach the world more differently: Elinor Dashwood thinks before she speaks and rarely lets other people see how strongly she feels, while Marianne speaks with complete honesty, falls in love quickly, and finds emotional restraint almost suspicious. Each believes she understands something about life that the other has missed... But then both fall in love, and their theories become much harder to defend.
With a new Sense and Sensibility adaptation arriving in October 2026, Elinor and Marianne are returning to the screen once again. Their romances provide plenty of drama, but the relationship between the sisters gives the story its shape. They watch each other make mistakes, suffer through disappointments, and gradually reconsider some of their strongest opinions.
Before They Became Sense and Sensibility
When Sense and Sensibility appeared in 1811, Jane Austen's name was absent from the title page. The author was identified simply as “A Lady.” It was Austen's first published novel, although she had been developing the story for years. An earlier version was called Elinor and Marianne, a title that places the sisters themselves at the center of the story.
Their troubles begin with a death and a will. The Dashwoods have been living comfortably at Norland Park in Sussex, where Elinor and Marianne's father expects to provide for his wife and daughters. When he dies, Norland passes to his already wealthy son John Dashwood, Elinor and Marianne's half-brother, while Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters are left with a much smaller income and no permanent home of their own.
This situation was connected to the property and inheritance rules of Austen's society. An estate could be legally arranged so that its owner had limited power over who inherited it next, and landed property commonly remained in the male line.
Before Mr. Dashwood dies, John promises his father that he will help his stepmother and half-sisters. Even though he initially considers giving the women £3,000, his wife Fanny begins talking him out of it. Within a wonderfully sharp conversation, £3,000 becomes £1,500, then an annual allowance, and finally almost nothing. Fanny even concludes that the women will manage perfectly well on £500 a year:
John agrees. Soon his wife and child have taken possession of Norland, while Mrs. Dashwood searches for a home she can afford. She eventually accepts Barton Cottage in Devonshire, sells her carriage and horses, reduces the number of servants, and moves there with Elinor, Marianne, and their younger sister Margaret. Thus they have gone from a large family estate to a rented cottage and must now think carefully about expenses that once came naturally.
Austen knew something about this kind of uncertainty. When her father, George Austen, died in 1805, Jane, her sister Cassandra, and their mother lost the security his income had provided. They depended partly on support from Jane's brothers and spent several unsettled years before moving to Chawton Cottage in 1809. The Dashwoods' story is not a fictional version of Austen's own life, but the basic vulnerability of the situation was more than familiar to her.
So when the sisters arrive at Barton Cottage, they have already learned their first difficult lesson about independence. Their future depends partly on money they do not control and partly on the choices of other people. Elinor understands this lack of control almost immediately. Marianne will take longer.
Elinor and Marianne: Two Very Different Mindsets
Elinor is nineteen and already used to being the sensible person in the family: she manages practical problems, worries about money, and tries to understand people before judging them. When she begins to care for Edward Ferrars, she refuses to assume that his affection means they will marry.
Marianne finds this caution almost impossible to understand. She wants love to be obvious and overwhelming. When Elinor says that she “esteems” Edward, Marianne is horrified:
Marianne here burst forth with indignation — “Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment.”
What Marianne is unable to see at that moment is that Elinor is actually far from cold-hearted - she simply keeps most of her feelings private.
Marianne soon gets the kind of romance she believes Elinor is missing. After she injures her ankle in the rain, the handsome John Willoughby carries her home. He loves music and books, shares her tastes, and joins enthusiastically in her opinions. Austen says he is “exactly formed to engage Marianne's heart.” Marianne does not need much more evidence that there is. She falls deeply in love and assumes that Willoughby feels the same.
Both sisters are soon forced into painful situations. Lucy Steele tells Elinor that she has secretly been engaged to Edward for years. Elinor must hide her heartbreak because Lucy has trusted her with the secret. Marianne, meanwhile, is abandoned by Willoughby and later humiliated when he treats her coldly in London. Unsurprisingly, their reactions to the heartbreak could hardly be more different: Marianne's entire family knows she is suffering, but Elinor continues with everyday life while almost nobody realizes what has happened to her.
At one point, Marianne even calls her sister “Happy, happy Elinor!”, and at that moment Elinor can finally bear the misunderstanding no longer:
Later, Marianne discovers that Elinor has known about Edward's engagement for four months. For Marianne, this is a shock. She has often treated visible passion as evidence of sincere feeling, but now she realizes that her reserved sister has been heartbroken for months while supporting everyone around her. Elinor, on the other hand, also starts seeing the limits of her own approach. Her self-control protects her from public embarrassment, but it leaves her carrying an enormous emotional burden alone.
Willoughby, Edward and Brandon
The men in the novel complicate the sisters' ideas about love because first impressions are often unreliable.
On paper, Willoughby is Marianne's perfect match: attractive, lively, romantic, and apparently just as passionate as she is. He dislikes the people she dislikes and admires the things she admires. Marianne seems to have found a man created from her own idea of romance. Then the question of money enters the story.
Willoughby has debts, and after losing the financial support of a wealthy relative, he chooses to marry the rich Miss Grey. His affection for Marianne may have been real, but it is not enough to make him accept the consequences of marrying her. Marianne once asks Elinor:
“Grandeur has but little,” said Elinor, “but wealth has much to do with it.”
Edward faces his own financial test. He has behaved badly by allowing Elinor to become attached to him while hiding his engagement to Lucy. Yet when his wealthy mother discovers that engagement and threatens to disinherit him, Edward refuses to abandon Lucy simply to save his fortune. His behavior might be awkward and frustrating, but when keeping his promise becomes expensive, he still keeps it.
Colonel Brandon is easier for Marianne to dismiss. At thirty-five, he seems impossibly old to her teenage eyes. He lacks Willoughby's dramatic charm and makes little attempt to advertise his feelings. Over time, however, Marianne sees him helping people when he has little to gain from doing so. He supports the Dashwoods, helps Edward after his family rejects him, and rushes to bring Mrs. Dashwood when Marianne becomes dangerously ill.
This makes Marianne's eventual marriage to Brandon more complicated than a traditional happy ending. She once imagined happiness as an intense meeting between two people with the same tastes and feelings. However, her experience with Willoughby forces her to look more carefully at what people actually do rather than say.
What the Sisters Learn From Each Other
Marianne's greatest change comes when she finally understands what Elinor has been going through. While Marianne was consumed by Willoughby and her own heartbreak, Elinor was silently suffering too, yet still found the strength to care for her sister. Marianne had taken that silence for a lack of feeling.
Elinor's change is less dramatic, though just as revealing. She spends much of the novel keeping her emotions under control and trying not to burden anyone with them. When the truth about Edward finally comes out, that control gives way, and we see just how much she has kept to herself. Even Elinor cannot think her way through every emotion.
Austen lets both sisters change gradually while keeping their personalities intact. Marianne is still Marianne at the end, and Elinor is still Elinor. What changes is how they understand themselves and each other. Marianne becomes less quick to trust first impressions and more attentive to other people's feelings. Elinor, meanwhile, gives herself more freedom to show her own. Their differences remain, which is part of what makes them so enjoyable together. Marianne can still be intense and Elinor cautious; Austen gives us two distinct personalities rather than a lesson in how either woman ought to behave.
Perhaps that is why the novel's early title, Elinor and Marianne, feels so fitting. Love, money, reason, and emotion create plenty of trouble along the way, yet the relationship that carries the sisters through all of it is their relationship with each other.