But one grand truth women have yet to learn. . . . In the choice
of a husband they should not be led astray by the qualities of a
lover. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of The Rights of Woman
(249) Sense and Sensibility presents a conflict between two
opposite ways of approaching the world. Both sense and
sensibility are necessary for a complete life, but in this novel
Jane Austen demonstrates that the pain and vagaries of living
require a greater use of sense than of sensibility. Although the
definitions of these two abstract nouns repeatedly shift
meaning, the reader quickly comes to understand that Elinor and
Edward Ferrars represent “sense” and Marianne and John
Willoughby are the book’s representatives of “sensibility.”1
Much of the dramatic tension in Sense and Sensibility comes from
the fact that both main suitors in the novel—Edward Ferrars and
John Willoughby—conceal prior romantic engagements from the
women they’ve chosen to court. These concealed engagements,
though initially unknown to the hero