Sense and Sensibility

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Charlotte Brontë once said that Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is “a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers” and that she, personally, would not want to live inside its world.

• Is Sense and Sensibility universally relevant, or are its messages applicable only to the confined world of the upper classes of Regency England? (topic sentence)
• Give at least 3 examples drawn from throughout the text that support your evaluation of the novel’s relevance.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, connect your evaluation to the relevance of one or more of the novel’s themes: Sensibility Versus Real Feeling, The Lifelong Mission of Character Improvement, and Women’s Power in a Patriarchal Society.

2. Austen’s work is often said to prefigure literary realism.

• What are the realistic elements of this novel? (topic sentence)
• Give at least 3 examples drawn from throughout the text that support the different elements of realism you have identified.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, show how the realistic elements of Austen’s novel contribute to the reader’s understanding of one or more of her themes: Sensibility Versus Real Feeling, The Lifelong Mission of Character Improvement, and Women’s Power in a Patriarchal Society.

3. Austen’s work, in some ways, represents a rebuke of Romantic attitudes.

• How does the book’s plot and its characterization of Marianne serve as a commentary on Romantic attitudes? (topic sentence)
• Explain the Romantic beliefs being critiqued. Be sure to cite your sources.
• Offer paraphrased evidence from the plot and quoted evidence of how Marianne is characterized that demonstrate Austen’s use of Marianne to create a counter-argument to Romantic beliefs.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, show how Marianne’s character is used to support the book’s larger thematic concern with Sensibility Versus Real Feeling.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Austen’s work is often praised for its sense of humor. What comic elements do you observe in her characterizations and in the novel’s plot? How do they contribute to the reader’s understanding of her themes of Sensibility Versus Real Feeling, The Lifelong Mission of Character Improvement, and Women’s Power in a Patriarchal Society? Write an essay in which you analyze the comic elements of Sense and Sensibility and show how these elements contribute to the reader’s enjoyment and understanding of the novel. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence drawn from throughout the text, making sure to cite all quoted material.

2. One groundbreaking aspect of Austen’s work is her use of free indirect discourse. But Austen’s work is also heavily ironic at times, and this easy access to her characters’ minds can lead to a false impression of intimacy with Austen’s own thoughts. Virginia Woolf, commenting on this paradox, said that Austen “flatters and cajoles you with the promise of intimacy and then, at the last moment, there is the same blankness. Are those Jane Austen’s eyes or is it a glass, a mirror, a silver spoon held up in the sun?”

Which character or characters does the reader feel intimacy with because of the narrative perspective of Sense and Sensibility? How does Austen’s language also create an ironic distance between the narrator and this character or these characters? Does Austen ever reveal her own perspective, or is her aim to simply hold up a mirror in which society can gaze at its own reflection? Write an essay in which you analyze how Woolf’s commentary on Austen applies to Sense and Sensibility. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence drawn from throughout the text, making sure to cite all quoted material.

3. How does the novel critique the behavior of characters like Fanny, Mrs. Ferrars, Mrs. Dashwood, Mrs. Jennings, and Lucy Steele? How does their behavior relate to the extremely limited power they have over their own lives in a patriarchal society? Does the novel have sympathy toward any of these women, or are they being held up as examples of how not to respond to the confinement of women’s gender roles? In an essay, analyze the characterization of one or more of these women, the novel’s attitude toward the character(s), and the messages being conveyed about Women’s Power in a Patriarchal Society. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence drawn from throughout the text, making sure to cite all quoted material.