rejected a marriage proposal, and relocated again with her mother and sister to Chawton, where she turned her attention to writing. Austen’s sense of herself in the world must have been influenced by her close relationship with her only sister, Cassandra, who similarly was disappointed in love and in the awkward position of elder spinster aunt to a large and noisy upper-middle-class country family.

The only surviving portrait of Austen, a watercolor sketch by her sister, depicts the author as a plain, pensive subject with large eyes and a slight hint of a smile. She appears proper and subdued, unlike the description of her by a family friend, who pronounced her “certainly pretty—bright & a good deal of colour in her face—like a doll” (Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life, p. 108). Austen’s niece Anna’s view of her aunt matches Cassandra’s portrayal of her: “Her complexion [is] of that rare sort which seems the particular property of light brunettes: a mottled skin, not fair, but perfectly clear and healthy; the fine naturally curling hair, neither light nor dark; the bright hazel eyes to match the rather small, but well shaped nose” (Austen-Leigh, p. 240) .

In keeping with Austen’s status as a respectable daughter of a clergyman, Sense and Sensibility was first published anonymously. The initial advertisement for the novel, which appeared in the Morning Chronicle on October 31, 1811, refers to the author as “A Lady.” A subsequent notice in the same paper on November 7, 1811, bills the work as “an extraordinary novel by A Lady.” A few weeks later the book was announced as “an Interesting Novel by Lady A” (Austen-Leigh, p. 254). Austen apparently made some money on the first edition. Her biographers Richard and William Austen-Leigh note that the £140 profit from the first edition of Sense and Sensibility was a considerable sum compared to the lesser proceeds her female contemporaries earned from their novels—the £30 Fanny Burney gained from sales of Evelina or the £100 Maria Edgeworth received for Castle Rackrent (Austen-Leigh, p. 255).

Austen was influenced by the writers of her youth. She adored Samuel Richardson, read Maria Edgeworth, Sir Walter Scott, Dr. Johnson, Alexander Pope, William Cowper, Henry Fielding, and Daniel Defoe, and recited passages from Fanny Burney aloud (Gay, Jane Austen and the Theatre, p. 11). In Sense and Sensibility Austen echoes earlier novelists while at the same time anticipating the format of the nineteenth-century novel. Austen’s choice of translating “Elinor and Marianne” from an epistolary narrative (a novel in letters) into a story told by a central narrative allowed her to juxtapose the internal and external facets of her heroines. What we see Elinor do is often contrasted with what we know she is thinking. This gap between thought and action is highlighted repeatedly throughout the novel.

Marianne and Elinor have very different ideas about what they can and should reveal about their private thoughts. When Elinor pleads with Marianne to give her the details of her secretive relationship with the deceiving Willoughby, Marianne retorts: “Our situations then are alike. We have neither of us any thing to tell; you, because you communicate, and I, because I conceal nothing” (p. 138). What Marianne implies is that Elinor’s mode of communication, while utterly proper and correct, is always veiled and restrained. When pressed about her feelings for Edward, Elinor replies: “I meant no offence to you, by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my own feelings. Believe them to be stronger than I have declared” (p. 18). In Austen’s world women cannot communicate effectively without revealing too much. They are left to perfect the art of innuendo, leading questions, and disguised sentiments. The slippery properties of language become a heroine’s greatest weapon. At the same time, a misunderstood phrase or rumor can cause her downfall.

The plot of Sense and Sensibility opens with the anxiety of displacement and disenfranchisement. The Dashwood sisters have just lost their father and have been forced out of their home by their conniving sister-in-law. Austen’s initial descriptions of Elinor and Marianne focus on their reactions to this financial crisis:

Elinor, this eldest daughter whose advice was so effectual, possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother.... She had an excellent heart; her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong: but she knew how to govern them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never to