Sense and Sensibility

Two sisters. Two philosophies of love. One merciless society that demands they marry well or not at all. Marianne Dashwood believes in grand gestures, poetry, and a heart laid bare. Elinor, her elder sister, keeps counsel close and emotions closer, certain that propriety protects more than it conceals. When both women fall for men who seem forever out of reach, one a wealthy neighbor bound by duty, the other a cad who speaks in sonnets, each sister discovers that the world will not bend for passion or reason alone. Austen wrote this novel at twenty-three, and it shows: sharp, unsparing, and wickedly funny about the ways we convince ourselves that love is simple. The sisters must learn, through heartbreak and humilation, that the heart and the head are not enemies, but they cannot be strangers either.