3.1　A Brief Survey ofSense and Sensibility

Jane Austen（1775-1817），is the English novelist generally credited with first giving the novel its modern character through her treatment of the details of everyday life in provincial English middle-class society.She was born on December 16，1775 at the parsonage of Steventon，in Hampshire，a village of which her father was a rector.She was the youngest of seven children.In 1801，the family moved to Bath，where they lived until 1805 when，upon the death of her father，the family moved first to Southampton and then to Chawton in 1809.It was in Chawton that her major works were composed，although she had begun as a child to write for family amusement.Austen depicted with a sympathetic imagination the lives of minor landed gentry，country clergymen，and families in various economic circumstances struggling to maintain or enhance their social position.The most urgent preoccupation of her young，well-bred heroines and heroes is courtship and marriage.Her interest lay in life's little conundrums of sentiment and conduct.

Sense and Sensibility was first published in 1811，sixteen years after Jane Austen began the first draft，titled“Elinor and Marianne”.Financed by Austen's brother and attributed only to“A Lady”，it was the first of her novels to be put into print.Sense and Sensibility is the story of two sisters，Elinor and Marianne Dashwood，who，as members of the upper class，cannot“work”for a living and must therefore make a suitable marriage to ensure their livelihood.The novel is a sharply detailed portraiture of the decorum surrounding courtship and the importance of marriage to a woman's livelihood and comfort.The novel is also，as is most evident in its title，a comparison between the sisters'polar personalities.The eldest sister，Elinor，exemplifies the sense of the title.She is portrayed as a paragon of common sense and diplomatic behavior，while her younger sister Marianne personifies sensibility in her complete abandonment to passion and her utter lack of emotional control.In upholding Elinor's levelheaded and rational behavior and criticizing Marianne's romantic passions，Austen follows the form of the didactic novel，in which the personalities of two main characters are compared in order to find favor with one position and therefore argue against the other.