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Boekgegevens

Titel: Sense and Sensibility
Auteur: Jane Austen
Uitgeverij: Penguin Popular Classics
Aantal pagina´s: 374
Eerste publicatie: 1811

1. Summary:

When Mr. Henry Dashwood dies, leaving all his money to his first wife's son John Dashwood , his second wife and her three daughters are left with no home and very little income. Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters Elinor and Marianne and Margaret are invited to stay with their distant relations, the Middletons, at Barton Park. Elinor is sad to leave their home at Norland because she has become closely attached to Edward Ferrars, the brother-in-law of her half-brother John. However, once at Barton Park, Elinor and Marianne discover many new acquaintances, including the retired officer and bachelor Colonel Brandon, and the gorgeous John Willoughby, who rescues Marianne after she twists her ankle running down the hills of Barton in the rain. Willoughby openly and courts Marianne, and together the two flaunt their attachment to one another, until Willoughby suddenly announces that he must depart for London on business, leaving Marianne lovesick and miserable. Meanwhile, Anne and Lucy Steele, two recently discovered relations of Lady Middleton 's mother, Mrs. Jennings , arrive at Barton Park as guests of the Middletons. Lucy ingratiates herself to Elinor and informs her that she (Lucy) has been secretly engaged to Mr. Ferrars for a whole year. Elinor initially assumes that Lucy is referring to Edward's younger brother, Robert ,but is shocked to learn that Lucy is actually referring to her own beloved Edward.
In the second part of Sense and Sensibility, Elinor and Marianne travel to London with Mrs. Jennings. Colonel Brandon informs Elinor that everyone in London is talking of an engagement between Willoughby and Marianne, though Marianne has not told her family of any such attachment. Marianne is anxious to be reunited with her beloved Willoughby, but when she sees him at a party in town, he cruelly denies her and then sends her a letter denying that he ever had feelings for her. Colonel Brandon tells Elinor of Willoughby's history , with Eliza, and Mrs. Jennings confirms that Willoughby, because he's left with no money, has become engaged to the wealthy Miss Grey .
In the third part of Sense and Sensibility, Lucy's older sister accidentaly reveals the news of Lucy's secret engagement to Edward Ferrars. Edward's mother is outraged at the information and disinherits him, promising his fortune to Robert instead. Meanwhile, the Dashwood sisters visit family friends at Cleveland on their way home from London. At Cleveland, Marianne develops a severe cold because she had taken long walks in the rain, and she falls deathly ill. Upon hearing of her illness, Willoughby comes to visit, attempting to explain his misconduct and seek forgiveness. Elinor pities him and shares his story with Marianne, who finally realizes that she behaved imprudently with Willoughby and could never have been happy with him anyway. Mrs. Dashwood and Colonel Brandon arrive at Cleveland and are happy to learn that Marianne has begun to recover.
When the Dashwoods return to Barton, they hear from their servant that Lucy Steele and Mr. Ferrars are engaged. They assume that he means Edward Ferrars. But Edward himself soon arrives and tells him they are wrong: it was Robert, not himself, whom the Lucy ultimately decided to marry. So Edward is finally free to propose to Elinor, and not long after, Marianne and Colonel Brandon become engaged as well. The couples live together at Delaford and remain in close touch with their mother and younger sister at Barton Cottage.

Bron: www.scholieren.com

2. Biografy of Jane Austen. 1775-1817.

Jane Austen was born December 16th, 1775 at Steventon, Hampshire, England (near Basingstoke). She was the seventh child (out of eight) and the second daughter (out of two), of the Rev. George Austen, 1731-1805 (the local rector, or Church of England clergyman), and his wife Cassandra, 1739-1827 (née Leigh). (See the silhouettes of Jane Austen's father and mother, apparently taken at different ages.) He had a fairly respectable income of about £600 a year, supplemented by tutoring pupils who came to live with him, but was by no means rich (especially with eight children), and (like Mr. Bennet in Pride and prejudice) couldn't have given his daughters much to marry on.
In 1783, Jane and her older sister Cassandra went briefly to be taught by a Mrs. Cawley. They were brought home after an infectious disease broke out in Southampton. In 1785-1786 Jane and Cassandra went to the Abbey boarding school in Reading, which apparently bore some resemblance to Mrs. Goddard's casual school in Emma. (Jane was considered almost too young to benefit from the school, but their mother is reported to have said that "if Cassandra's head had been going to be cut off, Jane would have hers cut off too".) This was Jane Austen's only education outside her family. Within their family, the two girls learned drawing, to play the piano, etc. (See "Accomplishments" and Women's Education.)
Jane Austen did a fair amount of reading, of both the serious and the popular literature of the day (her father had a library of 500 books by 1801, and she wrote that she and her family were "great novel readers, and not ashamed of being so"). However decorous she later chose to be in her own novels, she was very familiar with eighteenth century novels, such as those of Fielding and Richardson, which were much less inhibited than those of the later (near-)Victorian era. She frequently reread Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, and also enjoyed the novels of Fanny Burney (a.k.a. Madame D'Arblay). She later got the title for Pride and prejudice from a phrase in Burney's Cecilia, and when Burney's Camilla came out in 1796, one of the subscribers was "Miss J. Austen, Steventon". The three novels that she praised in her famous "Defense of the Novel" in Northanger Abbey were Burney's Cecilia and Camilla, and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda.
In 1782 and 1784, plays were staged by the Austen family at Steventon rectory, and in 1787-1788 more elaborate productions were put on there under the influence of Jane's sophisticated grown-up cousin Eliza de Feuillide (to whom Love and Freindship is dedicated). This throws an interesting light on Jane Austen's apparent disapproval of such amateur theatricals in her novel Mansfield Park
Jane Austen wrote her Juvenilia from 1787 to 1793; they include many humorous parodies of the literature of the day, such as Love and Freindship, and are collected in three manuscript volumes. They were originally written for the amusement of her family, and most of the pieces are dedicated to one or another of her relatives or family friends.
Earlier versions of the novels eventually published as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and prejudice and Northanger Abbey were all begun and worked on from 1795 to 1799 (at this early period, their working titles were Elinor and Marianne, First Impressions, and Susan respectively). Lady Susan was also probably written during this period. In 1797, First Impressions/Pride and prejudice was offered to a publisher by Jane Austen's father, but the publisher declined to even look at the manuscript.

Family:
· Jane's eldest brother James (1765-1819) was studious, went away to Oxford university at the age of 14 in 1779, and was ordained a clergyman in 1787. He had some literary pretensions (see his poem on Sense and Sensibility), and in 1789-1790 edited (with Henry) a university magazine at Oxford called The Loiterer, which ran for sixty issues. He took on the duties of the Steventon parish after his father's retirement. His second wife, Mary Lloyd, was not a favorite of Jane Austen's.
o His daughter Anna (1793-1872), was Jane Austen's first niece; some pieces in the Juvenilia (written when Anna was an infant) are dedicated to her. During Jane Austen's life, she worked on a never-completed novel (to be titled Which is the Heroine?) with the help of her aunt's advice, but eventually destroyed it after Jane Austen's death.
o Her younger half-siblings James Edward (1798-1874) and Caroline (1805-1880) also solicited their aunt's opinions on their youthful literary efforts (James Edward wrote a poem on being informed that Aunt Jane was the author of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and prejudice). Later, Caroline wrote down her memories of Jane Austen, and James Edward (who took the last name Austen-Leigh after inheriting from his great-aunt and -uncle) wrote the Memoir.
· Edward (1767-1852) was steady and business-like, and in the early 1780's was adopted by rich childless cousins of the Austens, Thomas and Catherine Knight. He was sent by them on the "grand tour" of continental Europe in 1786-1788, and eventually inherited their estate of Godmersham, Kent, and took the last name of "Knight".
o His oldest child Fanny (1793-1882) was (along with Anna), one of Jane Austen's favorite nieces; some pieces in Jane Austen's Juvenilia were also dedicated to her in her infancy. Her mother died before she was sixteen. She asked her aunt Jane's advice about several of her unsettled romantic courtships, and about whether or not to break them (She finally married a baronet after Jane Austen's death; her son edited the first edition of Jane Austen's letters, and one of her descendents has married the daughter of Louis Mountbatten of Burma, a cousin to Prince Phillip and Queen Elizabeth
· Henry (1771-1850) was Jane Austen's favorite brother; he was witty and enthusiastic in whatever he did, but not always successful. He entered Oxford University in 1788, married Eliza de Feuillide (who died in 1813), and eventually ended up as a Calvinist-leaning minister, after a business bankruptcy in 1815. He saw Jane Austen's novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey through the press after her death.
· Cassandra Elizabeth (1773-1845) was Jane Austen's only sister, and her closest confidante. Over a hundred letters from Jane Austen to Cassandra have survived, giving us our most intimate look at some of the details of Jane Austen's life. Cassandra's fiancé Thomas Fowle died of yellow fever in the Caribbean in 1797; he had gone there as a military chaplain. Possibly Cassandra's experience is reflected in Mrs. Musgrove and Mrs. Croft's abomination of "long engagements" and "uncertain engagements" in Jane Austen's Persuasion (he and Cassandra had continued engaged since about 1794, due to lack of money. After this, Cassandra never married. Cassandra (like Jane) frequently visited her brothers and their families, and other relatives and friends (it was the separations between herself and Jane, resulting from visits on which they did not both go, that necessitated the letters between them).

· Frank (1774-1865) and Charles (1779-1852) both entered the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth at the age of 12, fought in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars, and both eventually rose to become admirals. (Nelson once called Frank Austen "an excellent young man".) This naval connection influenced Jane's novels Mansfield Park and Persuasion. Frank was away at sea in the Far East from age 14 to 18.
Jane Austen enjoyed social events, and her early letters tell of dances and parties she attended in Hampshire, and also of visits to London, Bath, Southampton etc., where she attended plays and such. There is a famous statement by one Mrs. Mitford that Jane was the "the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers" (however, Mrs. Mitford seems to have had a personal jealousy against Jane Austen, and it is hard to reconcile this description with the Jane Austen who wrote The Three Sisters before she was eighteen).
There is little solid evidence of any serious courtships with men. In 1795-6, she had a mutual flirtation with Thomas Lefroy (an Irish relative of Jane Austen's close older friend Mrs. Anne Lefroy). On January 14th and 15th 1796, when she was 20, she wrote (somewhat sarcastically), in a letter to Cassandra:
"Tell Mary that I make over Mr. Heartley and all his estate to her for her sole use and benefit in future, and not only him, but all my other admirers into the bargain wherever she can find them, even the kiss which C. Powlett wanted to give me, as I mean to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I do not care sixpence. Assure her also, as a last and indisputable proof of Warren's indifference to me, that he actually drew that gentleman's picture for me, and delivered it to me without a sigh.
Friday. -- At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow at the melancholy idea."
However, it was always known that he couldn't afford to marry Jane (Many years later, after he had become Chief Justice of Ireland, he confessed to his nephew that he had had a "boyish love" for Jane Austen.) A year later, Mrs. Lefroy (who had disapproved of her nephew Tom's conduct towards Jane) tried to fix Jane Austen up with the Rev. Samuel Blackall, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but Jane wasn't very interested.
In late 1800 her father, who was nearly 70, suddenly decided to retire to Bath (which would not have been Jane Austen's choice), and the family moved there the next year. During the years in Bath, the family went to the sea-side every summer, and it was while on one of those holidays that Jane Austen's most mysterious romantic incident occurred. All that is known is what Cassandra told various nieces, years after Jane Austen's death, and nothing was written down until years after that. While the family were staying somewhere on the coast (probably in south Devonshire, west of Lyme), Jane Austen met a young man who seemed to Cassandra to have quite fallen in love with Jane; Cassandra later spoke highly of him, and thought he would have been a successful suitor. According to Caroline "They parted -- but he made it plain he should seek them out again"; however, shortly afterwards they instead heard of his death! There is no evidence as to how seriously this disappointment affected Jane Austen, but a number of people have wondered whether or not Jane Austen's 1817 novel Persuasion might not reflect this experience to some degree, with life transmuted into art; Jane Austen would have been 27 (the age of Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion) during 1802-1803, and a crucial scene in Persuasion takes place in Lyme.
A more clearly-known incident occurred on December 2nd. 1802, when Jane Austen and Cassandra were staying with the Bigg family at Manydown, near Steventon. Harris Bigg-Wither, who was six years younger than herself, proposed to Jane, and she accepted, though she did not love. However, the next day she thought better of it, and she and Cassandra showed up unexpectedly at Steventon (where their brother James was now the clergyman), insisting they be taken out of the neighbourhood to Bath the next day. This was socially embarrassing, but her heart does not seem to have been seriously affected -- Mr. Bigg-Withers, though prosperous, was "big and awkward".
Notoriously, none of Jane Austen's letters to Cassandra from June 1801 to August 1804, in which she probably would have alluded to these incidents, have been preserved. In the end, Jane Austen (like Cassandra), never married.
In 1803 Jane Austen actually sold Northanger Abbey (then titled Susan) to a publisher, for the far-from-magnificent sum of £10; however, the publisher chose not to publish it (and it did not actually appear in print until fourteen years later). It was probably toward the end of the Bath years that Jane Austen began The Watsons, but this novel was abandoned in fragmentary form.
In January 1805 her father died. As would have been the case for the Bennets in Pride and prejudice if Mr. Bennet had died, the income due to the remaining family (Mrs. Austen and her two daughters, the only children still at home) was considerably reduced -- since most of Mr. Austen's income had come from clerical "livings" which lapsed with his death. So they were largely dependent on support from the Austen brothers (and a relatively small amount of money left to Cassandra by her fiancé), summing to a total of about £450 yearly. Later in 1805, Martha Lloyd (sister of James Austen's wife) came to live with Mrs. Austen, Cassandra, and Jane, after her own mother had died.

In 1806 they moved from Bath, first to Clifton, and then, in autumn 1806, to Southampton. Two years later, Jane remembered (in a letter to Cassandra) with "what happy feelings of Escape!" she had left Bath. Southampton was conveniently near to the navy base of Portsmouth and the naval brothers Frank and Charles.
In 1809 Jane Austen, her mother, sister Cassandra, and Martha Lloyd moved to Chawton, near Alton and Winchester, where her brother Edward provided a small house on one of his estates. This was in Hampshire, not far from her childhood home of Steventon. Before leaving Southampton, she corresponded with the dilatory publisher to whom she had sold Susan (i.e. Northanger Abbey), but without receiving any satisfaction.
She resumed her literary activities soon after returning into Hampshire, and revised Sense and Sensibility, which was accepted in late 1810 or early 1811 by a publisher, for publication at her own risk. It appeared anonymously ("By a Lady") in October 1811, and at first only her immediate family knew of her authorship: Fanny Knight's diary for September 28, 1811 records a "Letter from Aunt Cass. to beg we would not mention that Aunt Jane wrote Sense and Sensibility"; and one day in 1812 when Jane Austen and Cassandra and their niece Anna were in a "circulating library" at Alton, Anna threw down a copy of Sense and Sensibility on offer there, "exclaiming to the great amusement of her Aunts who stood by, ``Oh that must be rubbish, I am sure from the title.''" There were at least two fairly favorable reviews, and the first edition eventually turned a profit of £140 for her.
Encouraged by this success, Jane Austen turned to revising First Impressions, a.k.a. Pride and prejudice. She sold it in November 1812, and her "own darling child" (as she called it in a letter) was published in late January 1813. She had already started work on Mansfield Park by 1812, and worked on it during 1813. It was during 1813 that knowledge of her authorship started to spread outside her family; as Jane Austen wrote in a letter of September 25th 1813: "Henry heard P. & P. warmly praised in Scotland, by Lady Robert Kerr & another Lady; -- & and what does he do in the warmth of his brotherly vanity and Love, but immediately tell them who wrote it!". Since she had sold the copyright of Pride and prejudice outright for £110 (presumably in order to receive a convenient payment up front, rather than having to wait for the profits on sales to trickle in), she did not receive anything more when a second edition was published later in 1813. A second edition of Sense and Sensibility was also published in October 1813. In May 1814, Mansfield Park appeared, and was sold out in six months; she had already started work on Emma. Her brother Henry, who then conveniently lived in London, often acted as Jane Austen's go-between with publishers, and on several occasions she stayed with him in London to revise proof-sheets. In October 1813, one of the Prince Regent's physicians was brought in to treat an illness that Henry was suffering from; it was through this connection that Jane Austen was brought into contact with Mr. Clarke.
At Steventon she and Cassandra had had a private "dressing room" next to their bedroom (in the later years, after their brothers had mainly moved out), which she used to write her Juvenilia and early versions of her first three novels in relative privacy. At Chawton, she didn't have any such study, and James Edward tells the story of the famous creaking door, which Jane Austen requested not be fixed, since it gave her warning of any approaching visitors, so that she could hide her manuscript before they came into the room.
In addition to her literary work, she often visited her brothers and their families, and other relatives and friends, and they sometimes came to Southampton or Chawton. She had a reputation for being able to keep young children entertained, and was also attached to her oldest nieces Fanny and Anna. In a letter of October 7th 1808, she wrote about her niece Fanny: "I found her... just what you describe, almost another Sister, -- & could not have supposed that a neice would ever have been so much to me". In a letter of October 30th 1815 she wrote to her young niece Caroline, after her sister Anna's first child had been born: "Now that you are become an Aunt, you are a person of some consequence & must excite great interest whatever you do. I have always maintained the importance of Aunts as much as possible, & I am sure of your doing the same now."
In a letter of November 6th 1813 (when she was 37 years old) she wrote: "By the bye, as I must leave off being young, I find many Douceurs in being a sort of chaperon [at dances], for I am put on the Sofa near the Fire & can drink as much wine as I like." A few days earlier she had written, "I bought a Concert Ticket and a sprig of flowers for my old age. In December 1815 Emma appeared, dedicated to the Prince Regent. A second edition of Mansfield Park appeared in February 1816, but was not a sales success; her losses on the reprint of Mansfield Park ate up most of her initial profits on Emma.
She had started on Persuasion in August 1815, and finished it in August 1816 -- although during 1816 she was becoming increasingly unwell. In early 1816 her brother Henry's business went bankrupt; Edward lost £20,000.
In early 1817 she started work on another novel, Sanditon, but had to give it up in March. On April 27th she made her will (leaving almost everything to Cassandra), and on May 24 she was moved to Winchester for medical treatment. She died there on Friday, July 18th 1817, aged 41. It was not known then what had caused her death, but it seems likely that it was Addison's disease. She was buried in Winchester Cathedral on July 24th 1817 (at that time, so we are told, women did not usually attend funerals -- three years afterwards, Victoria's mother was not allowed to attend her husband's funeral -- so Cassandra was not present).

3. Beschrijving van de tijd waarin het boek zich afspeelt.

Dit boek speelt zich af rond de industriële revolutie in Engeland. De industriële revolutie nam plaats aan het einde van de 18de eeuw, waarin dit boek ook is geschreven. Het is duidelijk dat Jane Austen het boek in haar eigen tijd heeft geplaatst. Toch zie je dat het nog een hele tijd geleden, aangezien er nog geen auto´s waren, maar gebruik werd gemaakt van koetsen. Een ander kenmerk van een heel ander tijdperk is, dat de mensen geacht worden binnen hun stand te blijven. Deze familie is niet rijk, maar bevind zich wel binnen de hogere stand. Hierdoor worden de meisjes ook geacht om binnen deze stand te trouwen. Dit typische accent uit deze tijd komt ook naar voren bij de personage van Edward Ferrars. Zijn familie dreigt hem te onterven als hij niet met een zeer welgesteld meisje trouwt.

4. Plaats het boek in de tijd.

De literaire stroming is voornamelijk ´de romantiek´. Het boek Sense and Sensibility zegt het al. Het is de spanning tussen gezond verstand (Sense) en gevoeligheid (Sensibility). Er zit een zeer groot romantisch aspect in deze roman, ze beschrijft de karakters met een heel diep gevoel. De liefde is het belangrijkste doel in het leven van de hoofdpersonen, het vinden van een geschikte echtgenoot die heel erg gevoelig is.
In de periode van dit boek begon ook de Franse Revolutie en het bewind van Napoleon. Van deze aspecten vind je niet veel terug in het boek. In het boek komen wel de grote verschillen tussen arm en rijk naar voren. Het boek gaat namelijk over de gegoede burgerij va het Zuid-Engelse platteland, waarbij heel erg naar standen wordt gekeken, zoals ik al in het vorige punt beschreef. De status van een familie is erg belangrijk, de familie-eer staat erg vooraan. Men wil dan ook niet dat een gegoede burger met een ´lager´ persoon trouwt.

5. Welke autobiografische elementen zijn er aan te wijzen?

In het boek komen naar mijn mening niet erg veel autobiografische elementen voor. Vooral in de familie samenstelling zijn veel verschillen. De vader van Jane is erg oud geworden, ongeveer 75, en haar moeder ook. Daarnaast leefde ze niet in een gezin met alleen maar meisjes. Ze woonde met 8 kinderen, waarvan 2 meisjes. In Sense and Sensibility zijn er 3 meisjes. De namen die voor de hoofdpersonen worden gebruikt komen ook in haar eigen omgeving voor. Zo is Eliza de Feuillide haar nichtje en komt deze naam ook voor in haar boek. Edward Austen is haar broer en in het boek komt de naam Edward Ferrars voor.
De autobiografische elementen zijn misschien dat ze in dezelfde tijd leefden en beiden in de stand van de gegoede burgerij zonder erg hoog inkomen.
Jane Austen heeft in haar leven een aantal verschillende mannen om haar heen gehad en er waren dezelfde kwesties over juiste echtgenoot in samenhang met geld. Zo kon mr. Tom Lefroy niet met haar trouwen omdat hij niet genoeg geld had.

6. Werk het thema uit.

Het hoofdthema is: liefde, sociale waarden, (standenmaatschappij), huwelijk, vriendschap.
De liefde komt in overvloed aan beeld, hier draait eigenlijk het hele boek om, het is dan ook niet voor niets een liefdesroman!
Sociale waarden vind je terug in de gedragspatronen die de meisjes en omgeving vertonen. Er zijn bepaalde (ongeschreven) regels waar je je als (jonge)dame en (jonge)heer aan moet houden. Dit vind je terug in de beschrijven van Marianne en Elinor over de mannen. Bepaalde karaktereigenschappen en gedragsmanieren worden overgewaardeerd en anderen totaal onderworpen. Dit verschilt wel per persoon, maar over het algemeen is het duidelijk dat een aardige, (over)gevoelige, attente ´heer´ het belangrijkste is. Deze moet passie hebben voor muziek en kunst, hier zie je ook weer het romantische ideaal in terug. Elinor is wat minder romantisch ingesteld en wat meer verstandelijk, maar ook in haar woordengebruik leidt je af dat dit soort man toch als perfecte word gezien, ook al valt zij soms op een wat meer stugge man.
Standenmaatschappij is eigenlijk een onderdeel van de sociale waarden. Met de standenmaatschappij bedoel ik: de bevolking ingedeeld in lagen, verschillen tussen arm en rijk en voornamelijk tussen: aanzien. Voor de familie van de personages in het boek is het erg belangrijk om in dezelfde kringen een huwelijkspartner te vinden, deze moet welgesteld en mooi zijn. Het is voornamelijk van belang dat het gezicht van de familie niet verloren gaat, dat men niet onder zijn eigen gratie gaat. Het huwelijk is dus van groot belang, in het boek lijkt het ook alsof het leven van de meisjes alleen maar om het vinden van een partner gaat.
Vriendschap is ook een item die naar voren springt, aangezien de vriendschap tussen Marianne, Elinor en Margaret als erg belangrijk word aanvaard. Het is ook belangrijk in deze wereld om mensen te kennen om ergens te komen, dit gebruiken ze ook om uitstapjes te maken, zoals die ene keer naar Londen. De vriendschap is de basis waar steeds weer op wordt teruggevallen.

7. Geef een gedetailleerde beschrijving van de hoofdpersoon.

Ik geef een beschrijving van Elinor en Marianne omdat hun in mijn ogen beiden de hoofdpersoon zijn, misschien dat Elinor een iets grotere rol in het verhaal speelt, maar toch zijn ze beiden even belangrijk.
Elinor: Ze is 19 jaar oud (in het begin van het verhaal, deze gaat over zo´n 2,5 jaar) en heeft een zeer goed gezond verstand. Ze wil graag alles onder controle houden, dus diepgaande, (emotionele) gevoelens komen bij haar niet meteen naar boven, ze probeert ze te onderdrukken. Ze is dan ook erg rustig. Ze praat zeer formeel, zelfs over haar gevoelens. Ze is bestwel lief tegen iedereen, ze wil graag dat mensen een goed beeld van haar hebben. Ze is de oudste van drie zussen en dit heeft denk ik wel meegespeeld, aangezien haar vader doodging toen ze 19 was. Ze wordt verliefd op Edward Ferrars en na heel veel te hebben gestrubbeld trouwen ze
Marianne: Ze is 17 jaar. Ze is een zeer gevoelig meisje. Ze heeft een uitzonderlijk lief, emotioneel en warm karakter. Ze heeft zeer sterke gevoelens en zegt ook alles wat ze voelt. Ze doet hier niet moeilijk over zoals haar zus Elinor, ze heeft haar hart open en zegt wat daarin opkomt. Ze wordt verliefd op Willoughby, maar hij trouwt met een ander meisje, daarom trouwt zij uiteindelijk met colonel Brandon. Ze houdt heel erg van muziek en lezen. Ze is bestwel wild en impulsief en flapt er soms ook verkeerde woorden uit, die niet goed vallen bij anderen mensen. Haar verliefdheid op Willoughby uit haar wanhopig drang naar liefde. Misschien is haar drang naar affectie ook wel een nasprong van het verlies van haar vader.

8. Een eigen verwerkingsopdracht naar keuze:

Assigment 26. Characterize the main character, in other words, give an elaborate character description. So don´t just say ´she is 19 and rich´, but use adjectives, like ´she is very helpful´. Give examples from the test to illustrate your answer.

Voor deze opdracht heb ik John Willougby gekozen. Hij is ook een van de hoofdpersonen. Hij is een heel erg mooie, knappe, aantrekkelijke man. Hij straalt een zeker gevoel uit, waar vrouwen overweldigd van raken. Hij is attent en lief. Zo is hij uitermate beleefd tegen de moeder van Marianne, hij zou nooit een aanbod, om bijvoorbeeld te blijven eten afslaan. Verder is hij charmant en elegant, dit blijkt uit zijn manieren en zijn woorden. Hij praat op een formele, maar zeer attente manier, hij heeft een goede woordenschat en laat mensen in hun waarden. Er komt een zeker soort van respect uit.
Willoughby is heel erg verliefd op Marianne en ze hebben een mooie tijd samen, ze hebben dezelfde interesses en ideeën en kunnen hier ook uren over praten., hier kan de rest van het gezelschap vaak niet inkomen. Ze hebben elkaar ontmoet toen hij haar uit nood hielp, ze verstuikte haar enkel in de stromende regen op een heuvel. Willoughby houdt ook van Shakespeare en heeft net zo´n wilde aard als Marianne. Dan vertrekt hij ineens naar Londen zonder duidelijke uitleg. Als Marianne hier later heen komt schijnt hij verloofd te zijn met een erg rijke vrouw, Eliza Grey. Hij deed dit zodat hij niet onterft zou worden, maar hij zegt van haar te houden. Hieruit blijkt dat voor Willoughby geld toch belangrijker is als echte liefde. Hij heeft namelijk geen spijt dat hij met Eliza Grey getrouwd is.