A study on the moral lesson in Jane Austen's novel "Sense and Sensibility"

In this thesis, the writer chooses literature as the subject of her study. It is because literature can enrich people’s knowledge and outlook through the stories shared. Here, the writer selects one of Jane Austen’s works entitled Sense and Sensibility. This novel is Jane Austen’s first work and regarded as her most ambitious and didactic novel. It tells the experience of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood in their search love. Indeed, Sense and Sensibility was written following the educational novels of that day. These novels set two protagonists in a parallel faith with the object of finding that one is invariably right and the other is invariably wrong. In this case, this pattern of story is designed to teach moral lesson that is what one should do or should not do in undergoing life. Therefore, in analyzing Sense and Sensibility, first of all, the writer of the thesis wants to identify how the heroines are contracted to each other. Later, she wants to find out how the contrast reveals the moral lesson of the novel. In doing the analysis, the writer deals with literary and content analyses. Since then, she concerns with the elements existing inside the literary work like plot, character, and setting, and finds the meaning of each part and its contribution to answer her statements of the problem. Besides, she uses some references, which are related to discussion on Sense and sensibility, and contributes her ideas and opinions that can be subjective. Therefore, this study is a qualitative research. After analyzing Jane Austen’s sense and sensibility, the writer finds that the heroines of the novel, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood have different attitude in following their parallel faith. In this case, Elinor is sensible girl. She prefers to respond flexibly under the direction of her reason. In contrast, Marianne is a sensitive girl. She chooses to react impulsively under the guide of her sentiment. Later, the writer discovers that throughout most of the action, Elinor’s attitude is regarded as the correct one. In other words, this novel favors sense more than sensibility. Thus, the moral lesson of the novel is that it is prudent to behave sensibly, but it is reckless or even dangerous to give up oneself to the excess of sensibility