Editing Sense and Sensibility (section)

===Characterisation===
As used by Austen, the word "sense" signifies good judgment, wisdom, or prudence, and "sensibility" signifies sensitivity, sympathy, or emotionality. By changing the title from the names of the sisters Elinor and Marianne in her first choice of title to that of their qualities, Austen adds "philosophical depth" to what began as a sketch of two characters.<ref>{{cite book |first=Harold |last=Bloom |year=2009 |title=Bloom's Modern Critical Reviews: Jane Austen |location=New York |publisher=Infobase Publishing |page=252 |isbn=978-1-60413-397-4}}</ref> However, these characteristics, as demonstrated through the dominant behaviour of the sisters, are not mutually exclusive. Although their qualities are compared and contrasted through means of the plot, neither sister is a one-sided caricature. Humanised through emotional suffering, Marianne's sympathy for her sister teaches her self-control and prudence, while Elinor learns to express her emotions more overtly.<ref>Anna Stanisz-Lubowiecka, [https://www.academia.edu/37806292/ The_Semantics_of_Sense_and_Sensibility_The_Meaning_of_the_Title_Words_in_Jane_Austen_s_Novel "The Semantics of ''Sense & Sensibility'': The Meaning of the Title Words in Jane Austen's Novel"], Academia 2015</ref>

Nevertheless, the changes to the original novel's structure are never resolved in the eyes of some critics. [[A. Walton Litz]] judged that ''Sense and Sensibility'' is "caught uneasily between burlesque and the serious novel…in which the crude antitheses of the original structure were never successfully overcome". [[Tony Tanner (scholar)|Tony Tanner]] sees a shift of view instead to "the tensions between the potential instability of the individual and the required stabilities of society", as demonstrated by the influence of the governing qualities on the younger and the older sister. While sensibility has its positive aspects, its over-cultivation leads in the novel to the [[psychosomatic disorders]] to which Marianne nearly succumbs.<ref>Tony Tanner, ''Jane Austen'', Harvard University 1986, [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=khvEXPSIOYgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=meaning+%22Sense+and+Sensibility%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjR3vv6pfuKAxU8_rsIHbKcKc8Q6AF6BAgKEAI#v=onepage&q=meaning%20%22Sense%20and%20Sensibility%22&f=false Chapter 3, "Secrecy and Sickness"]</ref>

[[Claire Tomalin]] too argues that ''Sense and Sensibility'' has a "wobble in its approach", which developed because Austen, in the course of writing the novel, gradually became less certain about whether sense or sensibility should triumph.<ref>{{cite book |first=Claire |last=Tomalin |year=1997 |title=Jane Austen: A Life |location=New York |publisher=Random House |page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780679446286/page/155 155] |isbn=0-679-44628-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780679446286/page/155 }}</ref> Austen characterises Marianne as a sweet person with attractive qualities: intelligence, musical talent, frankness, and the capacity to love deeply. She also acknowledges that Willoughby, with all his faults, continues to love and, in some measure, appreciate Marianne. For these reasons, some readers find Marianne's ultimate marriage to Colonel Brandon an unsatisfactory ending.<ref>{{cite book |first=Claire |last=Tomalin |year=1997 |title=Jane Austen: A Life |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780679446286/page/156 156–157] |isbn=0-679-44628-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780679446286/page/156 }}</ref>

In [[Rachel Brownstein]]’s opinion, the differences between the Dashwood sisters have been exaggerated, and in fact the sisters are more alike than they are different, with Elinor having an "excellent heart" and being capable of the same romantic passions as Marianne feels, while Marianne has much sense as well. Elinor is more reserved, more polite, and less impulsive than Marianne, who loves poetry, taking walks across picturesque landscapes and believes in intense romantic relationships, but it is this very closeness between the sisters that allows these differences to emerge during their exchanges.<ref name="ReferenceA">Brownstein, Rachel "Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice" pages 32–57 from ''The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen'', Cambridge University Press, 1997, page 43.</ref> 

Mary Favret explores the contrast through examining popular forms of fiction of the time. <ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics, and the Fiction of Letters|last=Favret|first=Mary|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1993|pages=145–153}}</ref> In [[epistolary fiction]], action, dialogue, and character interactions are all reflected through letters sent from one or more of the characters. In exploring Austen's fraught relationship with such fiction, Favret surveys how Austen "wrestled with epistolary form" in previous writings and, with the publication of ''Sense and Sensibility'', "announced her victory over the constraints of the letter". Favret contends that Austen's version of the letter separates her from her "admired predecessor, [[Samuel Richardson]]" in that Austen's letters are "a misleading guide to the human heart which, in the best instances, is always changing and adapting."<ref name=":1" /> According to Favret, the character of Elinor Dashwood is an "anti-epistolary heroine" whose "inner world" of thoughts and feelings does not find "direct expression in the novel, although her point of view controls the story."<ref name=":1" /> ''Sense and Sensibility'' establishes what Favret calls a "new privacy" in the novel, which was constrained by previous notions of the romance of letters.<ref name=":1" /> This new privacy is a "less constraining mode of narration" in which Austen's narrator provides commentary on the action, rather than the characters themselves through the letters.<ref name=":1" /> Favret claims that in ''Sense and Sensibility'', Austen wants to "recontextualize" the letter and bring it into a "new realism."<ref name=":1" /> Austen does so by imbuing the letter with dangerous power when Marianne writes to Willoughby; both their love and the letter "prove false".<ref name=":1" /> Additionally, Favret claims that Austen uses the correspondence of both of the sisters to emphasise the contrasts in their personalities.<ref name=":1" /> When both write letters upon arriving in London, Elinor's letter is the "dutiful letter of the 'sensible sister'" and Marianne writes a "vaguely illicit letter" reflecting her characterisation as the "sensitive" sister".<ref name=":1" /> What is perhaps most striking about Favret's analysis is that she notes that the lovers who write to one another never unite with each other.<ref name=":1" />