Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

In this module, Professor John Mullan thinks about the role of money in the novel, focusing in particular on: (i) Marianne’s claim that money hardly matters at all (“it can afford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned“); (ii) the sheer extent of Marianne’s wealth, and the absurdity of her claim that she barely has enough to live on; (iii) the extent to which characters in the novel are hypocritical about money; (iv) the extent to which money is linked to power, and the extent to which this follows gender lines – focusing in particular on Edward Ferrars and Mrs Jennings; (v) the painstaking precision with which Austen describes the financial situation of the Dashwood family; and (vi) the extent to which characters judge each other based on how wealthy they are. This lecture is part of a larger course on ’Sense and Sensibility’. The full course can be found here: MASSOLIT works with univer