At Seventeen: Adolescence in Sense and Sensibility

Examining Jane Austen’s seventeen-year-old protagonist Marianne Dashwood as an adolescent provides new insight into how Austen presents, and how readers have responded to, Marianne’s emotions, behaviours, and eventual marriage to Colonel Brandon. I work against the conventional opposition of sense versus sensibility to posit instead a developmental progression from adolescence to adulthood. In this article, I show how Austen uses the imaginative space of the novel to depict adolescence by allowing her protagonist first to explore and then to grow out of the dangers associated with this stage of life. This thoroughgoing re-evaluation of Marianne’s character challenges the prevailing readings of Sense and Sensibility.