Elinor and Anne: Emotional Isolation, Family, and Society in Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion

In her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, and her last, Persuasion, Jane Austen centers the perspectives of gentry women, Elinor Dashwood and Anne Elliot, who were socially successful because of their ability to regulate their own emotions and influence those around them, skills cultivated as a response to their emotional isolation from their families. Austen carefully portrays the impact of social requirements and family dynamics on the mental states of her protagonists as they navigate turbulent periods of their lives. Because of Austen’s skill at creating characters with complex psychological lives, modern understandings of psychology and emotion can be applied to the emotional experiences of Austen’s characters and their social interactions to better understand the purpose of her writing, which in the cases of Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion is her concern for emotionally isolated women.