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Gender Roles In Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility

1277 Words6 Pages

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is a great example of her works that looks at the role of women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Austen shows us the gender roles inflicted on women during this time period and how they are perceived. We see the strict gender roles that women were adhered to and the struggle for identity as a woman. Central to this novel is the vulnerability of women and the expectations surrounding gender influence everything and produce define results. Gender definitely determines and structures the world in which these characters live. The women in Sense and Sensibility were more interested in obtaining a husband due to financial difficulties than that of a good education. Gender stereotypes are seen throughout this novel, as educational success was only deemed important for the more superior men. Social orders reflect the differences in social class and gender. We see Austen use the economic position of women to show the powerlessness they had which underlies the pressure of marriage and the vulnerability …show more content…

One thinks more of how society views them more than thee other. This demonstrates that marriage may often be more a matter of economics than of love, the examples of Marianne and Elinor show that it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way. And, insofar as marriage brings families together and creates new family units, it can create strong and lasting bonds of familial love. Elinor and Marianne ultimately do marry for love in the

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