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the more sagacious one, expresses the view that wealth has much to do with happiness, Marianne disagrees. It is her view that:
    Money can only give happiness when there is nothing else to give it. Beyond a competence, it can afford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned.
    When Edward Ferrars travels from Norland to visit the Dashwoods at Barton Cottage, and then disappoints them all by declaring that he is to go away, Elinor reacts in her typically controlled way. As soon as he is out of the house she sits down at her drawing-table and:
    … busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor avoided the mention of his name, [and] appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in the general concerns of the family.
    Lucy Steele and her sister Anne, distant relations of Sir John, are invited to stay with him at Barton Park. Lucy drops a bombshell when she confides to Elinor that not only is she engaged to Edward Ferrars, but that she has been so for four years. At this news Elinor manages to maintain the composure of her voice, ‘under which was concealed an emotion and distress beyond any thing she had ever felt before. She was mortified, shocked, confounded’.
    Marianne is equally disappointed with Willoughby. When she writes to him, he responds by returning her letters and thelock of hair which she had given him and tells her that he is shortly to be married to Miss Grey, an heiress with £ 50,000. At this Marianne exclaims: ‘Oh! How easy for those who have no sorrow of their own … Happy, happy Elinor, you cannot have an idea of what I suffer’. But when Marianne learns of Edward Ferrars’ engagement to Lucy Steele she is filled with compassion for Elinor and says to her sister, ‘What! – while attending me in all my misery, has this been on your heart? – and I have reproached you for being happy!’
    Willoughby arrives on the scene to explain to Elinor the reason for his bad behaviour towards Marianne. ‘I have been always a blockhead, I have not been always a rascal’, he says. And then he declares that notwithstanding his affection for Marianne and despite her attachment to him, these factors were:
    all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased.
    In other words, for Willoughby, pecuniary considerations must take precedence over romantic feelings. Having heard how guilty and miserable Willoughby now feels about the whole business, Elinor’s heart is softened – Jane Austen could never believe that any character (even one such as Willoughby) was wholly bad; everyone has some redeeming features.
    Elinor’s hopes of Edward Ferrars are dashed when she learns that he is married to Lucy Steele. However, when she and Edward meet, he explains that it is actually his brother Robert who has married Miss Steele. He then asks Elinor to marry him. All ends happily for Marianne also; she marries Colonel Brandon, and in doing so ‘found that her own happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of each observing friend’.

     
    In Sense and Sensibility the sisters Elinor and Marianne react to setbacks in their romantic aspirations in different ways: the former calmly and stoically; the latter histrionically. And yet, both these coping mechanisms are effective in seeing them through to a happy ending.
    The two sisters mirror the real life Jane and Cassandra Austen, who when they experience similar problems confide in one another and offer mutual support in precisely the same way. Also, Jane reflects the dread that insecurity can bring. She had doubtless heard how her father, the Revd Austen’s great-grandfather John (born c .1670), had bequeathed his lands and estate entirely to his eldest grandson (also John), leaving his wife Elizabeth and their six sons and one daughter penniless. Jane would also have been aware of her