Love and Marriage in Jane Austen’s Novels - Parallels of "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice"

Abstract

That Jane Austen’s most beloved novels Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813) have many things in common can be rather easily deducted by any reader. In this essay, I take that view one step further and claim that there are direct parallels in Austen’s main characters in the two novels, and that this is a conscious choice made by the author. The moral of both stories is that to have a happy marriage, the spouses should not only have courted for some time, instead of falling head over heels for each other, or marrying for money, but they should also be compatible and have a friendship based on affection and mutual respect. To ascertain this moral, Austen makes use of archetypical characters of various degrees of maturity to show that if you lead your life a certain way and have certain character traits, you are more likely to have a happy and long-lasting romantic relationship.