From a lovely story, to a complicated topic

In this essay I will develop 2 of the topics I find more interesting in the novel written by Jane Austen, called “Sense and Sensibility”. I will start with a small summary of the novel, then I will talk about the topic I have chosen and finally, I will close it with a conclusion.

After Mr. Dashwood died, his wife and 3 daughters (Elinor, Marianne and Margaret) were supposed to live with Mr. Dashwood’s only son, John. John was the only heir to Mr. Dashwood’s fortune and lands. While Mrs. Dashwood and her 3 daughters were living with John and Fanny, John’s wife, Edward Ferrars, Fanny’s brother, came to visited them. Elinor and Edward feel attracted to each other immediately, and spend most of their time together. Mrs. Dashwood was really happy, because she was thinking her daughter will married with a wealthy known man. One day Mrs. Dashwood and her 3 daughters received a letter from Mrs. Dashwood’s cousin, Sir John Middleton, which said that he invited them to live in a small cottage in Devonshire, Barton Park. Mrs. Dashwood accepted immediately, and in there they met Colonel Brandon, a 35 year old bachelor who felt attracted to Marianne’s personality.
Marianne was a very passionate and extroverted girl, who was really interested in paintings, reading, music, etc. She also fell in love really quickly, that is how she falls in love of Willoughby, the nephew of a wealthy old woman. They had a really good connection almost immediately, because they had a lot of things in common. After a few days of visiting Marianne, Willoughby announced he will leave Barton Park for a couple of months. Marianne and Mrs. Dashwood were devastated because of the terrible news.

Edward went to visit the Dashwood’s girls for a few days. After Edward left, Ann and Lucy Steel came to visit her cousin lady Middleton. During that visit, Elinor was informed by Lucy that she has been secretly engaged to Edward for 4 years. Elinor felt overwhelm, but she tried to justify Edward, because deeply inside she wanted to find a reason to forgive him.
Marianne and Elinor travelled to London to spend the winter at Mrs. Jennings’s home. Willoughby and Marianne met in a party by coincidence, and Willoughby treats Marianne as he did not know her at all. The day after the party Marianne received a letter from Willoughby which says that he was engage to Mrs. Grey, a really wealthy woman who could help him with his debts. Marianne was in shocked; and deeply inside Elinor was suffering too.

At the end of the story, everything went well for Elinor and Marianne. Edward decided not to get marriage Lucy because he loved Elinor. After a few months, they got married even though Mrs. Ferrars and Fanny did not accept Elinor in their family. Lucy and Robert, Edward’s brother, got married after all. Everyone realized that Lucy wanted to get married not for love, but for money. On the other hand, Marianne realized that she deserved something better than Willoughby and that her excess of sensibly almost killed her. At the age of 19, Marianne got married with Colonel Brandon, and all the Dashwood’s lived happily ever after.

From this novel I can rescue a lot of things; values, love, carrying, etc. unfortunately I have to choose only one topic. The topic that called my attention the most was whether to married for love or for money.

Is it correct to get married for money? We can see in the story that Lucy was only concerned about money; love was not something important for her. Fanny and Mrs. Ferras were an example too; they did not wanted Elinor in their family because she did not have money. They did not care about Edward’s feeling, they were only concern about they fortune.
Since I was very little I have heard that getting married for money is bad. You are supposed to love your future husband, and if he has money it is even better. That is what I used to believe. In a perfect world, everyone would get married for love, and will live happy with that, but are we in a perfect world? Absolutely not. People need money to survive. People need to pay bills, schools, vacations, and so on. so you can not leave with only love. In today’s world people are getting married for money, not for love. A new survey about this topic was made and the results were absolutely amazing. “Fully two-thirds of women and half of the men said they were "very" or "extremely" willing to marry for money.” these quote is a conclusion of the survey mentioned before. This survey agreed on what I think about this topic. People now are more willing to get married for money, than they were 50 years ago. This is saying that the world is changing.

More and more people are realizing how difficult is to have a family, and how difficult is to have a good marriage. Many couples get divorced because money problems, in those cases we can see that love was not enough. A divorce specialist said that “every one of them has "messy marriages" because of a romanticized view of love carried over from childhood.” He is referring to the different couples who decided to get married for love, and failed. If people get married for love, is because they think is what they have to do and not what they what they want to do. We are living in a materialistic world, and in people’s priorities, money is in the top of the list.

To conclude this essay, I can say that the novel “Sense and Sensibility” has a lot of topics we can focus on. In my opinion, getting married for love or for money was the one I chose. It is amazing to see how young couples are not concerns about love anymore. Money is the main priority for both man and woman. In today’s world, people are more focus on having a new mobile phone than family issues. Children are rising by themselves, because their parents are working from Monday to Monday. Even though I think is not “terrible” to get married for money, we should pay attention to this issue, because it could become a huge problem in the near future.

Bibliography

Bibliography


Austen, Jane. “Sense and Sensibility”. London: Waverley 1892. 3rd July 2009.

Frank, Robert. “Marrying for Love… for Money” The Wall Street Journal. 14th December 2007. 3rd July 2009.



Small, Benjamin. “Don’t get married for love, says divorced expert” Canadian Broadcasting corporation. 13th February 2007. 3rd July 2009.