"Sense and Sensibility" vs "Pride and Prejudice": The same book with different characters?

It’s probably become apparent that I enjoy reading and writing about Jane Austen novels. When I read Sense and Sensibility, it was my second Austen novel, having read Pride and Prejudice a few months before. I wanted to make a post slightly different from my others, comparing the two books. They are both masterpieces that are well-thought-out and are the epitome of why Jane Austen is a renowned author. It's commonly known that Jane Austen's novels are usually marriage stories, but as I am just starting to read Jane Austen's books, I wanted to take time to compare and contrast these two in particular. Although this review could be seen as a review of Sense and Sensibility in part, I want to talk more about the similarities and differences I noticed between Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.

First of all, I knew even before reading Sense and Sensibility that it was going to be very similar to Pride and Prejudice in terms of the overall setting and mood. Already, they both have titles with two nouns connected by an “and.” Both nouns start in both books with the same letter. The covers of the two books, or at least the ones I bought, both have one of the female protagonists on them, on which both of these characters are also portrayed reading.

Inside the book, I was unsurprised to find that the sisters in Sense and Sensibility, Eleanor and Marianne, have contrasting personalities, much like the two main sisters, Elizabeth and Jane, in Pride and Prejudice. Both stories follow the sisters’ love interests and the drama that goes into arranged marriages and marriages truly for love. The male characters in each book are often unreliable. The female characters focus on nothing but marriage. And the books both end with the sisters happily engaged to their loves.

In terms of the differences between the two novels, the personalities of the sisters in the two books are very different. While in Sense and Sensibility we see how Elinor embodies Sense while Marianne embodies Sensibility, we don’t see that same relationship between the book’s title and Elizabeth and Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, although those ideas certainly come up in the book.

That said, is Austen really to blame for the overwhelming amount of similarities her books share? Of course, she has the choice of the topic she wants to write about, but once she has chosen a specific setting with the perspective of a young woman at the time, what else is she supposed to write about? Austen is unfortunately right that women’s lives at that time and place centered around marriage. Maybe, after all, Austen made her books mostly about this similar topic to remind us how narrowly focused and monotone the unadventurous lives of women were due to the obligatory focus on marriage society pushed on them. As I continue to read more Austen novels, I will be excited to compare and contrast her work further, but whatever the story, it’s Austen, so I’m sure I will find much to analyze and discuss.