In Vindication of the Rights of Women, a seminal feminist text published during Jane Austen's era, Mary Wollstonecraft contends that because women are subjugated by their weaker sensibilities, they must rely entirely on the more rational men for survival. Wollstonecraft asserts that women can achieve independence only by wholly rejecting their sensibility in favor of a rigorous rational education. Based on your reading of Sense and Sensibility, how do you believe Jane Austen would respond to this argument? Do you think she aligned with Wollstonecraft's views?

During the late eighteenth century, a significant political upheaval was transpiring in France just as Jane Austen commenced her writing career. The Jacobins had recently overthrown the aristocracy, advocating for individuality and personal freedom, or sensibility, which was revolutionary and would deeply influence European politics. How do you perceive these political events in France impacting Austen's writing of Sense and Sensibility? Does she align with the Jacobins' call for individual freedoms, or do you think Austen was more conservative, preferring to maintain the status quo?

Sense and Sensibility is frequently described as a "didactic" novel, meaning it presents two conflicting viewpoints. Didactic novels were popular during Austen's time and were known for their formulaic nature, where one viewpoint invariably triumphed over the other. The opposing perspectives in this novel are clearly sense and sensibility. Do you view Sense and Sensibility as didactic in the traditional sense? In other words, is there a definitive winner and loser in the conflict between sense and sensibility?

One intriguing feature of Sense and Sensibility is the near-complete absence of father figures from the main narrative. Almost every adult child in the novel who faces matrimonial decisions has a father who is either deceased or absent, leaving the mother as the sole authority figure. Indeed, mothers play a pivotal role in the upbringing and education of many of the novel's main characters. From your reading of Sense and Sensibility, can you infer Austen's perspective on motherhood? How are the mothers in the novel portrayed, and what point do you think Austen is trying to convey?

Sense and Sensibility primarily focuses on a small segment of the English population at the dawn of the nineteenth century, specifically the upper class. There is minimal reference to laborers or farmers, even though agrarian reforms and the nascent stages of the Industrial Revolution were significantly impacting these lower classes. Consequently, these changes were also influencing the upper classes that Austen depicted in her novel. Investigate the class structure of England during the time Sense and Sensibility was published. Explain the reforms that were affecting farmers then and analyze how the working classes were influenced by evolving technologies. How did these transformations impact the social classes represented by the characters in Sense and Sensibility?