In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen takes a look at the rules of love, courtship, and marriage during the Regency. Through the trials and tribulations of Elinor, Marianne, Edward, Lucy, Willoughby, and Young Elizabeth, Ms. Austen satirizes the rules that govern love and all that encompasses it. Through Sense and Sensibility, one gets the sense that the Regency is characterized by rules that make love non-existent. To perpetuate this feeling even more, one can look to the author herself, who was never married.
Sense and Sensibility, is the story of two sisters searching for love and all the happiness that accompanies it. The difference between the two sisters is that one of them follows society's rules, while the other follows her heart. Elinor knows her place in society and is in search of a calm tasteful life, while Marianne is outspoken and looking for a life filled with adventure. When it comes to love though, they have something in common, nothing goes as planned. The realm of love is full of surprises and disappointments galore, and when the rules of the Regency are imposed upon this realm very little good comes of it.
Love is a special feeling that has a special meaning to all of us on different levels. Many of us search a lifetime for love and never find it. For a society to place rules on a feeling such as love is simply ludicrous. As Jane Austen illustrates, when rules are imposed upon this special feeling, it isn't special anymore. Rules sometimes help move things along, when imposed upon feelings though, they hinder what could be the greatest thing in the world. In her subtle and eloquent way Jane Austen depicts how love can never be true love when rules are involved.
Since love is a feeling, one becomes very emotional when it comes to issues surrounding this feeling. However, the rules state that women are not supposed to be open with their emotions when it comes to men.