The novel is probably set between 1792 and 1797[2] and follows the three Dashwood sisters and their widowed mother as they are forced to leave the family estate in Sussex and move to a modest cottage on the property of distant relative in Devon.

On his deathbed, Henry Dashwood gets John, his son by his first wife, to promise to take care of his stepmother and half-sisters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, from his inheritance.

Affronted by this, Mrs Dashwood decides to move her family to Barton Cottage in Devonshire, which has been offered her at a low rent by her second cousin, Sir John Middleton.

Just as an engagement seems imminent, however, Willoughby informs the Dashwoods that his elderly cousin Mrs. Smith, upon whom he is financially dependent due to his debts, is sending him to London indefinitely on business, leaving Marianne distraught.

On learning this, Colonel Brandon shows his admiration for Edward’s honourable conduct by offering him the clerical living of a nearby parsonage, so as to enable him to marry Lucy after he is ordained.

Marianne recovers from her illness and, learning of Elinor’s own silent heartache, becomes ashamed of her ostentatious grief, vowing to be guided by her sister’s good sense and emend her behaviour in future.

After their return home, a family servant meets Lucy passing through the nearby market town and brings them the message that she has married and is now Mrs Ferrars.

[3] Austen drew inspiration for Sense and Sensibility from other novels of the 1790s that treated similar themes, including Adam Stevenson's Life and Love (1785) which he had written about himself and a relationship that was not meant to be.

[6] The reviewer claims that "the object of the work is to represent the effects on the conduct of life, of discreet quiet good sense on the one hand, and an overrefined and excessive susceptibility on the other.

"[7] In addition to emphasising the novel's morality, Pollock reviews the characters in catalogue-like fashion, allotting praise and criticism on the assumption that Austen favours Elinor's point of view and temperament.

A. Walton Litz judged that Sense and Sensibility is "caught uneasily between burlesque and the serious novel…in which the crude antitheses of the original structure were never successfully overcome".

Tony Tanner sees a shift of view instead to "the tensions between the potential instability of the individual and the required stabilities of society", as demonstrated by the influence of the governing qualities on the younger and the older sister.

[13] Austen characterises Marianne as a sweet person with attractive qualities: intelligence, musical talent, frankness, and the capacity to love deeply.

Elinor is more reserved, more polite, and less impulsive than Marianne, who loves poetry, taking walks across picturesque landscapes and believes in intense romantic relationships, but it is this very closeness between the sisters that allows these differences to emerge during their exchanges.

"[16] According to Favret, the character of Elinor Dashwood is an "anti-epistolary heroine" whose "inner world" of thoughts and feelings does not find "direct expression in the novel, although her point of view controls the story.

[17] William Galperin, in his book The History Austen, comments on the tendency of this system of patriarchal inheritance and earning as working to ensure the vulnerability of women.

"[18] Feminist critics have long been engaged in conversations about Jane Austen, and Sense and Sensibility has figured in these discussions, especially in the context of the patriarchal system of inheritance and earning.

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's seminal feminist work The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination contains several discussions of this novel.

In Sense and Sensibility they educe the fact that Mr. John Dashwood cuts off his stepmother and half sisters from their home as well as promised income, as an instance of these effects.

[20] Key to Austen's criticism of society, runs Johnson's argument, is the depiction of the unfair marginalisation of women resulting from the "death or simple absence of male protectors.

Poovey contends that Sense and Sensibility has a "somber tone" in which conflict breaks out between Austen's engagement with her "self-assertive characters" and the moral codes necessary to control their potentially "anarchic" desires.

Poovey argues that while Austen does recognise "the limitations of social institutions", she demonstrates the necessity of controlling the "dangerous excesses of female feeling" rather than liberating them.

[21] She does so by demonstrating that Elinor's self-denial, especially in her keeping of Lucy Steele's secret and willingness to help Edward, even though both of these actions were hurtful to her, ultimately contribute to her own contentment and that of others.

[22] Susan Rowland's article "The 'Real Work': Ecocritical Alchemy and Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility" studies the effects of alienation upon Edward Ferrars and Marianne Dashwood.

Rowland argues that human culture estranges people from nature rather than returning them to it, serving merely through the fact of ownership to bolster their place in the social order.

Marianne’s emotional estrangement begins as she is ripped from the aesthetic enjoyment of her home environment, although ultimately she finds a new identity by uniting with Colonel Brandon on his estate at Delaford.

[26] The novel was soon translated into French by Madame Isabelle de Montolieu as Raison et Sensibilité, ou les deux manières d'aimer (1815).

[27] The "translation" of Sense and Sensibility by Montolieu changes entire scenes and characters, for example having Marianne call Willoughby an "angel" and an "Adonis" upon first meeting him, lines that are not in the English original.