Sense and Sensibility Rewritten: Revising Love and Marriage in Jane Austen and Joanna Trollope’s Sequel

While most discussions of marriage in Jane Austen primarily dwell on Pride and Prejudice and its treatment, marriage is also central in Sense and Sensibility, which illustrates the penury that may befall young, single women with limited financial means. This essay analyzes Sense & Sensibility, a rewriting of Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope (2013), which is set in twenty-first century England, paying close attention to how Trollope approaches love and marriage (its desirability or the obligation to get married), especially under the light of changing social mores in the twenty-first century and taking into account Austen’s own views on both issues as presented in Sense and Sensibility.