Genre

Sense and Sensibility

by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility: Genre 1 key example

Genre
Explanation and Analysis:

As is true of most Jane Austen novels, Sense and Sensibility is a novel of manners, meaning that it focuses primarily on characters’ subtle behaviors (or “manners”) that signal their particular positions within a rigid social hierarchy. Austen hopes that readers will notice all of the subtle (and not-so-subtle) social dynamics at play between the various characters, including the strategies that the unmarried female characters use in order to secure financially advantageous marriages.