Sense and Sensibility

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Charlotte Brontë once said that Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is “a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers” and that she, personally, would not want to live inside its world.

• Is Sense and Sensibility universally relevant, or are its messages applicable only to the confined world of the upper classes of Regency England? (topic sentence)
• Give at least 3 examples drawn from throughout the text that support your evaluation of the novel’s relevance.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, connect your evaluation to the relevance of one or more of the novel’s themes: Sensibility Versus Real Feeling, The Lifelong Mission of Character Improvement, and Women’s Power in a Patriarchal Society.

2. Austen’s work is often said to prefigure literary