Sense and Sensibility | Page 3

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SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
by Jane Austen (1811)






CHAPTER 1
The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate
was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of
their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so
respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their
surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single
man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his
life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her
death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great

alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received
into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal
inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to
bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children,
the old Gentleman's days were comfortably spent. His attachment to
them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry
Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but
from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which
his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the children added a
relish to his existence.
By a former marriage, Mr. Henry Dashwood had one son: by his
present lady, three daughters. The son, a steady respectable young man,
was amply provided for by the fortune of his mother, which had been
large, and half of which devolved on him on his coming of age. By his
own marriage, likewise, which happened soon afterwards, he added to
his wealth. To him therefore the succession to the Norland estate was
not so really important as to his sisters; for their fortune, independent of
what might arise to them from their father's inheriting that property,
could be but small. Their mother had nothing, and their father only
seven thousand pounds in his own disposal; for the remaining moiety
of his first wife's fortune was also secured to her child, and he had only
a life-interest in it.
The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;--but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest.
Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and
daughters than for himself or his son;--but to his son, and his son's son,
a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to leave to
himself no power of providing for those who were most dear to him,
and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate, or by any
sale of its valuable woods. The whole was tied up for the benefit of this
child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland,
had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by such attractions as
are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old; an

imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many
cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of
all the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and
her daughters. He meant not to