The story portrays the life and love stories of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, who represent sense and sensibility respectively。 Mrs。 Dashwood and her daughters Elinor, Marianne and Margaret are left with little money when Mr。 Dashwood dies, because his estate passes to his son by the previous marriage, John Dashwood。 The daughters and their mother have to continue their life with scanty money。 Worse more, John’s avaricious selfish wife, Fanny, compels them to move away from their hometown, Norland。 Thanks to Mrs Dashwood’s cousin, the helpless sisters and their mother find a cottage and settle down in Devonshire。 Elinor, the rational and elder sister, falls in love with her bother-in-law, Edward Ferras; Marianne, the emotional and younger sister, loses her heart to romantic John Willoughby。 Meanwhile, she shows contempt for Colonel Brandon, a quiet, serious man who truly loves her。 Accidently, Elinor discovers that Edward has already engaged with Lucy Steel, a vain and vulgar girl。 However, Elinor keeps her grief secret and restrains her sorrow as usual。 In fact, Elinor is the true lover of Edward。 In the end, Lucy runs off with his brother and Edward is free to marry Elinor。 Unlike Elinor, Marianne is obsessed with dashing Willoughby so that she ignores Elinor’s warning against her inappropriate demonstration of feelings towards Willoughby。 Later, after several unanswered letter of Willoughby and his unusual behaviors, Marianne finds he is to marry a rich lady。 She is so devastated that she neglects her health and almost dies。 After her recovery, Marianne reflects her impulsive actions and judge Willoughby and Brandon from a rational perspective。 What’s more, she begins to appreciate Elinor’s personality。 Finally, she happily marries Colonel Brandon and decides to govern her feelings and temper with the example of Elinor。 In this novel, Jane Austen takes marriage as its theme and applies her emotions to these characters。 Marianne, as the representative romantic and emotional heroine, greatly changes her marriage views in the end。 She comes to the stream of sense and abandons all her romantic illusions of marriage。 Therefore, we can analyze Jane Austen’s ideal marriage concept through Marianne’s transformation。 This essay traces the development of Marianne’s marriage concepts in order to reveal Jane Austen’s application of ideal marriage concept to Marianne。

Apart from Introduction and Conclusion, this paper is composed of three chapters。 Chapter One primarily generalizes Marianne’s pre-views on marriage through her different attitudes towards the three heroes。 Chapter Two concentrates on Marianne’s post-views on marriage。 From the transformation, it can be easily found that Marianne changes her marriage views from emotional egoism to rational self-command。 Chapter Three is mainly about Jane Austen’s love experience and her ideal marriage concept applied to Marianne。