# Sense and Sensibility — Character guide

> Key figures in Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

- [Elinor Dashwood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/elinor_dashwood.md): The eldest Dashwood sister, whose steady sense and concealed feelings make her the family's quiet negotiator in love, money, and other people's secrets.
- [Marianne Dashwood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/marianne_dashwood.md): A seventeen-year-old romantic who believes feeling should be ungoverned, she falls hard and fast for a man as ardent and imprudent as herself.
- [Edward Ferrars](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/edward_ferrars.md): A reserved, honorable gentleman with no fortune and no gift for performance, whose hidden obligations make his growing attachment to Elinor a study in restraint.
- [John Willoughby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/john_willoughby.md): A dashing young man of quick imagination and open manners, he seems made for Marianne until his carelessness with propriety begins to worry her sister.
- [Colonel Brandon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/colonel_brandon.md): A quiet, thirty-five-year-old soldier with a good estate and a sorrowful past, he loves Marianne silently while everyone else watches the wrong man.
- [Lucy Steele](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/lucy_steele.md): A cunning young woman with no fortune and a talent for smiling confidences, she claims a prior engagement that quietly rearranges Elinor's world.
- [Mrs. Jennings](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/mrs_jennings.md): Mrs. Jennings is the Dashwood sisters' host in London, a woman whose zeal for matchmaking runs ahead of her ability to read a room. She cheerfully spreads the rumor of Marianne's engagement to Willoughby, laughing over a
- [Sir John Middleton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/sir_john_middleton.md): Sir John is the Dashwoods' landlord at Barton Cottage, a chatty, generous man whose kindness overflows all bounds of civility. He calls the morning after their arrival, sends garden produce and game within hours, insists
- [Lady Middleton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/lady_middleton.md): Lady Middleton is the mistress of Barton Park, handsome and graceful but with nothing to say beyond the most commonplace remark. She is roused to enjoyment only by her four noisy children, who pull her about and end all 
- [Fanny Dashwood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/mrs_john_dashwood.md): Fanny Dashwood is the mistress of Norland who takes possession the moment her father-in-law dies, showing how little attention to others' comfort she can manage when occasion requires. She talks her weak husband down fro
- [John Dashwood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/john_dashwood.md): John Dashwood promises his dying father he will make his stepmother and half-sisters comfortable, and genuinely means to give them a thousand pounds apiece. But he is very fond of his wife, and Fanny is a stronger, narro
- [Mrs. Ferrars](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/mrs_ferrars.md): Mrs. Ferrars is the matriarch whose fortune and approval govern her sons' prospects, and whose disapproval can strip a man of everything. Her obsession with wealth and social standing makes Edward's secret engagement to 
- [Robert Ferrars](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/robert_ferrars.md): Robert Ferrars moves through fashionable society as the favored, frivolous son, absorbed in trifles and his own consequence while his elder brother Edward bears the family's displeasure. His vanity and want of principle 
- [Mrs. Palmer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/mrs_palmer.md): Charlotte Palmer is a pretty, perpetually laughing young wife whose openness and kindness more than atone for her want of elegance and recollection. Her folly is inoffensive because it is never conceited, yet her thought
- [Mr. Palmer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/mr_palmer.md): Mr. Palmer arrives in the novel as a gentleman of fashion and self-regard, perfectly civil to visitors yet openly contemptuous of his wife and mother-in-law. Elinor finds him capable of pleasant company, spoiled only by 
- [Margaret Dashwood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/margaret_dashwood.md): The youngest Dashwood sister, still a child with a lively imagination.
- [Mrs. Dashwood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/mrs_dashwood.md): Mrs. Dashwood is a loving, affectionate mother whose lively imagination and romantic temperament make her more like a sister than a parent to Elinor and Marianne. She encourages Marianne's passionate attachment to Willou
- [Miss Grey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/miss_grey.md): A wealthy young woman whom Willoughby marries for her fortune after abandoning Marianne.
- [Anne Steele](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters/anne_steele.md): Lucy Steele's older, less clever sister who accidentally reveals Lucy's secret engagement.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sense_and_sensibility_se/characters