Sometimes the Dashwood girls do not seem like sisters. Elinor is all calmness and reason, and can be relied upon for practical, common sense opinions. Marianne, on the other hand, is all sensibility, full of passionate and romantic feeling. She has no time for dull common sense – or for middle-aged men of thirty-five, long past the age of marriage.
True love can only be felt by the young, of course. And if your heart is broken at the age of seventeen, how can you ever expect to recover from the passionate misery that fills your life, waking and sleeping?
Glossary
- admire: to have a very good opinion of someone or something
- affection: a strong feeling of liking or love; (adj) affectionate
- agitated: showing in your behaviour that you are anxious and nervous
- approve: to think that someone or something is good or right
- astonish: to surprise someone very much
- attachment: a feeling of liking or love for a place or person
- attract: to cause a person to like someone
- attractiveness: the appearance or qualities that make a person pleasant to look at or to be with
- bachelor: an unmarried man
- bear: (v) to suffer pain or unhappiness; to accept something unpleasant without complaint
- blush: (v) to become red in the face, especially when embarrassed
- carriage: a vehicle, pulled by horses, for carrying people
- the Church: the Anglican Church (the Church of England)
- comfort: (n) having a pleasant life, with everything you need
- comfort: (v) to be kind and sympathetic to someone who is worried or unhappy
- cottage: a small, simple house, usually in the country
- debt: money that is owed to someone
- debtor: a person who owes money
- deceive: to make someone believe something that is not true
- deserve: to be good enough, or worthy enough, for something
- duel: a formal fight with weapons between two people, used in the past to decide an argument, often about a question of honour
- elegant: graceful and attractive in appearance; (n)
- elegance fair: treating people equally or in the right way
- firm: (adj) strong and determined in attitude and behaviour
- frost: a thin white covering of ice on the ground in cold weather
- gain: (v) to obtain or win something that you need or want
- gentleman: a man of good family and social position
- Good heavens! an exclamation of surprise
- honour: (n) (1) the quality of knowing and doing what is morally right; (2) a great pleasure or privilege
- hospitable: welcoming and generous to guests and visitors
- infection: an illness which can easily be passed on to others
- inheritance: money or property that you receive from someone when they die; (v) to inherit
- lack: (n) not having something, or not having enough of something; (v) to lack
- living: (n) (in the past) a position in the Church as a priest, and the income and house that go with this
- lock: (n) a length or curl of hair
- mistress: (in the past) the female head of a house, who employs the servants
- mother-in-law: the mother of your husband or wife
- opportunity: a chance, the right time for doing something
- passion: a strong feeling or emotion, especially of love or hate; (adj) passionate
- praise: (v) to express your admiration and good opinion of someone; (n) praise
- recover: (v) to get better after an illness; (n) recovery
- relieved: glad that a problem has gone away; (n) relief
- respect: (v) to admire and have a high opinion of someone because of their good qualities; (n) respect
- rival: (n) someone who competes with another person (e.g. in love)
- romantic: very imaginative and emotional; not looking at situations in a realistic way
- scoundrel: a man who treats other people badly, especially by being dishonest or immoral
- seduce: to persuade someone (usually young and inexperienced) to have sex against their wishes
- sensibility: the ability to understand and experience deep feelings; the quality of being strongly affected by emotional influences
- sink: (v) to go down, or to cause to become, lower; to move downwards (e.g. by sitting or falling)
- sob: (v) to cry loudly and very unhappily
- sociable: fond of being with other people; friendly
- sorrow: a feeling of great sadness
- spoil: to do too much for a child, so that it has a bad effect on their character; (adj) spoilt
- stepmother: the woman who is married to your father but who is not your real mother
- subject: (n) the thing or person that is being discussed
- taste: (n) the ability to choose or recognize things which are elegant, attractive and pleasing
- trust: (v) to have confidence in someone, and in their ability to keep a secret
- vicar: a priest in the Church of England
- vulgar: low, common, coarse, lacking in taste or manners
Real
Good