Chapter 1
The famous opening: 'The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex.' Establishes Norland, the entailment, and the financial precariousness that drives the plot.
Read in Books4Free →Opening Passage: The Dashwood Family of Norland
From Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
The novel opens not with a romantic flourish but with a measured account of the Dashwood family's estate, inheritance, and the cold legal mechanism that will dispossess the heroines.
Chapter 1
Mrs. John Dashwood's persuasion of her husband to whittle down the promised support for his sisters from three thousand pounds to occasional gifts of fish and game—one of Austen's most savage satirical scenes.
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