Sense and Sensibility (1811) was Austen’s first published novel, following the author’s unsuccessful attempts to publish the works that would later become Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Northanger Abbey (1816). Well-received but not effusively praised by contemporary critics, it earned the author a respectable £140 and a second edition which she saw through the press within two years. Although its cultural and political allusions to the turbulent 1790s were outdated by 1811, the novel highlights inequities of gender and class while criticizing the sentimental novel. Modern critical responses examine the unstable dialogic structure, the use of free indirect discourse, and the complexities of cultural allusions to resist the limiting binary implicit in the title. The plot focuses on the dynamic relationship of the dual heroines, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Following the death of their father and owing to the indifference of their half-brother, John, who inherits the Dashwood estate, Elinor, Marianne, and the youngest sister Margaret relocate with their mother from Sussex to Devonshire at the invitation of Sir John Middleton, a distant relative of Mrs. Dashwood. Comparisons between the dual heroines are prompted by their differing responses to disappointments in courtship and marriage outcomes.