Comparison of the Novel Pride and Predjudice and the Movie Sense and Sensibility

Pride and Prejudice, the novel by Jane Austen, and Sense and Sensibility, the movie based on the novel by Austen, share many striking similarities. These similarities lie in the characters, plots and subplots between these characters, the settings, and the overall style and themes used in creating the two works.

Jane Austen uses extremely similar characters in almost the exact same situation in Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. The clearest examples of this are the parallels between Jane and Bingley in Pride and Prejudice and Elinor and Ferris in Sense and Sensibility. Each of the ladies is in love with men who are in love with men far wealthier than they are. In a similar manner, both Ferris and Bingley, despite the fact that their lovers can offer them very little or nothing monetarily, have a true love for Elinor and Jane, respectively. The characters are also similar in that for a while they believe their chance at love is destroyed, when Bingley in the novel and Elinor in the movie are forced by outside circumstances to depart for a new residence. Both Bingley and Ferris are rumored to be engaged or interested in other, more wealthy, women, but both eventually return to their true lovers and propose to them. Jane Austen clearly uses these similar characters and plotlines to draw on the same main ideas about love, and the unimportance of wealth despite the customs of the times. Austen uses another set of parallel characters between the novel and the movie in Elizabeth and Darcy, and Maryanne and Brandon. In each case, the man either falls in love or is extremely attracted to his female counterpart immediately. Elizabeth and Maryanne, however, at first have their love lives centered elsewhere. Elizabeth's "first love" was Wickham, and Maryanne's was Willowby, but each man deserted and left the women feeling robbed. After being apart from their male admirers for some time and seeing the good each one really possesses, Elizabeth eventually falls in love with Darcy, and Maryanne with Colonel Brandon. This set of similar characters brings to light another of Austen's ideas, that sometimes what one believes is true love can completely unravel, but love always works out in the end.

Along with the similarities in the main characters and the plots and subplots which occur relating to these characters in Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, the two works are also share many more basic similarities.