Sense and Sensibility (film) in "The Atlantic" on the 20th anniversary of its release, arguing that the film served as "a turning point" for "pro-feminist masculinity" in Austen adaptations. Sense and Sensibility (film) Sense and Sensibility is a 1995 American period drama film directed by Ang Lee and based on Jane Austen's 1811 novel of the same name. Emma Thompson wrote the screenplay and stars as Elinor Dashwood, while Kate Winslet plays Elinor's younger sister Marianne. The story follows the Dashwood sisters, members of a wealthy English family of landed gentry, as they must deal with circumstances of sudden destitution. They are forced to
Sense and Sensibility have long been engaged in conversations about Jane Austen, and "Sense in Sensibility" has figured in these discussions, especially around the patriarchal system of inheritance and earning. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's seminal feminist work "The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination" contains several discussions of "Sense and Sensibility." Gilbert and Gubar read the beginning "Sense and Sensibility" as a retelling of "King Lear" from a female perspective and contend that these "reversals imply that male traditions need to be evaluated and reinterpreted from a female perspective." Gilbert and Gubar argue that Austen explores