Lindsay Doran film. Doran explained, "For 10 years I'd been trying to find somebody I thought could adapt it. Usually romantics are too optimistic and dreamy to see Austen's cynicism, and satirists are too cynical to believe in romance." Thompson fit Doran's criteria for a good screenwriter, despite the actress never having written a screenplay before. The resulting production of "Sense and Sensibility" earned Thompson an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, making her the only person to have won an Oscar for both her writing and acting (Thompson won the Best Actress award for "Howards End", in 1993). Along with producing,
Sense and Sensibility the effects of patriarchal control over women in which women cannot earn or inherit their money and use "Sense and Sensibility" as an example of this as the male heir, Mr. John Dashwood, deprives his sisters from their home as well as promised income. They also point to the "despised" Mrs. Ferrars' tampering with the patriarchal line of inheritance in her disowning of her eldest son, Edward Ferrars, as proof that this construction is ultimately arbitrary. Gilbert and Gubar contend that while "Sense and Sensibility's" ultimate message is that "young women like Marianne and Elinor must submit to powerful conventions