Barton to prepare the house for their arrival. She informs John and Fanny of their imminent departure and encourages Edward Ferrars to come visit them at Barton. Following Marianne's tearful goodbye to their home at Norland, the family sets out for Barton Cottage. Commentary The opening pages of Sense and Sensibility are concerned with the laws of inheritance and succession that govern the fate of the Dashwood family property. According to the laws of male primogeniture effective in the mid-nineteenth century, estates went to the closest male descendant of the original owner. Since Old Mr. Dashwood has no sons, his estate is bequeathed to his nephew, Henry Dashwood. Henry, in turn, leaves the estate to his eldest son, John. However, as Austen notes, Henry Dashwood's money was far more vital to his daughters than to his son, because John was already provided for both by his
Not only upon this account, I say, have I been so particular in examining the reason of children's inheriting the property of their fathers, but also because it will give us farther light in the inheritance of rule and power, which in countries where their particular municipal laws give the whole possession of land entirely to the first-born, and descent of power has gone so to men by this custom, some have been apt to be deceived into an opinion, that there was a natural or divine right of primogeniture, to both estate and power; and that the inheritance of both rule over men, and property in things, sprang from the same original, and were to descend by the same rules. Property, whose original is from the right a man has to use any of the inferior creatures, for the subsistence and comfort of his life, is for the benefit and sole advantage of the proprietor, so that he may even destroy the thing, that he has property in by his use of it, where need requires: but
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