Old Mr. Dashwood
Before
departing, Marianne wanders the grounds of Norland uttering a histrionic elegy: "Dear, dear Norland... Oh! happy house...
And you, ye well-known trees!" Elinor, however, experiences a far more subdued depression--though she is leaving behind
not just her home but also a man she has grown to deeply care for and admire.
The early chapters also display the wry irony for which Austen is so famous as a novelist. She is unsparingly critical of the
characters she dislikes, but conveys her criticism with a pointed subtlety, which makes it all the more forceful. For example,
in the opening chapter, Austen sketches the character of John Dashwood in three masterful sentences, achieving a biting
acerbity: the author begins elliptically with a double negative, only slyly to refute it: "He was not an ill-disposed young man,
unless to be rather cold-hearted and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed..
annaabi.ee 
