Who’s who in Sense and Sensibility

• Elinor Dashwood19 · the sense The eldest sister and the novel’s load-bearing wall. She manages the family’s money, her mother’s optimism, her sister’s collapses, and her own broken heart — the last one in total secrecy, for months, while making conversation with the woman who broke it. Austen gives her the driest lines in the book and almost no one to laugh at them. Do not mistake her composure for coldness; the novel exists to correct that mistake.
• Marianne Dashwood17 · the sensibility Beautiful, brilliant, and constitutionally incapable of feeling anything at half volume. She has rules: one love per lifetime, no concealment, dead leaves are transporting, and a man of twenty-seven is beyond hope. The book breaks every one of them over her — nearly fatally — and readers have argued for two centuries about whether it apologizes.
• Mrs. Dashwood40 · their mother Marianne’s sensibility, aged twenty-three years without gaining a day of caution. Widowed in chapter one, evicted by courtesy in chapter two, she moves her daughters to Devonshire on the strength of a friendly letter. Loving, generous, and never once ahead of events.
• Margaret Dashwood13 · the youngest Third sister, chief leaker. Margaret’s two plot functions are seeing things she shouldn’t and saying things she shouldn’t, usually to Mrs. Jennings. Every rumor in the first volume can be traced to her.

The suitors — three men, one lesson

• Edward FerrarsElinor’s · shy, entailed, entangled Fanny’s brother, heir to his mother’s fortune on conditions he keeps failing to meet. Quiet to the point of vanishing in company, honorable to the point of self-destruction: bound by a foolish teenage engagement he no longer wants, he chooses poverty and the promise over money and Elinor — and is rescued by the schemer he was promised to. The novel’s bet is that steadiness is romantic; Edward is the wager.
• John WilloughbyMarianne’s · of Combe Magna Arrives carrying Marianne out of the rain, reads poetry with exactly her emphasis, and courts her before the whole county — then vanishes to London and marries fifty thousand pounds. The debts were real; so, Brandon reveals, was worse: a fifteen-year-old ward, seduced and abandoned. His midnight confession to Elinor near the end — drunk, self-pitying, and partly true — is the book’s most argued-over chapter. In the app his vermilion sits one shade off Marianne’s red: nearly her color, and not.
• Colonel Brandon35 · of Delaford Grave, kind, and dismissed by Marianne on arrival as elderly (he is thirty-five; he wears, damningly, a flannel waistcoat). He loves her from the first evening and does something no one else in the novel manages: nothing selfish. He gives Edward a living he could have withheld, fights the duel he never mentions, and fetches the mother while everyone else panics. Whether he is the reward Marianne earns or the safety she settles for is the argument — see the FAQ.

Norland & town — the money

• John Dashwoodthe half-brother · inherits everything Promises his dying father he will take care of his sisters, then lets his wife negotiate the promise down — from three thousand pounds to occasional presents of fish and game — in one chapter, without ever deciding to be cruel. Austen’s most chilling portrait is of a man who merely agrees.
• Fanny Dashwoodnée Ferrars · his wife The negotiator. Her chapter-two performance — “people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them” — is the coldest comic scene Austen ever wrote. The app assigns her and her husband the same indigo, and honestly, who could tell them apart.
• Mrs. FerrarsEdward’s mother · the will as a weapon Never on stage for long, always in the ledger. She disinherits Edward for choosing the wrong fiancée, transfers everything to Robert — who promptly marries the same class of fiancée — and forgives him, not Edward. Consistency is not the point; control is.
• Robert Ferrarsthe younger brother · the toothpick case Introduced spending a quarter of an hour choosing a toothpick case while the Dashwood sisters wait. Inherits his brother’s fortune by doing nothing, marries his brother’s fiancée by knowing nothing, and suffers no consequences whatsoever. Austen notes the app’s opinion for us: he shares Elinor’s purple, an injustice she would find very like life.

Barton Park — the neighbors

• Sir John Middletonthe other John · their landlord The Dashwoods’ cousin, who rents them Barton Cottage at a kind rate and then attempts to repay himself in company: dinners, dances, and an unstoppable determination that everyone be merry. Cannot keep a secret, including other people’s.
• Mrs. Jenningshis mother-in-law · the engine of gossip Vulgar, loud, relentlessly matchmaking — and the moral surprise of the book. When Marianne’s world collapses in London, the fine people evaporate and Mrs. Jennings nurses her like a daughter. Austen loves doing this: hiding the good heart inside the embarrassing relation.
• Lady Middletonhis wife · elegant vacancy Cold where her husband is warm, silent where her mother is loud. Her one subject is her children; her one activity, presiding. Austen’s quietest joke is how relieved everyone is when she leaves a room.
• Charlotte PalmerMrs. Jennings’s daughter · laughs at everything Finds her husband’s rudeness hilarious, finds everything hilarious; a woman determined to be delighted, which in this novel is almost a philosophy.
• Mr. Palmerher husband · rude on principle Speaks mostly to contradict, reads the newspaper at people. Elinor suspects — correctly, when illness strikes his house — that the rudeness is a costume over an ordinary decent man, worn to feel superior to a silly wife.

The Steele sisters — handle with care

• Lucy Steelethe secret fiancée Poor, pretty, sweet-spoken — and secretly engaged to Edward Ferrars for four years, a fact she confides to Elinor with the precision of a marksman. Every “dear Miss Dashwood” is a knife checked for sharpness. She ends the novel rich, forgiven, and completely victorious; Austen, unusually, lets the villain win and merely writes down what it cost everyone else.
• Anne Steeleher elder sister · “Nancy” Older, sillier, obsessed with “smart beaux,” and the accidental detonator of the whole plot: it is Nancy who blurts the secret engagement to Fanny, on the theory that everyone would be pleased.

The dots are the dialogue colors as the app assigns them today, checked against the live book — eighteen speaking parts share the twelve-color palette, so a few relations double up. The app pairs John with Fanny and Robert with his mother, which is not commentary, but might as well be.