Journaling with Jane Day 1: Sense and Sensibility

Welcome to Day 1 of Journaling with Jane. We're going to start our seven days with Jane's first published novel Sense and Sensibility and the theme of HOME

Home.

A short word that means so much, and never more than over the past few months. Home was especially important to Jane Austen as well, and so many of her novels explore this idea from a wide range of angles. Sense and Sensibility opens with the Dashwood ladies searching for a new house, after being forced from their family home Norwood. Their removal to Barton Cottage in Devonshire and their finding a refuge in this relatively humble abode is particularly resonant for us here at Jane Austen’s House and made Home the obvious first theme to start Journaling with Jane.

Now, open your notebook, and take 15 minutes to write or draw on what home means to you.

If you would like, here are some further prompts:

  • What does home mean to you?
  • Have you found home?
  • Who is home?
  • “One can be too close to home…”

Sense and Sensibility is also about the different ways in which we feel; contrasting sensible Elinor with sensitive Marianne. Both girls feel things deeply, but they express and share their feelings very differently.

For a more Romantic-era journaling prompt, inspired by S&S, we suggest:

  • How do you feel
  • How do you express and share your feelings?

Did you know we have a copy of the first edition of Sense and Sensibility in our collection?
First edition of Sense and Sensibility, open on title page