The Cathartic Power of 'Sense and Sensibility' For its 25th anniversary, we look at how Ang Lee and Emma Thompson's adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel subverts expectations of female heroines. Sony Pictures Sense and Sensibility is about two young girls in England in the early 1800s, desperately traversing the line between love and monetary stability after their father’s death leaves them nearly penniless. It tells the story of a mother fearing for the future of her girls, of men grappling with the unfamiliarity of their own feelings. But, perhaps more than anything, Sense and Sensibility is about Jane Austen, who wrote the novel in secret two-hundred years before its first theatrical film adaptation made its debut.