In Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen, the pianoforte appears several times throughout the novel. It is one of the first items unpacked when the Austen women moved to Burton. The ability to play the pianoforte is considered desirable. Laura Vorachek notes that “learning to play the piano was a standard part of a middle-class girl’s training since it was believed to provide discipline, diversion, and a skill that would help her attract a husband” (26). Considering this, Jane Austen may have been attempting to portray the fact the Marianne was more composed than the reader may have initially thought. The narrator of Sense & Sensibility says, “Willoughby opened the piano-forte, and asked Marianne to sit down to it” (Austen). The fact that Willoughby calls for Marianne to come play for him is indicative of his thinking she is desirable. Additionally, when Marianne is heartbroken, she is described as spending “whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears” (Austen). She may be relying on the instrument that once drew her closer to Willoughby, to now bring her comfort and solace. It also may symbolize her crying over the thought of being less suitable as a potential wife if her ability to play was indicative of her eligibility. This makes me think that the pianoforte had been more important than I had initially believed. I think it is a comfort item that Marianne can lean on in times of both happiness and sadness.

Works Cited 

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Cove.

Vorachek, Laura. “‘The Instrument of the Century’: The Piano as an Icon of Female Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century.” George Eliot - George Henry Lewes Studies, no. 38/39, 2000, pp. 26–43. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42827934.