the fate of Marianne

From Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility:

"Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate.  She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her own conduct, her most favourite maxims."


I have just finished re-reading Sense and Sensibility.  I haven't read it as many times as Pride and Prejudice, maybe only twice before.  But these sentences never shouted out to me before as they did during this recent reading.

These sentences appear in the closing paragraphs of the novel; but to me, they could easily stand on their own at the beginning of an entirely different story: one whose heroine is Marianne, not Elinor.  These words remind me so much of the opening of P&P.  You know the words by heart, I'm sure:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." 

Just as this opening of P&P tells the entire story in one sentence, so these lines from S&S give us Marianne's journey in a few simple words.  Magical!