The history of filming Austen's and other classic novels in the twentieth century indicates that such films are as subject to the fashions of their own time (both material and intellectual) as any other cultural work is. At the most obvious level, think of Greer Garson's crinolines in MGM's Pride and Prejudice (1940), of the bouffant hairstyles of the young women in the BBC's 1970s literary adaptations. Laughable to viewers today, these fashions in their day were simply the normal look for youth and beauty. Arguably, the same may be said of the thematic shaping in film of Austen's stories of families and courtship: that is, that each shift in cultural history will draw from the novels the emphases that readers of that time naturally look for in them. Their images of the nation, of the family, of gender behavior, courtship and sexual desire, will be delineated according to contemporary agendas – whether intellectual, political, or commercial. For the film to succeed, however, it must achieve a double effect: it must create the impression of keeping faith with the original text (by not straying too far from the plot), and it must engage the audience with the sense that the story speaks to them of their own concerns. This essay will examine the ways in which late twentieth-century liberal feminism informs one such film, Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995), scripted by Emma Thompson, who also played Elinor Dashwood.