The Dashwoods are a well-established gentry family from Sussex who form the center of the novel. From the first chapter, we are told that “Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance."
A crisis of succession for the estate provides much of the initial action for the novel, circling around a range of family members:
- Uncle Dashwood, who married an unspecified woman and had no children
- Aunt Dashwood, who keeps house for her widowed brother Uncle Dashwood, for ten years after the death of his wife
- An unnamed and unmentioned younger brother of Uncle Dashwood, deceased long before the novel begins, who was the father of:
- Henry Dashwood, heir to Norland Park, who had two different families with two different wives:
- With his first wife:
- John Dashwood, who married heiress Fanny Ferrars and had:
- With his second wife, Mrs. Dashwood:
Uncle Dashwood, we are told, leaves the estate to Henry “on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest,” due in part to the entail which Uncle Dashwood sets up to benefit Harry. This has significant consequences for the Dashwood women after John Dashwood inherits.
