Jane Austen – Saturday 16 December 1775 – Friday 18 July 1817

Introduction

I have always been amused by Jane Austen ever since the first book of hers I read, Pride and Prejudice (spoiler alert), and continuing with her other novels, including Sense and Sensibility (spoiler alert). Reading the novels with current day eyes often evokes chuckles at the maneuvers and manners displayed in the pursuit of matrimony in that earlier century. But to be fair, I’m sure a future reader/viewer of our present day procedures in the quest for marriage will find much to amuse her. The Bachelor and The Bachelorette come to mind.

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Sense and Sensibility

“The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. 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. The later owner of this estate was a single man who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old gentleman’s days were comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the children added a relish to this existence.

By a former marriage, Mr. Henry Dashwood had one son: by his present lady, three daughters. The son, a steady respectable young man, was amply provided for by the fortune of his mother, which had been large, and half of which devolved on him on his coming of age. By his own marriage, likewise, which happened soon afterwards, he added to his wealth. To him, therefore, the succession to the Norland estate was not so really important as to his sisters; for their fortune, independent of what might arise to them from their father’s inheriting the property, could be but small. Their mother had nothing, and their father only seven thousand pounds in his own disposal, for the remaining moiety of his first wife’s fortune was also secured to her child, and he had only a life interest in it.

The old gentleman died; his will was read, and like almost every other will gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew; but he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and daughters than for himself or his son; but to his son and his son’s son, a child of four years old, it was secured in such a way as to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear to him, and who most needed a provision, by any charge on the estate, or by any sale of its valuable woods. The whole was tied up for the benefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters. He meant not to be unkind however, and as a mark of his affection for the three girls, he left them a thousand pounds apiece.”

Excerpt from the Afterword by Patricia Meyer Spacks in Sense and Sensibility

“Sense and Sensibility begins with money and ends with love. By the time the novel achieves its inevitable culmination in the happy marriages of the principal characters, the reader has come to understand the intricate ways in which money affects feelings, how the realities of the outside world impinge on the interior realm. Economic and psychic facts, from Jane Austen’s point of view, bear closely on one another. Their relationship defines her novelistic subject.”


Yesterday’s writer – Harriette Arnow
Tomorrow’s writer – Maeve Binchy

Source: Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Bantam Classic, January 1983. ISBN 0-553-21110-2. Chapter 1 Excerpt: pages 1-2; Afterword Excerpt: page 332

Images:

Left: Front cover of personal copy of Sense and Sensibility

Center: Jane Austen from website en.wikipedia.org