Jane Austen discussion
This topic is about
Sense and Sensibility
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Why chapter two?
it is a social criticism of the way things were run. and backround for the plight of the dashwood ladieswho might turn intio Miss Bates or Mrs Smith. Ann is in danger too. the Novels chat with each other and you must read them as a whole Be a clever elf.... if the chapter doesnt fit look for an explanation in a different novel
Why is it unsporting to create a character who is an awful person? And she's not gratuitously awful--she has a significant impact on the principal characters, sends them spinning off into a whole different life, compelled to be dependent on strangers. Pretty good premise for a story. There's a biblical undertone here, involving the cruelty of those whose "natural" duty it is to care for the needy closest to them and the grace of the Samaritan. And Mrs. John Dashwood's character, specifically her unreasoning resentment toward her husband's family, betrays her into doing unwitting harm to the family she does care about later in the book, so chapter 2 sets her up for her own undoing--pretty neat plotting to my mind!
Plus I love bravura writing for its own sake, and that conversation between John and Mrs. John is just wickedly perfect in its depiction of malice cloaked in spurious virtue. Each time I read S&S I can't wait to read chapter 2!
I enjoy your provocative threads, Martin, and rise to them like a trout to a fly.
If you skip it then you miss part of their characters, it's as much about John Dashwood as his wife. It shows you how they think and how their personalities effect each other.
Abigail wrote: "Why is it unsporting to create a character who is an awful person? And she's not gratuitously awful--she has a significant impact on the principal characters, sends them spinning off into a whole d..."Mrs wrote: "it is a social criticism of the way things were run. and backround for the plight of the dashwood ladieswho might turn intio Miss Bates or Mrs Smith. Ann is in danger too. the Novels chat with each..."
By 'social criticism' you mean? '... the way things were run' by whom? Jane was a part of the 'not quite upper' class and poked fun at it, but I don't follow. Miss Bates talks to much, but is happy with very little. Mrs. Smith (Persuasion's Anne E. chum?) is needed as witness to the real character of the younger Eliot, but she's not a punching bag.
Nothing wrong with villainous characters, per se. Mrs. Norris, vile as she is, is needed to get Maria unfortunately married, I guess. But I still don't get it. I don't see why the novel is changed by the deathbed promise followed by the extreme avarice. That is, assuming that the novel is about the sisters' (and mother, too) sense and sensibility.
Abigail wrote: "Why is it unsporting to create a character who is an awful person? And she's not gratuitously awful--she has a significant impact on the principal characters, sends them spinning off into a whole d..."Thanks for the kind words, Abigail. I'm trying to write a little romance myself, and I have no villains. I'm studying JA's villains to see what I should learn. They certainly can be plot tools. Lady Catherine gets Darcy to resume his assault on Lizzy, for example. Mrs. Norris helps get Maria married.
But some strike me as spurious. Might Mrs. Elton have been a decent, well-intended (if unfortunate) woman just trying to help Jane get a job?
Louise Sparrow wrote: "If you skip it then you miss part of their characters, it's as much about John Dashwood as his wife. It shows you how they think and how their personalities effect each other."I agree with you 100% re getting both Mr. & Mrs. J. D. but then I ask, so what? I guess my presumption is that this is a novel about Sense and Sensibility but...
I don't actually believe that P&P is about pride and prejudice, except tangentially. I think the name was chosen by the publisher to build on the small success of Sense and Sensibility.
I can picture him (uh, pretty sure it was male) bitching about 'Elinor and Marianne.' That title just says its about two girls. Nothing whatsoever about the subject, save that it has two girls! Wish this lady would think about selling books! Let's get a title that's relevant to today's issues!
OOh, Fanny Dashwood - the woman we women LOVE to hate!!!! Such a nasty piece of work! (Harriet Walter captures her beautifully in the Emma Thompson S&S film).Personally, I suspect that, whatever the literary function of Chapter 2, Austen actually enjoyed creating Fanny Dashwood, and took pleasure in 'exposing' her to the readers. (I wonder if she had a real-life model for her?? Could be!!!!!)
From the point of view of the plot, I guess that seeing just how unpleasant Fanny Dashwood is both sets up for the readers just how nasty the Ferrars were 'as a family' (the mother is even worse than the daughter!), and, perhaps, to highlight the moral contrast between the mother/daughter and Edmund.
In terms of whether it needs an entire chapter to do whatever Austen intended, I guess one should remember that firstly S&S is an 'early' novel (and so not necessarily perfect, whatever Janeites might think!!!!) and that apart from family, she didn't have an editor saying things like 'Cut for pace.....' !!!!!
I don’t see Lady Catherine as a villain, but that’s just me. Overbearing and probably difficult to be around, but not villainous or mean-spirted.
"Miss Bates talks to much, but is happy with very little. "?????
She bears up in adversity, and all credit to her. But I'm sure she would not have been 'unhappy' to have more money....
Fanny Ferrars Dashwood is a despicable human being, and one can only hope she dies (ideally before she has children), and frees up her husband to become a 'true man' (instead of the cowardly, spineless, cruel wimp he is in the novel) and marries a decent human being for a second wife.
I think Fanny's husband is particularly culpable for his behaviour as legally he had all the power over his horrible wife, and she only had the 'power of persuasion'.
As ever, the 'real' villain, is the dad, who was utterly irresponsible in not protecting his daughters and widow. But Austen is full of irresponsible parents - (the romantically foolish Mrs Dashwood included, for not being more prudently cautions over Marianne re Willoughby).
But, to an extent, that is inevitable - a heroine with responsible parents doesn't get to have many adventures or face any dilemmas!
Beth-In-UK wrote: "Fanny Ferrars Dashwood is a despicable human being, and one can only hope she dies (ideally before she has children), and frees up her husband to become a 'true man' (instead of the cowardly, spineless, cruel wimp he is in the novel) and marries a decent human being for a second wife."Fanny F..."
She already HAS a son and that's her argument for not giving the Dashwood women more. She's really quite selfish, greedy and obsessed with money- in short, she's a vulgar sort of person. This chapter sets up what's to follow. Where's the story of the Dashwood women have enough to live on? Ideally they should have enough to live comfortably with a few servants, like the Austen women, and have enough for dowries for the girls so they can marry someone of their station and not a poor farmer or whoever is there in the neighborhood.
However, some of what happens to the girls and their lack of society is Mrs. Dashwood's fault. Their mother has no sense and too much pride. If she had not so much pride she would borrow her cousin's carriage and get his lazy annoying wife to sponsor her girls for a season in London. She doesn't like to be beholden and won't be seen as a moocher but it doesn't do her daughters any good cooped up in the country with only their country squire cousin and his vulgar mother-in-law for company. Even Col. Brandon is too old and serious to be good company. Then the Steele sisters come to visit and they're lower down on the social ladder and quite vulgar- not good company for the Dashwood sisters.
You're right about Mrs. Elton, she's not so bad. Vulgar as all get-out but more a figure of fun than someone with the power to do harm. (As a side note, I believe her to be in part a sendup of the novelist Fanny Burney. Jane Austen, who was much younger and much less successful, probably met her or at least heard extensive reports of her because Jane's godfather was a dear friend and close neighbor of Fanny and her husband. And like Mrs. Elton, Fanny was fond of calling her caro sposo. I speculate that Jane felt a combination of jealousy and superiority--jealous of Fanny's fame and success and superiority about Fanny's inferior breeding. Today's fun Austen moment!)But Mrs. John Dashwood is a whole different kettle of fish. As others have indicated above, the Dashwood girls, just as they entered their marriageable years, went from being wealthy and connected to being poor and living in a remote cottage because of her. In a closer family the death of their father need not have meant even the loss of their home; they could have continued to live under their brother's roof and stayed with him when he was in London. If their mother really couldn't stand being supplanted as the mistress of the house, John should have set them up in a dower house and provided a livable income. His wife is not just condemning them to a life of deprivation, she is making it almost impossible for them to make good marriages. She does real harm.
I wasn't referring to the evel parts of Fanny Dashwood but to the plight of women at the mercy of stupid financial laws that they (including JA) had no control over the Dashwood sisters and Ann had they not had the luck to marry well would have ended up in the economic level of Mirs smith and Miss Bates (Miss smith?)part of( the hidden part ) and lengthy conversation between F and J Dashwood seems to me to hint at that aspect of JA social criticism..Showing how women were at the mercy of stupid lawsshe herself was at the mercy of her brothers who were nicer than the dashwoods (why were they given a house only 5 years after her father died and spent those years moving all the time?)
Martin wrote: "I am rereading S & S (I read most of Austen every year) and I have skipped chapter two, in which Mrs. John Dashwood talks her husband into doing nothing to redeem his promise to support Mrs. Dashwo..."To add a point. Shapard estimates the J. Dashwood fortune at 100k pounds. Invested in the 5%s that's about the same as Bingley's fortune, for example. To pass 3k pounds to the Dashwood daughters was extraordinarily niggardly. This, before Fanny talks him into doing nothing.
There's a nasty bit where Fanny tries to keep a dinner service that the second Mrs Dashwood informs her is actually HERS from her wedding etc.I think Mrs Ferrars is in the same camp as Lady Cathering, but nastier. They both seemed to have ended up with control over the pursestrings.
I haven't read S and S for years (probably my least fave Austen, even worse than Emma!), so have only dim memories of the novel itself. I watch the Emma Thompson version when it's on the telly - just love Hugh Grant making such a sympathetic jab at the hapless Edmund. (And I adore the 'but I think you mean my brother, Robert' re Lucy and ET just bursting into choking sobs with relief!)
Beth-In-UK wrote: "There's a nasty bit where Fanny tries to keep a dinner service that the second Mrs Dashwood informs her is actually HERS from her wedding etc.I think Mrs Ferrars is in the same camp as Lady Cathe..."
The scene in P&P where Lady C. takes EB out to the little copse, tells her that Darcy is pledged to her daughter (we've already seen that her poor daughter is not in the running) and demands EB's pledge to refuse Darcy, if asked, promotes her right up there with Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Elton, Mrs. Ferrars...
No, take that back. Mrs. Elton is a notch below the others.
I just read the novel recently and I believe Mrs. Dashwood won't even stay in the neighborhood as long as Fanny is there. As for the Austen women being given Chawton so late 1)it was occupied 2)there were issues of inheritance even after the ladies moved in.
Mrs. Knight retained Godmersham and Chawton until ca. 1798. After that she held back £2000 as an annual income for herself. Edward was supporting a large and growing family on a reduced (for landed gentry) income. He had to sell some property in order to maintain his estates. In 1809 he finally had two vacant cottages and offered one to his mother and sisters. They chose Chawton near Steventon where they used to live. Even after that the blood heirs tried to challenge Edward's inheritance. The stress of losing her home may have caused Jane to have an Addison's crash and ultimately die.
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-l...
QNPoohBear wrote: "I just read the novel recently and I believe Mrs. Dashwood won't even stay in the neighborhood as long as Fanny is there. As for the Austen women being given Chawton so late 1)it was occupied 2)t..."
Correct, QNPB, re Mrs. Dashwood. She originally wanted to stay in the neighborhood, but did a 180 just before receiving the offer of the cottage.
And thank you for your history. Got some references for us?
Christine Grover, Edward Knight's inheritance, Jane Austen Society of North America: JASNA vol. 34 no. 1, 2013. Some modern people believe Edward Austen Knight was a "tightwad" but I think he was doing the best he could to care for the estates he inherited. In Downton Abbey, the Earl of Grantham points out that they're not the owners of the estate, they're the custodians and it's their job to care for and manage the estate the best they can and pass it down to future generations. I think for Edward it must have been extra difficult because it wasn't his biologically.
Edward Austen Knight: A Tightwad or a Man With Heavy Responsibilities
Sadly for Jane, life imitated art.
The Austens may have hoped to inherit something from Mrs. Austen's cousin at Stoneleigh Abbey in August 1806. If so, they were sadly disappointed, except for Jane who liked the eye candy estate and may have been inspired to include a fictional version in one of her novels. Jane Lark blog
Jane's aunt Mrs. Leigh-Perrot was notoriously cheap. Mrs. Austen's brother, Jane's uncle Leigh-Perrot left his entire estate to his wife with nothing to his sister's children.
Deborah Yaffe blog
re: Jane and the Addison's crash, I think the source is speculation on behalf of Paula Byrne based on Jane's letters where she talks about bad news bringing on a relapse of her illness.
In the novel, it's an entirely different case. Fanny basically tells John his own sisters aren't really that related to him being half sisters so he shouldn't feel obligated to do much for them and the nitwit convinces himself making occasional presents to the ladies is a great favor. He never actually does though. On his own he seems nice enough to Elinor but clueless about her as a person.
I recommended reading an annotated version. It's dense and took forever but I did enjoy the annotations in this one The Annotated Sense and Sensibility
Thank you, QNPB!Let me second your recommendation of Shapard's annotated versions. For example, 'morning,' for those who don't have Shapard, means the period before dinner, forenoon and afternoon.
So chapter two might be Jane's revenge on Mrs. Leigh-Perrot? Serves her right if it was.
With the Dashwoods, another factor might be (I'm speculating, unless anyone can see textual evidence for it!) that John Dashwood bitterly resented his father marrying again as a widower, and so similarly resented the very existence of his half-sisters.This is very common in second families, and I'm sure many of us know families where a second wife is resented, and her children too.
Do we know anything about the first Mrs Dashwood? I always sort of assumed the second Mrs D was considerably younger than her husband.
Also, maybe the first Mrs D, Fanny's mother in law, brought money to the family, which, understandably, her son wants to retain on 'his' side, rather than have it pass across to his step-mother and half-sisters??
Or, of course, he's just a wimp and henpecked to death by the ghastly Fanny!
Re Jane Austen's finances, I've always been suspicious that she modelled Mr Bennett on her own father....???
Jane's father augmented his income by running a school for boys, Beth. Sounds different to me. Maybe QNPB can help us out.
Beth-In-UK wrote: "With the Dashwoods, another factor might be (I'm speculating, unless anyone can see textual evidence for it!) that John Dashwood bitterly resented his father marrying again as a widower, and so sim..."Certainly possible. I think it's important to remember that any character in a novel is a creation of the author. What we know from the author's evidence (thank you, Shapard) is that John D. was going to give 3k from his 100k estate, to fulfill his deathbed promise. He is a cheap bastard before he listens to Fanny. She just brings out the worst in him.
(This is not meant to argue that he is not also a henpecked wimp.)
Martin,Have you read Mansfield Park annotated by Shapard? I bout a copy approx 2 years ago, but haven’t managed to crack it open as of yet.
I’ve seen you mention him in your posts on this thread. Was the version you’ve read worthwhile? Maybe you’ll inspire me to make a push to get started.
I think I suspect Austen pere of being like Mr B in that neither put aside enough money for their widow and daughters.
Thinking about John Dashwood, I think Colonel Brandon, once he was formally engaged to Marianne and therefore he had the right to champion her, should have gone and confronted the girls' brother and basically 'named and shamed him', ideally in front of London society, and accused him of absolutely shameful and disgraceful behaviour.We know Col. B was fierce enough to fight a dual with Willoughby over the seduction of his ward, so I'm sure he could have taken on John Dashwood.
Save for Northanger, I reread all the completed Austens annually (or more) and consider Shapard vital.It's not something you read straight through, but it's something you glance at when a) "what the hell does that mean" or (and this is key) b) why is he noting that? In case b) he's noting it because it's not what it looks like.
Or, I guess, if you're like me, c) because you really want to know the difference between a chaise, a gig, a barouche and a coach. You never know when you might throw the wrong switch in that time machine and suddenly you'll be in Regency England.
I'd say more but I've got to report for goblin duty. Good thing I've got Elinor and Marianne to London.
Martin wrote: "Save for Northanger, I reread all the completed Austens annually (or more) and consider Shapard vital.It's not something you read straight through, but it's something you glance at when a) "what ..."
Northanger Abbey annotated edition is definitely the next that I will buy!
Oh, dear. In case I wasn't clear I thought Northanger was a failed book and I don't consider it a real Austen novel. I've no idea about the annotated NA, or even if there is one.
Well, I've just reread Volume 2, Chapter 11.Two things. I should have identified the previous topic as Volume 1, Chapter 2, (not just the chapter #).
Second, I should have remembered 2-11, where Elinor meets brother John Dashwood in Grays (an actual Regency jewelry store, Shapard tells us). Dear Jane cuts up poor John and leaves him strewn all over the floor. It makes her treatment of Fanny in 1-2 seem almost like kindness. Truly, John and Fanny deserve each other.
I agree NA has all the hallmarks of a 'first novel'.
Sadly, Jane's uncle Leigh-Perrot died after S&S was published but Jane sure could have had her aunt in mind when she wrote Mrs. Fanny Dashwood. I don't think John is bright enough to resent his father's remarriage. The money is his through his mother. He doesn't HAVE to share it with his sisters and stepmother but he did promise his father. Jane's father was just a poor country clergyman with a large family to support. He didn't have an estate like Mr. Bennet. His income was derived from the church. He supplemented his income by teaching divinity students, one son was adopted and the others worked. He retired and left his living to his son James who married Mary Lloyd, Jane and Cassandra's frenemy. Fanny Dashwood could also be partly Mary Austen who resented her husband's children from his first marriage and wasn't very kind to his little sister Jane who had a snarky sense of humor. Jane's sister Cassandra had a little money from her late fiance, Tom Fowle.
No one expected Rev. George Austen to die so suddenly after moving to Bath. The tour guide the Jane Austen Festival in Bath hired to take us around speculated Rev. Austen may have moved to Bath in a last ditch effort to marry off his two daughters but I haven't seen anything in the historical evidence that supports that. He was very supportive of Jane's writing even sending a manuscript "First Impressions" to the publisher.
Northanger Abbey was the first novel to be accepted by a publisher but it was never brought out in Jane's lifetime. She could have bought it back for 10 pounds but she didn't have that kind of money at the time. Later she revised the novel she called "Susan" and it was published posthumously. It's considered one of the big 6. The non-published works include Lady Susan, a novella and two fragments The Watsons and Sanditon plus a number of juvenile stories Juvenilia. There are also some poems, prayers and other miscellaneous writings, and a poor draft of a chapter in Persuasion that was thankfully rewritten to include the letter!
A Closer Look at Jane's Parents
Inspired by this discussion (!) I've fetched S&S off my bookshelf (haven't read it for ever!), and started it again.Firstly, I am now feeling more kindly towards the girls' father - I'd thought (remembered?) that the dad had simply trusted his son instead of formally ensuring his second wife and daughters had adequate provision made for them out of his estate.
But now I realise he had nothing 'spare' to leave, as he had only inherited Norland from his bachelor uncle who had already doted on 'young Harry' his great nephew, and set up his Will such that his direct heir, the girls' father, had nothing of his own that was not entailed to the eventual heir (young Harry). So the girls' dad could not take any money out of the capital value of the estate itself to leave them - he'd hoped to make savings out of the estate's annual profits, but only lived another twelve months after inheriting it from his uncle.
That was why he had to rely on begging his son to do what he had not lived long enough to do.
As for Chapter 2, having just read it I think that Austen actually enjoyed writing a devastating exposure of Mr and Mrs John Dashwood, (because it is viciously brilliant!). It's a very clever piece of writing, with lots of use of her famed Free Indirect Discourse technique, whereby apparently 'objective' or 'narrative' text is actually revealing the mentality of the subject.
On a moral stand, Chapter two shows how the process of 'evilisation' for want of a better term actually works - ie, how a man is 'tempted' to be a complete xxxx. In a way, thinking about it, Fanny Dashwood is of the sisterhood of Lady Macbeth - without either of their wives, both John Dashwood and Macbeth would have been better people....
John Dashwood was of course 'prepped' to succumb to Fanny's evil temptation to be even worse than he already was - there's another brilliant Austen put down in her first description of him -
"He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold-hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed....."
Ouch!
QNPB illustrates how dependent 'genteel' families were on their family connections, how important it was to have wealthier relations, deriving income from land primarily (rents from their farms in the their estates, plus things like timber and increasingly mineral rights, canals etc as the industrial revolution got under way in the 18th C).And, of course, most vital of all, of marrying into established money!
It's striking just how limited 'genteel' families were to get rich by 'other means' (ie, trade and business!). Such a shame JA didn't live longer, as she was finally starting to make money out of book sales - I believe her 'enthusiasm' for making money out of her writing which to us is totally understandable, and knowing her endlessly pinched financial circumstances even more understandable, was very much played down by her Victorian descendents, who consider it 'unladylike' that she actually (shock horror!) wanted to make MONEY!!!!!! (My dear, one simply does not stoop to such vulgarity!)
Another very handy way of improving one's circumstances was to acquire a wealthy godparent who acted as a 'sponsor' to bestow patronage, and open the way to more lucrative opportunities eg government appointments and so on. (Including of course livings for clergymen)Being able to 'make money' simply by your own efforts and entrepreneurial enterprise, as is so possible today, simply didn't seem to be a viable possibility for the 'genteel' class.
On the general theme of 'making money' for the genteel class, I wonder whether what Elinor and Marianne might actually have done to generate some money from their own efforts?
Beth-In-UK wrote: "On the general theme of 'making money' for the genteel class, I wonder whether what Elinor and Marianne might actually have done to generate some money from their own efforts?"Nothing. Elinor could have gone to work as a governess, perhaps but Jane Fairfax in Emma likens that to slavery. Elinor also has the patience to be a companion to an elderly person but those things were reserved for very dire situations, usually women without family or without money like Jane Fairfax. Elinor would constantly worry about her mother and Marianne though. Mrs. Dashwood is rather silly- she is also the Sensibility in the title along with Marianne while Elinor is the sense.
Alas, for poor Jane Austen, her books actually weren't selling that well when she died. She switched publishers, had a second edition on MP out along with Emma at the same time. Her letters indicated she was deeply troubled about finances. Could she have made more money from Sanditon? It's hard to tell from the fragment. Literary styles were changing and the "romantic" movement Sir Walter Scott was coming into fashion. Then came the three sisters who shall not be named by any Janite! ;-) There were some women writers who were contemporaries of Jane Austen and she may have succeeded for a little while longer. She could have adapted and changed her literary style too. We just don't know!
She came back into favor with the coming of the railroad. Railroad stations had bookstalls selling cheap mass market type versions of books, especially out of print books. Then the University professors discovered Mansfield Park at the end of the 19th century and during WWI Rudyard Kipling sang her praises and she's been popular ever since.
I appreciate that the opportunities for paid employment were very thin on the ground - and very badly paid at that! But I was wondering whether any 'genteel' ladies ever (shock horror!) 'went into trade' in some way....or perhaps more along the lines of what JA was hoping for, making money out of selling her books to the public.I realise it would have been rare, difficult and carry with it a degree of social opprobrium but I wonder if there is historical evidence for it?
Although the lot of unmarried and widowed women was not socially enviable (unless they were already rich!), they did at least have the legal freedom to exist in their own right, and take their own decisions, without constant reference and permission of their husbands (let alone that hubby was legally entitled to any money they might make!)(witness the horrid 'memoir' of Mrs Gaskell receiving a royalty cheque and promptly handing it over to Mr Gaskell as it was legally his money!!!!!!!)
In the Middle Ages, I believe, it was less uncommon for 'single women' to be 'businesswomen' of some kind, but perhaps that was only amongst the 'lower orders' - and that 'lower orders only' bar might have been operational in Regency times, because of the 'distaste' for 'making money' as opposed to simply sitting back and inheriting it! (Such a reversal of social opinion these days, where simply inheriting money is seen as lazy and 'unvirtuous' whereas entrepreneurialism is seen as largely praiseworthy and 'virtuous'!)
In America, unmarried women had more freedom. They could become teachers or widows could become tavern owners but in Jane Austen's England, women like the Dashwood sisters really had nothing to do except wait to get married and in the meantime, learn to be a supportive wife and gentlewoman. The women writers of the time were mostly married. Hannah More was a Quaker and religious writer. Fanny Burney did publish as a young, single woman, anonymously like Jane and later married and continued to write.Other than governess or companion, or teacher at a girls' school, genteel women just didn't work not even if they were destitute! They weren't trained for anything other than to be the wife of a hopefully wealthy man who would support them. It's hard for us to understand why didn't they just go out and a get a job?! To many people who don't understand the context of the time period, Jane's characters seem like gold diggers, especially the Bennets, but marrying and marrying well was a woman's job at that time.
Jane Austen chose poverty over marriage but her choices were only marriage or poverty. She enjoyed making money from her writing but it wasn't strictly a business venture.
Martin wrote: "I am rereading S & S (I read most of Austen every year) and I have skipped chapter two, in which Mrs. John Dashwood talks her husband into doing nothing to redeem his promise to support Mrs. Dashwo..."I think it’s quite an amusing chapter, as Mrs John Dashwood gradually talks her husband into doing nothing for his half sisters and stepmother. It explains how the Dashwood sisters come to be ‘poor’ (by upper class standards that is - only three servants, poor things). Shows how tight the John Dashwood are.
It's viciously amusing - and is a devastating expose of both Fanny and her weak, selfish husband (as opposed to his wife being strong and selfish!).
I could see that in the nascent USA there would be more opportunity for women in general - I guess partly because (I assume?) there was a disparity in numbers, as more single men would emigrate to the USA than married (or single women?). And, too, a general 'pioneering' and 'entrepreneurial' spirit of those who have made a profound change to their life in order to improve their prospects etc.I can see why 'genteel' women in Britain could not have simply got employment, and anyway, work was not well paid in the first place for anyone on the whole. I guess I was thinking more in terms of starting a business - perhaps, as indeed, so many female entrepreneurs still do, by targeting other women as their customers.
Maybe I'm being fanciful, but a business of say, home made cosmetics and remedies, or a lending library etc - however, it would have required capital outlay, and that would have been a challenge.
Maybe the best venue for a female entrepreneur would have been somewhere like Brighton, or the other burgeoning seaside resorts, where there was constant passing trade, a wealthy cohort of visitors keen to spend money on themselves (and fripperies) etc.
I'm sure it would have been very risky, and very hard, but it might have been possible at least.
I've always rather hoped that Mary Bennet, who was the plain, untalented one of the Bennet girls, might have discovered an entrepreneurial streak in herself, and realised she was a born businesswoman! (She could have gone to stay with Aunt Gardiner in London, and realised she was as good a merchant as her uncle maybe!)
Beth-In-UK wrote: "It's viciously amusing - and is a devastating expose of both Fanny and her weak, selfish husband (as opposed to his wife being strong and selfish!)."It also shows, as JA herself mentions in the book, that had John Dashwood married a really nice woman, she could have equally influenced him, but in a much better direction.
It would be funny... a reversed chapter, where a truly generous Mrs J. Dashwood would be turning him toward giving his sisters more than he originally intended ... LOL
Ah, but then there wouldn't be a novel at all, alas! I am rooting for Fanny to die (OK, sorry about little Harry, but I can't believe she was a loving mother in the first place!) (and definitely a bad influence on him - after all, HER character was obviously formed by her own quite ghastly mother!), so that her widower can marry again, but a nice woman this time.
I've tried to post this as a new topic, but it seems to be a total pain to do so (I have to prove I'm not a robot, and I can't just add it easily to the Austen group, but i.d. it from all the others, etc etc - bah!).....But, thinking about the ghastly Fanny Dashwood, it struck me that Austen often seems to re-use female names across her novels, and I wonder if there is anything to it? And the characters can be very different from each other - eg, Fanny Dashwood (nightmare!) vs the very good Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, and the 'saintly' Fanny Harville, Captain Benwick's late fiancée.
Then there is Jane Bennet and Jane Fairfax. Possibly too Maria Lucas (Charlotte's younger sister) and Maria Bertram.
Any others?
Given there is a huge choice of female names, it strikes me as a little odd - unless there is 'something going on' perhaps??!!!!
What do others think?
Elizabeth Bennet vs Elizabeth Elliot? :)
Catherine Moreland & Lady C?
I am glad I was not the only one with this thought. There's also Isabella Thorpe & I. Knightley.
Eleanor Tilney & Elinor.
Well spotted! I hadn't thought of any of those! I don't think any of the male names are repeated are they?
(Sadly, one of the things that puts me off Captain Wentworth is that he's called Frederick! I know it's a popular name now - especially as 'Freddy', but to me it's rather pompous and Germanic!)
Jane Austen
Books mentioned in this topic
Jane Austen and Names (other topics)Jane Austen's Names: Riddles, Persons, Places (other topics)
Lady Susan (other topics)
The Watsons (other topics)
Sanditon (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Hannah More (other topics)Frances Burney (other topics)
Walter Scott (other topics)
Rudyard Kipling (other topics)
Paula Byrne (other topics)
I am not sure I can figure out the reason for this chapter. It is certainly true that some people would do nothing for their relatives, regardless of disparity in financial status, but why does this get a chapter?
Seems to be unsporting to create a character and then shoot her full of holes for being an awful person.