by Jane Austen
Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang; and his punishment was soon afterwards complete in the voluntary forgiveness of Mrs. Smith, who, by stating his marriage with a woman of character, as the source of her clemency, gave him reason for believing that had he behaved with honour towards Marianne, he might at once have been happy and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought its own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted;—nor that he long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret. But that he was for ever inconsolable, that he fled from society, or contracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a broken heart, must not be depended on43—for he did neither.44 He lived to exert, and frequently to enjoy himself. His wife was not always out of humour, nor his home always uncomfortable;45 and in his breed of horses and dogs, and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of domestic felicity.46
For Marianne, however—in spite of his incivility in surviving her loss—he always retained that decided regard which interested him in everything that befell her, and made her his secret standard of perfection in woman;—and many a rising beauty would be slighted by him in after-days as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Brandon.
Mrs. Dashwood was prudent enough to remain at the cottage, without attempting a removal to Delaford; and fortunately for Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, when Marianne was taken from them, Margaret had reached an age highly suitable for dancing, and not very ineligible for being supposed to have a lover.47
Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication which strong family affection would naturally dictate;—and among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands.48
Notes
VOLUME I, CHAPTER I
1. Sussex: A county south of London (see map).
2. The gentry that dominates this and other Jane Austen novels were based in rural estates, whose agricultural profits formed the principal source of their income.
3. engage: gain.
4. “Housekeeper” was often used to refer to a high-ranking female servant. Here it means that his sister supervised the household, which would include directing and managing the servants, deciding on meals, ordering supplies for the house, and attending to the needs of residents and guests. These tasks were normally performed by women, so a man without a wife would usually have a sister or other unmarried female relative live with him for this purpose. Since unmarried women rarely had homes of their own, she would benefit by gaining a secure home in which she exercised a position of importance and influence.
5. When a landowner lacked sons, a paternal nephew, as Henry Dashwood’s name indicates he is, would normally be the sole heir. The idea was to preserve the family estate intact, and in the male line—if a woman inherited and then married, the estate would become her husband’s property, thereby transferring it to a different family. Thus even landowners who had daughters would usually leave the property to a nephew or other male relative.
6. The mother’s fortune would have come under the control of her husband upon her marriage, but the marriage settlement would have dictated that the son receive it upon turning twenty-one, the legal age of adulthood. Elaborate financial settlements, concerning the husband and wife and any children they might have, were standard for marriages among the gentry.
7. A woman almost always brought a dowry to a marriage: its size would significantly determine her marital desirability, as will be seen at various points in this novel. In return for the dowry, which would fall under the control of the husband, he, or his family in the event of his death, would be obligated to provide for her. Pin money, a certain annual sum for her personal use, would usually be part of the marriage settlement.
The dowry here, as revealed later (see this page), is ten thousand pounds. Thus it is more than what Mr. Henry Dashwood is shown below to have at his disposal. One mark of Jane Austen’s novels is precision about monetary sums, along with an appreciation of the important role money plays in life.
8. This means Henry Dashwood is able to use the income from the remaining moiety, or half, of his wife’s fortune but cannot touch the principal, which will go to his son after he dies. The family of the bride would often secure such an arrangement in the marriage settlement. It ensured that her fortune would ultimately go to her children, even if the husband turned out to be financially irresponsible, or if he, after she died, married again and was persuaded by his second wife to leave all his money to his second set of children.
9. Jane Austen herself, along with the rest of her immediate family, experienced disappointments on learning of the wills of some relatives.
10. He could not give them money from the estate, or money he borrowed using the estate as collateral.
11. Timber was often a leading product of estates. Wood was central to the economy of the time, used to make a variety of items that are currently made of metal or plastic.
12. It was standard practice for estates to be bound by such a settlement. By allowing the current holder of the property only to draw income from it, it ensured the estate would pass intact to the succeeding heir. At the same time, most settlements did not restrict the current holders quite this severely, and while they almost all gave the bulk of the estate to the eldest male of the next generation, they usually made more generous provision for other children than this one.
13. That they paid only “occasional visits” to the man’s father and grandfather hints at the lack of family feeling that will shortly be on full display.
14. Jane Austen, while described by nieces and nephews as a kind, attentive aunt, often criticizes in her novels excessive or blind fondness for children.
15. For more than a century many landowners had undertaken improvements to their estates, through clearing unproductive land for cultivation or increasing yields by agricultural innovations. The resulting increases in the food supply and population were important factors in the industrial revolution that began in England in the late eighteenth century. Greater income over the years, along with economical living, would allow Mr. Dashwood to accumulate a substantial sum that he then could pass on to his wife and daughters.
16. This would come from their three thousand pounds and the seven thousand pounds already mentioned as under the father’s control.
17. Meaning the danger of his dying soon.
18. mother-in-law: stepmother.
19. respectable: worthy, decent. The term, like the just-used “propriety,” was thoroughly complimentary, with none of the negative connotations sometimes found today.
20. amiable: kind, friendly, good-natured. The word then suggested general goodness and not just outward agreeableness.
21. narrow-minded: mercenary, parsimonious. In a letter Jane Austen expresses doubt of someone’s ability to “persuade a perverse and narrow-minded woman to oblige those whom she does not love” (Jan. 25, 1801).
22. The four thousand would be the income from the estate. His wife’s dowry of ten thousand (see this page) would, at the standard 5% rate of return on investments then, yield five hundred a year. Since his mother’s fortune was described as large, his annual income would now be at least five thousand pounds a year, perhaps even six or seven. This is far more than Mrs. Dashwood, who would get only five hundred pounds a year from her ten thousand.
It is hard to translate these amounts into current terms, for relative costs of things were very different then. Goods tended to cost a great deal, while services, including full-time live-in servants, were relatively cheap. But, allowing for that, a pound then is worth approximately 55 pounds today, which at 2010 rates is the equivalent of 80 to 85 U.S. dollars. This would make John Dashwood’s income somewhere around half a million dollars a year. For the time, this would probably put him in the top .1 or .2% of the pop
ulation.
23. That John Dashwood feels capable of generosity only after inheriting such a considerable fortune signals that he is far from naturally generous.
24. liberal: generous.
25. easy: comfortable financially.
26. That he thinks of it so continually suggests that he may be finding it difficult to reconcile himself to it.
27. Once the house became her husband’s Mrs. John Dashwood would take over the position of mistress and housekeeper from Mrs. Dashwood (see note 4). This is why nobody disputes her right, but a more delicate, or sensitive, person would have refrained from displacing so quickly a woman who had just lost her husband from a position she had long held.
28. disgust: distaste. The word did not have as strong a connotation then.
29. Mrs. Dashwood will often display the same impulsiveness shown here, along with the same tender affection for her children. The impropriety of hastily leaving probably refers to the insult it would be to John Dashwood.
30. In calling Elinor “only nineteen” the author raises a possible point of criticism, namely whether someone of Elinor’s youth could display the extraordinary wisdom and self-command that she does throughout the novel.
31. This sentence provides an excellent summation of Elinor’s character. She represents the “Sense” of the title, but this does not mean she is a creature of pure reason. She shows at various points the strong feelings mentioned here. What distinguishes her is her willingness and ability to control them and act rationally and sensibly, even in the most trying circumstances.
32. The generally equal abilities of Marianne to Elinor, referring particularly to her intellectual abilities, are an important point, as is Marianne’s generally equal goodness. Their acute differences stem from their different outlooks on life and opinions on how to act and feel.
33. interesting: engaging; inclined to arouse curiosity or emotion.
34. “Sensibility,” a word used often then, had a variety of meanings, with the most important revolving around the capacity for sensation or feeling. It was a term often used positively, by Jane Austen as well, for she never regards an incapacity to feel, something displayed by various characters in her works, as laudable. This is why Elinor regrets only the “excess of her sister’s sensibility.”
“Sensibility” in the eighteenth century had also come to refer to a broad cultural movement that extolled acute feeling and sensitivity (for more on this background, see introduction). Many literary works expounded and celebrated this idea, even as others criticized it. The cult of sensibility exercised an important influence on, and shared much with, Romanticism, which by Jane Austen’s time had become a powerful cultural force in Europe. Thus this novel is responding quite explicitly to contemporary matters of great concern and debate.
35. This indulgence in grief and deliberate cultivation of it would be appropriate for a devotee of sensibility. Its advocates believed in fostering and intensifying a variety of emotions, and saw a capacity for grieving and weeping copiously as a mark of tenderness and virtue.
36. They turned to every reflection that would make them more wretched.
37. admitting: allowing; permitting themselves.
38. romance: imaginative or romantic qualities.
Farnley Hall: a grand country house such as Norland might be.
[From John Preston Neale, Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen, Vol. V (1822)]
[List of Illustrations]
VOLUME I, CHAPTER II
1. While she is consistently shown to be a nasty person, especially in the remainder of this chapter, Fanny generally displays decent outward manners. One reason is probably her high social origins, for among the elite, especially in London (where her mother lives), a strong code of etiquette was taught and upheld.
2. If their son remains an only child, with no siblings to share his inheritance, he will be less harmed by any gift to others. She, however, is so determined to dissuade her husband that she will use any argument, good or bad.
3. Their income is at least five thousand a year (see note 22); they also inherited Norland house and its furnishings (the figures for income would be separate from that). In contrast, three thousand pounds would generate only one hundred and fifty pounds of annual income. Thus it represents only 2% to 3% of their fortune.
4. His use of “my dear Fanny” is a standard formulation in Jane Austen’s time, found throughout her novels and letters, and does not indicate any special intimacy and affection, or special formality and pretentiousness.
5. If they married their money would become part of the fortune of their husbands’ families.
6. Since her husband has just proclaimed his principal reason for assisting his sisters to be the sanctity of a promise, rather than his own inclination, she has cleverly kept insisting on a contrary moral principle, their duty to their son.
7. If half blood is “no relationship at all,” they would not really be his sisters. It is notable that he does not contradict her point.
8. mean: stingy, base. It is significant that he has switched from the inescapable obligation of a promise to the vaguer principle of not wishing to be mean.
9. “Above three thousand pounds” refers to what they will have once their mother’s seven thousand is divided between them and added to their own thousand apiece; the precision that he and his wife display on money matters indicates how much such matters concern them. Women did usually have smaller fortunes in this society, since property generally went to males and husbands were expected to support their wives. But most women of their class had more than this—his wife brought ten thousand pounds to him—and it was usually needed to attract a husband. Moreover, one would normally not count what a woman would inherit after a parent’s death, a procedure that allows John Dashwood to triple their supposed fortune, since it was what a woman had when being courted that counted, and in this society a woman usually needed to marry when fairly young if she was to do so at all.
10. worth half that purchase: likely to last half that time. Mrs. Dashwood is now forty. Average life expectancy then was low, though much of the reason was high childhood mortality. A reasonable number of people survived to old age, especially if they had already reached Mrs. Dashwood’s age, so John Dashwood’s estimate of only several years is probably premature. He may be thinking along those lines because it buttresses his argument about the girls having the expectation of inheritance from their mother.
11. stout: strong, robust.
12. clogged: encumbered.
13. Such charity to servants who had long worked for the family was common, a product of the strong ethos of upper-class paternalism.
14. Most servants’ annuities were not very large. Since Fanny’s mother is later shown to be a very wealthy woman, these payments probably represented only a fraction of her income. Nor would they have been much trouble, since a person in her position would usually employ someone, whether a family attorney or an agent or steward, to handle such details. That she nonetheless felt deeply aggrieved by the matter provides a hint of her greedy and unpleasant character. It also establishes a strong affinity between herself and her daughter.
15. A widow would often receive only a limited portion of her husband’s fortune, or only a regular payment from it while she lived, with the rest going to the heir. Fanny’s mother is an exception, and the power this gives her will play a critical role in the story.
16. There were four rent days: Christmas, Lady Day (March 25), Midsummer (June 24), and Michaelmas (September 29). They divided the year into quarters and were when many payments were due. Though Fanny’s example concerned twice-annual payments, and it would be perfectly possible to give the Miss Dashwoods annuities that were paid only once a year, he has stretched their possible frequency to four times a year to make them sound as unpleasant as possible.
17. By this point John Dashwood has completely abandoned any discussion of moral considerations to focus solely on his own pleasure and con
venience.
18. Pence were one of the three basic British monetary units, along with shillings and pounds. Twelve pence made a shilling, and twenty shillings a pound. Thus sixpence—which was half a shilling and the denomination of a silver coin—was a small amount. He probably chose this specific amount because the sixpence coin had long been one of the most common coins in Britain.
19. People who moved would usually have to hire wagons to transport their things, as well as a carriage and horses to convey themselves. A wealthy man like John Dashwood would certainly own a carriage and horses, and a large estate would probably have wagons or carts that could carry goods. Thus this would be of real assistance to them, though worth much less than the monetary sums discussed.
20. Many estates had fishponds, and many landowners hunted game (though John Dashwood is never described as doing so).
21. Husbands and wives in Jane Austen often call each other “Mr.” and “Mrs.”
22. The 5% rate of return she mentions is found throughout Jane Austen. It was the standard rate on government bonds, which were the investment of choice for money that was not tied up in land (there were 3% and 4% bonds as well, but they were sold at a discount, making the effective return the same). The precision about money displayed by both people in the conversation gives a good clue to their character.
23. Fanny is right about their not having a carriage and horses, and few servants, and this does save them considerable expense. But it also comes with a price, one that Fanny does not pay herself. For example, their lack of a carriage will restrict the range of other families they will be able to visit in their new home.
24. Stanhill is the house they lived in before they came to Norland—most prominent houses and estates were given names. The high cost of moving items would have spurred the sale of the first home’s furniture. The china, plate (table utensils), and linen, being more portable, were transferred, and because they were not originally part of Norland they do not automatically remain with the house. Thus Henry Dashwood, trying to give as much as he could to his wife and daughters, left them these items.