Sense & Sensibility, chapter 13: On The Offense

Here’s a scenario: pretend that Sense & Sensibility is the only novel from its time that you’ve ever read. No other Jane Austen books. No nonfiction pieces from the time. Definitely no Fordyce’s Sermons. 

Just using the context of S&S, would you be able to tell what’s proper and what’s improper? Not necessarily right versus wrong, but polite versus impolite. Would you go into a house when the owner is in residence even though you haven’t met her? Would you leave a group of people you promised to take on a day trip without offering an explanation? Would you badger your would-be host into giving said explanation? 

In this chapter, different characters offer different answers for each question.

Elinor at one point tells Marianne that “the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.” This come after the reveal that Marianne and Willoughby visited Allenham, the estate currently owned by Willoughby’s older relation that he will inherit. Marianne counters that “if there had been any real impropriety in what I did, I should have been sensible of it at the time, for we always know when we are acting wrong, and with such a conviction I could have had no pleasure.” Did you clock that “we” she uses? She might be referring to herself and Willoughby, but it can also read as a universal “we.” Marianne argues that knowledge of impropriety is intrinsic; therefore, if she feels that whatever she does isn’t bad, she doesn’t feel bad about doing it. Very seventeen-years-old of her.

Let’s apply this logic to Mrs. Jennings, shall we?

As a large group of people are waiting to leave on their trip to Whitwell, the estate Col. Brandon’s brother resides in. But a letter delivered to Col. Brandon upsets these plans, and the colonel hastily prepares to go to London. Everyone is disappointed. Mrs. Jennings, Sir John, Willoughby, and Marianne all press him to delay his new journey so that they can all go to Whitwell. Mrs. Jennings eagerly asks, over and over, why he’s changed his mind and what the contents of the letter were. Over. And. Over. It is ridiculous. It is embarrassing how many times she tries to wheedle information out of Col. Brandon, who politely ignores her. She actually suggests that he tell the entire group what’s going on, “we might see whether it could be put off or not.” Ugh. Nosy neighbors.

Then, after Col. Brandon has left, Mrs. Jennings blabs that she actually knows the reason: one Miss Williams, “a relation of the colonel’s.” To Elinor, she explains (erroneously) that Miss Williams was born out of wedlock to Col. Brandon. After that, at dinner, Mrs. Jennings reveals that she knows that Marianne and Willoughby visited Allenham (her servant got it out of the groom). “I hope you like your house, Miss Marianne,” she teases. “[W]hen I come to see you, I hope you will have new-furnished it.”

Who here thinks Mrs. Jennings has been incredibly rude so far? And who here thinks she feels a lick of guilt about it?

Marianne’s transgression of visiting a house with only a man as a companion isn’t quite the same as an older lady spreading gossip because she’s bored. But there is an interesting character dynamic at play. When Elinor invokes Mrs. Jennings’ “very impertinent remarks” as something that should check her sister’s behavior, Marianne replies, “If the impertinent remarks of Mrs. Jennings are to be the proof of impropriety in conduct, we are all offending every moment of our lives. I value not her censure any more than I should do her commendation.”

If there was a Mrs. Jennings in your life, would you be inclined to take her seriously? This is one of the reasons I like Marianne as a character: while her selfishness is perpetually annoying, I can empathize with her dismissal of Mrs. Jennings. She does nothing to earn Marianne’s respect.*

Marianne, though embarrassed to be found out, is not ashamed of what she actually did.** When Elinor asks if it’s true, Marianne gets “quite angry with her for doubting it.” It takes a simple scolding from Elinor for Marianne to later admit “it was rather ill-judged,” but she doesn’t act like she believes it. In fact, she tattles on herself even more, revealing that she could “describe every room in the house” if Elinor lets her. All these allusions to a theoretical engagement and a future marriage muddle the lesson on propriety. Only Elinor points out that even if Marianne were to soon be Mrs. Willoughby, she still “would not be justified in” visiting a house she has no business seeing. But Marianne’s too caught up in her fantasy to listen. 

Irony alert: Willoughby jokes that Col. Brandon wrote the emergency letter himself to get out of hosting duties. 

Next time, Willoughby admires Barton Cottage and it appears that Milloughby is going strong.

*I’m not disputing that as an older woman in the same class as Marianne, she deserves respect. But Mrs. Jennings’ carefree attitude makes her an ineffectual authority figure.

**I think the sneakiness of Mrs. Jennings—how she learned what she now knows—is more offensive to Marianne than the knowledge itself.