The Context of Sense and Sensibility



70 The Rice Institute Pamphlet

Sir John Middleton and his selfish and insipid wife, the in-
credibly disagreeable Mrs. Ferrars, the vapid beau Robert
Ferrars combine to represent the heartless world, cutting to
some extent across class-lines, to which Mme. d’Arblay s
heroines are exposed. The Burney situation of the young
girl seeing the world, derived ultimately from Richardson’s
Grandison, is duplicated in form when the sisters go to Lon-
don under the dubious chaperonage of Mrs. Jennings. As
Elinor says, “She is not a woman whose society can afford
us pleasure, or whose protection will give us consequence.”7
Not all this variegated cast has a close bearing on the hopes
and disappointments of Marianne, but since Edward Ferrars,
Elinor’s suitor, had already got himself engaged to Lucy,
the younger Steele sister, Elinor’s fate is bound up with these
people.

In such company the serious and virtuous characters are
“out of spirits.” The story needs a witty and animated par-
ticipant, which is perhaps an unfair way of saying that it
contains no Ehzabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse, no per-
son such as Emma Watson and Charlotte Heywood promise
to become in the fragments
The Watsons and Sanditon. As
for the respectable men whom Elinor and Marianne marry
at last, Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon, we can assure
them, as Jack Absolute assures FauIkland, that no one could
accuse them of being “the joy and spirit of the company.”8
Edward, at least, needs to be treated as Jane Austen later
treated the pensive Benwick in
Persuasion. In her letters she
deals shrewdly with these young men touched by depression:

We hear a great deal of Geo. H’s wretchedness. I sup-
pose he has quick feelings—but I dare say they will not
kill him.—He is so much out of spirits however that his
friend John Plumptre is gone over to comfort him, at Mr.
Hatton’s desire; he called here this morning in his way.
A handsome young Man certainly, with quiet, gentleman-



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