The Context of Sense and Sensibility 71
like manners.—I set him down as sensible rather than
Brilliant1-There is nobody Brilliant nowadays.9
Colonel Brandon’s "forlorn and cheerless gravity” can of
course be understood when we learn that Willoughby, Mari-
anne’s faithless suitor, has seduced Brandon’s ward, the
daughter of the woman he had loved and lost, and that he
and Willoughby have met in a duel.10 This commonplace
Richardson plot is later told by Brandon to Elinor, and by
her reported to Marianne; it represents in almost glaring
form the difficulty that later imitators of Richardson had in
combining the degenerate vein of tragedy derived from
Clarissa with the drawing-room comedy derived from
Grandison and modified by the robust variations of that
comedy contributed by Bumey. The misdeeds of the rake,
seducer, or weakling may be necessary as an inciting move-
ment in the plot, but they are kept off-stage, and at their
worst touch the heroine only indirectly. Willoughby is a
much reduced and softened Lovelace, a Lovelace cut down
to size. Jane Austen saw the wealmess and absurdity, not
the romantic or heroic side, of Richardson’s hero-villain;
and later dwelt at some length on the absurdity of the
extravagance of the admirers of Lovelace in her portrayal
of Sir Edward Denham in Sanditon. Yet Willoughby must
have some degree of worth to be introduced even as a
possible suitor for Marianne, just as, on a different scale,
there must be some positive virtue in Lovelace, in order that
he may at any time be taken seriously by Clarissa; or, later
in Jane Austen’s work, just as Henry Crawford must have
some merit in his capacity as a suitor of Fanny Price. Wil-
loughby is characterized superficially and at arm’s length.
Jane Austen could integrate Elinor’s troubles with the
social comedy of the Steeles and the uncongenial Ferrars
family, but Marianne, whose mode of Sentimentahsm pre-