Volume 24, no 3, Winter 2011 - Jane Austen Society of North ...

Dashwood, she makes a point of finding out exactly
where Marianne and Willoughby wander on
their day trip to Allenton. If Mrs. Jennings is too
insistent on finding out what’s the matter with Marianne,
Mrs. Dashwood is far too reticent in not
finding out the true problems in Marianne’s romance
with Willoughby.
Johnson and Reynolds note that Mrs. Jennings
is an exemplar of important virtues Austen emphasizes
in Sense and Sensibility. As the widow of a
happy marriage, love as been a joy to her, and that
is why she seeks it for those around her. She exhibits
absolute, intense loyalty to those close to her,
even to Lucy Steele. She shows fortitude in her attempts
to help Marianne, and even stays with her at
Cleveland when the rest of her family flees. Her
benevolence – a good trait of sensibility, one that is
better than sympathy or empathy without action for
those distressed – added to her intuitive sense make
her an essential comfort to the Dashwood sisters as
their lives unravel in London.
Notes on Peter Sabor’s
Letters Presentation
by Sara Bowen
Letter writing in Austen is a topic
close to the hearts of Wisconsin
JASNA members after our
2005 AGM “ Jane Austen’s
Letters in Fact and Fiction”, and
Canadian scholar Peter Sabor
brought fascinating items from
the letters of Sense and Sensibility
to our attention at a Saturday
plenary.
Sense and Sensibility is
thought to have originated as an
Peter Sabor. epistolary novel, (or perhaps, as
Deirdre LeFaye opined in her
video talk, it grew out of the epistolary Love and
Freindship). 22 letters are mentioned in Sense and
Sensibility, and 6 are quoted in full, though none of
them rise to the heights of greatness shown by Darcy’s
letter in Pride and Prejudice or Wentworth’s
letter in Persuasion.
We learn a great deal about the characters in
Sense and Sensibility from their approach to letters.
We first hear of Sir John Middleton’s generosity
through the thorough discussion of his letter, though
it is not quoted verbatim. We learn that Mrs. Dashwood
is unsure of herself because of the approval
she seeks for her reply to that letter. Willoughby’s
letter rejecting Marianne contains a business form
of signoff, and Sabor wonders if this is Austen’s
secret sign that it really was written by the male
Willoughby, and not dictated by Miss Gray, who
would be a convenient person to blame when
Willoughby wants to denial ownership of the letter’s
brutal content later.
Perhaps the character most revealed through
letter writing is Lucy Steele. Unlike Austen, who
thriftily used every scrap of space in her letters, Lucy
writes short letters that waste the money of the
recipient who had to pay for them – little news for
much money. Sabor thinks Lucy probably would
have used large margins and huge scrawling handwriting
in contrast to Austen’s tight margins and
script. Lucy’s writing is full of bad grammar and
hypocritical sentiments. As Edward says after Elinor
reads Lucy’s “Dear John” letter, “this is the only
letter I ever received from her, of which the substance
made me any amends for the defect of the
style.”
Treasure Trove
by Judy Beine
(just attended my 12th AGM)
For those of you who did not go to this year’s AGM
in Fort Worth, you missed quite a boatload of goodies
in what has become our annual tote bag. This
year’s model was exactly the same as our 2005
AGM bag, same color even with the many zippered
Judy Beine & the Treasure of the Poker Tournament.
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