Sense & Sensibility Chapter 19

As Barton Cottage loses Edward, the Palmers arrive at Barton Park

Want to join a private one-on-one book club with Frances? Contact her to request a time

Support the podcast and hear episodes early on Ko-fi

Find Frances on YouTube, Instagram or at her website

Buy our merch on Redbubble or Zazzle

Book for a Jane Austen Society of Aotearoa New Zealand event on Humanitix

Transcript

Frances:  welcome to the amateur austenite. i'm frances duncan, author, austenite, and life coach. my cohost is emma dunning.

Emma:  ready for a siesta.

Frances:  oh, i tried to have one earlier. today we're discussing chapter 19 of sense and sensibility. a lot happens. it kinda feels like it should be two chapters. edward leaves. before he leaves, there's this whole discussion are mrs. jennings' daughter and her husband. who are missus jennings' daughter and her husband. so edward stays a week, you were commenting that to you it seems like a week is a long amount of time?

Emma:  but jane austen, wants us to know that is in fact a short visit and that he is cutting it short. even though he doesn't lie and tell them that he's got something else to do, he tells them that he doesn't have any time constraints, that he doesn't want to go to london or Norland but he has to go to one of them, but he's insistent that he must go. and they put this down to missus farris. they put everything down to missus farris and eleanor mentally comments that it's quite handy to have a mother that nobody knows so they can put any anomalies in edward's behavior down to it must be missus farris.

Frances:  so there are a couple of reasons that he has to go. one of which is probably missus farris. she would not be pleased if he stayed very long there because fanny will have told her mother about eleanor, and they're trying to make sure that edward doesn't marry eleanor they don't know about lucy, where he's just been. but he also may be trying to lump those two trips together so it's not everyone's knowledge that he's been to two different places.

Emma:  ah, so if he spends a week in one place, a week traveling, and a week in another place, he's just been three weeks away. yeah.

Frances:  and the amount of time it takes to travel is important. that's why you tend to stay a long time. if it takes you two days to get somewhere, also costs a lot of money to get there, you stay longer. people would stay months. remember that he was at Norland for six months.

Emma:  and he's sat in a house with four ladies, presumably the man servant. would he sleep in the main house?

Frances:  yeah. he'd sleep in the garrets.

Emma:  yeah. yeah. it just does seem a little bit odd. there's no man of the house, a young unmarried man staying with a couple of unmarried ladies and their widowed mother who's only 40.

Frances:  she is a widow. that makes her respectable.

Emma:  seems like a missed opportunity.

Frances:  and what for him to sleep with all of the dashboards at one of my ears there? why not?

Emma:  he's not that kind of guy.

Frances:  no. everything as you say is put back to his mother to explain why he's being the way that he is. and missus dashwood teases him, you'd be happier if you had some sort of profession, and you'd also know where you were going when you left. it must be so weird for them that he's like, i've gotta go. i don't know where i'm going, but i have to go. i want to get away from you? that's what it sounds like, but he's also saying my greatest happiness is being here with you. there's a whole quite large speech from edward. he doesn't talk this much. i have no necessary business to engage me, no professional employment, nothing to afford me independence. i am an idle, helpless being. i've always preferred the church, not smart enough for my family. they recommended the army, too smart for me. he could be dashing and expensive whether he had a red coat, i. e. the army, or not. the law could be good, but i had no inclination for the law. the navy, it was fashionable, but i was too old. and since i don't need the money, idleness was decided to be the most advantageous and honorable thing for me to do. it sounds like he wants to be doing something, but he's not been allowed to. general tilney in northanger abbey thought it was really important that his sons had professions even though his eldest son, captain tilney, would inherit northanger and the money that came with it, general tilney thought it was important that he had a job. and i hate to think what sort of shit he would have got up to if he didn't have a job, because he was bad enough as it was.

Emma:  i have to agree. it is important to have your own occupation that you can feel proud of what you yourself have achieved. and edward clearly sees that. he does go to oxford to be idle. to enter the church, you do have to study theology. yes. he could always have taken orders. i suppose you could study something other than theology at oxford, but it's interesting that he hasn't put his foot down with his mother before now.

Frances:  because he's edward, he's not the sort that would put his foot down. not about something like this. when it comes to lucy, he puts his foot down because that's the honorable thing, but he also respects technically he should be head of the family, but yeah. but the question about employment comes up a lot in sense and sensibility, and it's possibly one of the reasons that he likes the dashwoods so much, because they have their own employments. they're always working on something.

Emma:  that's true, and it comments that edward's sister,

Frances:  doesn't. and the same with the middletons. they don't have anything to keep them busy, and they're always like, what are the dashwoods doing? we turn up and they're always doing something, it's so odd. but they're not idle. they work on their music or their art. not sure what mrs. dashwood works on reading, but it's very clear that they always all are working on something. they're not just sitting around waiting to be entertained like the middletons, and that's why the middletons constantly need people there to keep them entertained. we

Emma:  do get some insights into, um, into edward's self esteem. edward talks about if he has sons that they will be brought up to be as unlike himself as possible in feeling, action, condition, and everything. very sad.

Frances:  i think all parents want their children to be better people than they were, but yeah, the way that he's saying it's unlike yourself as possible. like, there's something wrong with me. i don't want my kids to have that. although most people would go, i don't think i should have kids, actually, if that's the case.

Emma:  but this is pre contraception. true. so to not have children is not to marry.

Frances:  and we know he will, whichever way it goes. he knew he was going to marry. missus dashwood, again, just wants it to be his mother's fault. she keeps coming back to that. at some point your mother will give you an independence. it's her duty. and missus dashwood always wants to think the best of people, and perhaps it is missus ferris's duty to give edward some kind of independence, but what she's focused on is i want him to be fancy. people should know him. he should be in expensive clothes and expensive carriage

Emma:  and more like robert. yeah. the independence part is interesting. so presumably at the moment edward gets an allowance and what he should have is the lump sum handed over to him to manage himself. so the allowance means that he's kept on a string, he has to do what his mother says or his allowance gets cut cut off.

Frances:  which when he's in his twenties, should be an independent man, it's quite uncomfortable. and you can kinda see why he's stuck, because his mother won't let him out the apron strings.

Emma:  so he leaves despondently.

Frances:  and eleanor handles this so differently than mary anne, and mary anne is quietly bitchy about it in her own mind. eleanor is determined to not appear to suffer because that would increase the suffering of her family. she's not going to follow even though mary anne thought it was the right thing. she sat down to her drawing table to do her drawings. as we say, she's always employed. she doesn't avoid speaking about him. she appears interested in everything that's going on around her, but it's still painful for her. but at least she's not making it worse for everybody around her. and mary anne sees fault in this. she can't see fault in the way that she behaves, but she sees fault in the way that eleanor is behaving. but her internal explanation for this is that eleanor doesn't have the strong affections that she does, she only has calm affections. that's why she's not so affected by edward leaving, because she doesn't love him with the violence that

Emma:  i love willoughby. and that cherry on the top of this, and there's that mary anne believes that this makes mary anne the better person, that she could possibly love someone as much as she loves eleanor when eleanor is so calm. how great am i, marianne, that i can love someone that calm? yep.

Frances:  it's still hard for eleanor, and this is kind of the worst bit that they can't see it.

Emma:  yeah. she's making such a self sacrifice here for their comfort, and they are absolutely oblivious.

Frances:  she doesn't avoid her family, but there are times where they're all employed where it feels like she's alone, she thinks about him all the time, thinking of him and how he behaved and what it means. and going over the conversations over and over again in her mind. she is kinda doing the same thing as mary anne but in a really different way. not in such a way that it's draining her of ability to do anything else and making everybody else involved in this for her. it is quiet in its internal, but it doesn't mean that it's any less impactful than what mary anne is going through. and then we switch gear into funny. okay. should there be a chapter break? this is so wild. it's suddenly she's sitting there thinking about edward. then sir john comes up, talks to her through the window, encourages her to open the window so she can continue talking to her and is like, hey we bought you visitors.

Emma:  missus jenning is hallowing through the window she's galloped across the garden to shout through the window. and they're talking about their guests who are right behind them and can probably overhear. charlotte's very pretty, i can tell you. you may see her if you look this way. i stick your head out the window and have a look and see if she's pretty or not. they haven't even knocked on the door yet. presumably this the servant girl is supposed to come and answer the door generally speaking. it is just bizarre. it's a sneak preview. poke your nose out the window. have a sneak preview of

Frances:  your guests before they actually come in through the proper way. mary anne's not there and sir john's like, i can see her pianos. i've been hit. she'd run away because we came. he knows, but she's like, i need quiet. but then when she turns back up, he goes and opens the door

Emma:  to her, doesn't even let the servant do it. and we meet the absolute delightful palmers. missus palmer is missus jenny's younger daughter. the older daughter is lady middleton whom we know is all very stiff and what she's all about, how things appear, and then we have a younger daughter who is described as short and plump with a very pretty face and prepossessing manners and a smile, she smiled all the time except when she laughs.

Frances:  we saw a production of this where the charlotte palmer character laughed the entire time she was on stage, and it was at such a pitch, you just cringed every time, it was beautifully done. very hard to sustain, mean that is acting craft right there.

Emma:  she's married to, mr palmer, a grave looking young man of 25 or 26, which is interestingly young and he has no willingness to please or be pleased, so his behaviour is truly magnificent. he enters the room with a look of self consequence. he slightly bows off to the ladies. he does not say anything. he's meeting people for the first time. he does not say anything. he surveys the people, the room, sits down, picks up a newspaper, and reads it the whole visit.

Frances:  he looks up when mary anne arrives because she's a monstrously pretty girl, but that's it. when he goes to leave is the first time he really talks, and he just, like, looks around the room and was like, this isn't a great room. the ceiling's a

Emma:  bit low and it's crooked, bows and leaves.

Frances:  for the dashboards though, that might be actually nicer than dealing with the loud

Emma:  people. this is another bad first impression. mrs jennings made a bad first impression with her vulgar behaviour and mister palmer is making a bad first impression. but don't be deceived.

Frances:  both characters, we learn as the novel goes on, are actually good people. eleanor has a lot more perception, and i think it's even in the next chapter, i thought it was in this one, she realizes that mr. palmer's not so bad, he's just i married someone who doesn't have any brains. i'm a little bit embarrassed about this. i was taken in by someone who was really pretty and married her before knowing her well enough, which seems to be a bit of a trope at this time because the same thing happened to mister bennett.

Emma:  except that missus palmer is good humoured. true. and that's not to be undervalued. i mean, i myself would not like to live with someone who talks quite this much.

Frances:  but had there been an ential would mrs. palmer become mrs. bennet? because you've gotta bear in mind that mrs. bennett needs to get her daughters married off, that's why she is the way she is, because they don't have enough money to live on once he dies.

Emma:  but also, it's not nice to live with a husband who doesn't respect you, that affects how you behave too. missus bennett must know that her husband doesn't respect her.

Frances:  missus palmer knows that her husband does not hear her. she finds it funny. will she become more like missus bennett because of the way he treats her in addition to the potential, uh, entail

Emma:  well, we shall see. missus palmer is very much like her mother, missus jennings in the prattle. there's a beautiful piece of dialogue here from mrs jennings she's telling them how surprised they were that the partners came mrs jennings is telling the dashwoods about their arrival that they had arrived so suddenly they heard the carriage last night. i had thought of nothing but whether it might not be colonel brandon had come back again. so i said to sir john i do think i hear a carriage perhaps it is colonel brandon come back again. the way she recounts the story why say it once when you can say it twice? it's just a beautiful piece of character writing. you can hear missus jennings talking and talking and talking.

Frances:  there's several paragraphs before you pick back up with mrs. jennings who's been talking that entire time. she talked on as loud as she could, continued her account.

Emma:  obvious surprise.

Frances:  missus jennings showing she is vulgar again indicates that missus palmer is pregnant, and lady middleton changes the subject because it is inappropriate. i feel for lady middleton having such a sister and such a mother that it must embarrass her constantly. not on a way that she's a feeling kind of person because little middleton has been described as cold, but more of she's aware that they're not behaving the way that they should be.

Emma:  i think there's kind of a middle ground where you can be affectionately tolerant of the foibles of your family.

Frances:  lady middleton's not that, she even struggles with her husband.

Emma:  unfortunately we do see that eleanor and marianne are still a bit snobbish about these new friends of theirs because they are invited, up to the park to have dinner they don't want to go because they have no expectation of pleasure.

Frances:  is that snob ish considering that whole scene that we just witnessed where they had mister palmer ignoring everybody, missus jennings and charlotte both talking nonstop.

Emma:  they probably would enjoy an evening at the cottage pursuing their own interests more. i guess it's quite comic to read about these characters, but maybe not so enjoyable to spend an evening of several hours in their company.

Frances:  with mrs palmer's laugh, she does seem genuinely happy, lovely person. she's complimenting everything. the room's lovely. look at the art. it's so lovely. i can look at it. forever can look at it. sits down and forgets it missus dashwood does encourage them to go to dinner though. you guys should go socialize. but she chooses not to go because she wants to maintain the rules of sociability where the middletons should dine with them as much as they dine with the middletons.

Emma:  but it's okay for her daughters to go. i imagine it costs a fair amount to feed the crowd of them now would be five extra people to dinner, and that's quite an expense if you're gonna feed them meat and multiple courses. she has to be a bit careful how often she invites them to dinner. that too.

Frances:  in one of the chapters around here, i'm not sure if it's before or after, lady middleton is expressing a similar, no, we can't have the gilberts because they dined with us last. we have to dine with them before we can invite them again. yes. she and missus dashwood do have the same rules of society, but they kind of apply them in a different way, where lady middleton comes off as cold and missus dashwood

Emma:  doesn't. i think the rules are partly so nobody feels awkward.

Frances:  which, thank you, can we bring those back? because i don't understand socialising.

Emma:  i think there are.

Frances:  rolebooks. for now?

Emma:  yeah. i just think that they're not universally agreed

Frances:  austen's making a joke about missus jennings and her daughters that they are anxious to avoid a family party.

Emma:  yeah. and then they've only just arrived too. they can't actually tolerate an evening of only themselves they need someone to, to break

Frances:  it up a bit. when they arrive, ellen is all by herself and missus jennings says, you'll be glad of a little company to sit with you, because she would be. and sir john would be, and probably lady middleton would be, but not eleanor. eleanor's quite happy to be solitary. all of the dashwoods are happy to be by themselves because they don't need other people to stimulate them. they've got more going on. and that's a big difference between the characters.

Emma:  is that not just introversion and extroversion? is not more virtuous to be introverted than it is to be extroverted.

Frances:  i i am not, attributing any virtue to it. i think that austin is using it as a way to joke about the middletons and the jennings that they don't have a lot going on in their heads.

Emma:  yes, that's fair. i said it explicitly earlier.

Frances:  mary anne's bitchy and doesn't wanna go. we don't have to pay much rent here, but it's so hard having to socialize with them all the time. we pay in other ways. and eleanor's like, you didn't used to mind. i wonder why. what's changed? i mean, she would never be that straight about it, but yeah. and that's our discussion of chapter 19 of sense and sensibility by jane austen. i've been frances duncan, and this has been emma dunning. thank thank you for listening, and we wish you happy reading.