a woman of fortune, I would leave her every harmless absurdity to take its chance. . . . Were she your equal in situation—but, Emma, consider how far this is from being the case! She is poor; she is sunk from the comforts she was born to; and if she should live to old age must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed! You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honor—to have you now, in thoughtless spirits, and the pride of the moment, laugh at her, humble her—and before her niece, too—and before many others, many of whom (certainly some) would be entirely guided by your treatment of her. This is not pleasant to you, Emma, and it is very far from pleasant to me; but I must, I will—I will tell you truths while I can trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now', While they talked, they were advancing towards the carriage; it was ready, and before she could speak again he had handed her in. He had misinterpreted the feelings which had kept her face averted and her tongue motionless. They were combined only of anger against herself, mortification, and deep concern. She had not been able to speak,' and on entering the carriage, sunk back for a moment overcome; then reproaching herself for having taken no leave, making no acknowledgment, parting in apparent sullenness, she looked out with voice and hand eager to show a difference; but it was too late. He had turned away, and the horses were in motion . . . . Emma felt the tears running down her cheeks almost all the way home, without being at any trouble to check them, extraordinary as they were."
It is not on such grounds, in such terms, that a heroine is often talked to in a novel, and it is not so that she commonly takes a talking-to. But it is to be remembered that Knightley is not only Emma's tacit lover; he is the brother of her sister's husband, and much her own elder, and as a family friend has some right to scold her. It is to be considered also that she is herself a singular type among heroines: a type which Jane Austen perfected if she did not invent, and in that varied sisterhood she has the distinction, if not the advantage, of being an entirely natural girl, and a nice girl, in spite of her faults.
II
"Sense and Sensibility " is the most conventional, the most mechanical of the author's novels. The title, like that of " Pride and Prejudice',' implies the task of developing two opposite characters in the antithesis which suggests itself; but Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are contrasted much more directly and obviously than Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. These, indeed, are often interchangeably proud and prejudiced; but Elinor is always a person of sense, and Marianne is always a person of sensibility. One sister always looks the facts of life in the face; the other always sees them through a cloud of romantic emotions. It is not pretended that the wise virgin escapes suffering any more than the foolish, and so far, the novel attests itself the effect of Jane Austen's clear perception and faithful observation. It abounds in the truth and courage which distinguish everything she did, and it is perhaps more humorously just and more unsparingly exigent of true ideals than some other books of hers. But it is built more than her other books upon the lines of the accepted fiction of her time, or of the times before hers. In the affair of Marianne's false-hearted lover Willoughby there is almost a reversion to the novel in which young men habitually sought the love of trusting girls and betrayed it. It was in fact her earliest novel and she first wrote it in the form of letters. Then, after she had practiced her 'prentice hand to mastery in "Pride and Prejudice," she recast " Sense and Sensibility " in its present shape. It is only inferior to her other novels; compared with most of the novels that had gone before hers, this least of Jane Austen's is a masterpiece; and the romantic Marianne, even more than the matter-of-fact Elinor, is a picture of girlhood touched in with tender truth, and with the caressing irony which still leaves the character pleasing.
The story is distinctively modern in giving a description of the sister heroines, which was probably an afterthought, and occurred to the author in the making over. "Miss Dashwood," she says, "had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister's, in having the advantage of height, was more striking. . . . Her skin was very brown, but from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her features were all good; her smile sweet and attractive, and in her eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness, which could hardly be seen without delight." Marianne's mother is as romantic as the girl herself, and it is by her connivance that the girl thinks it a kind of merit to be a credulous simpleton, and to believe more in the love of the cruel scoundrel who flatters and jilts her than he openly asks her to do. When she finds herself in London, shortly after their parting in the country with all the forms of tacit devotion, on his part, and he snubs her at their first meeting in society, she owns in her shame and grief, that there has been no engagement. " ' It was every day implied, but never professedly declared. Sometimes I thought it had been—but it never was.' Yet with a faith in his unplighted truth as absolute as the sense of her own loyalty to him, she would have been ready to seize upon him, and claim all his remembered tenderness, if her sister had not prevented her.
"'Good Heaven!' she exclaimed, 'he is there, he is there! Oh! why does he not look at me? Why cannot I speak to him?' 'Pray, pray, be composed,' cried Elinor, 'and do not betray what you feel to everyone present. Perhaps he has not observed you yet.' This, however, was more than she could believe herself, and to be composed at such a moment was not only beyond the reach of Marianne, it was beyond her wish. She sat in an agony of impatience that affected every feature. At last he turned round again, and regarded them both; she started up, and pronouncing his name in a tone of affection, held out her hand to him. He approached, and, addressing himself rather to Elinor than Marianne, inquired in a hurried manner after Mrs. Dashwood, and asked how long they had been in town. Elinor was robbed of all presence of mind by such an address. . . . The feelings of her sister were instantly expressed. . . . 'Good God, Willoughby! what is the meaning of this? Have you not received my letters? Will you not shake hands with me?' He could not then avoid it, but her touch seemed painful to him, and he held her hand only for a moment. ' I did myself the honor of calling in Berkeley Street, last Tuesday. . . . My card was not lost, I hope?' ' But have you not received my notes?' cried Marianne, in the wildest anxiety. . . . 'Tell me, Willoughby—for Heaven's sake, tell me, what is the matter?' He made no reply; his complexion changed, and all his embarrassment returned; but as if, on catching the eye of the young lady with whom he had been previously talking, he felt the necessity of instant exertion, he recovered himself again, and after saying, ' Yes, I had the pleasure of receiving the information of your arrival in town, which you were so good as to send me,' turned hastily away with a slight bow, and joined his friend. Marianne, now looking dreadfully white, and unable to stand, sunk into her chair. . . . 'Go to him, Elinor,' she said, as soon as she could speak, ' and force him to come to me. . . . I cannot rest, I cannot have a moment's peace, till this is explained—some dreadful misapprehension or other. Oh, go to him this moment.' 'How can that be done? No, my dearest Marianne, you must wait. This is not a place for explanations ' . . . Marianne continued incessantly to give way ... in exclamations of wretchedness. In a short time Elinor saw Willoughby quit the room . . . and telling Marianne that he was gone, urged the impossibility of speaking to him again that evening."
III
In an earlier age of fiction, if not of society, the folly of Marianne would have meant her ruin; but in the wiser and milder aesthetics of Jane Austen it meant merely her present heartbreak, with her final happiness through a worthier love. Hers is a very simple nature, studied with a simpler art than such an intricate character as Emma's. She has only at all times to be herself, responsive to her mainspring of emotionality; and a girl like Emma has apparently to be different people at different times, in obedience to inconsistent and unexpected impulses. She is therefore perhaps the greatest of Jane Austen's creations, and certainly the most modern; yet even so slight and elemental a character as Marianne is handled with the security and mastery, which were sometimes greater and sometimes less in the author's work.
"Persuasion," which was the latest of her novels, is in places the poorest, and "Sense and Sensibility," which is, on the whole, the poorest, has moments of being the greatest. There
