A comic scene

Sense and Sensibility, Book 3, Chapter IV (Chapter 40 in cheap editions)
This chapter is almost entirely taken up with a bit of situation comedy. But it's not just funny.

Assuming anyone coming by here has already read the book, the joke is that Mrs. Jennings has overheard snippets of a conversation in which Colonel Brandon tells Elinor of his plans to offer Edward Ferrars a living. Mrs. Jennings assumes that he is in fact proposing to Elinor. This all happens in Chapter III.

In Chapter IV both women express their satisfaction with what what they understand to be the situation never realizing that they completely misunderstand one another.

Now, pause for a moment and think of how a scene like this would be handled on a situation comedy on television. Imagine it on Seinfeld. The whole point of such a set up would be the revelation when all would be revealed and we'd all laugh at the stupidity of at least one of the people involved. Austen does no such thing. The actual revelation is of no dramatic importance at all:

The deception could not continue after this; and an explanation immediately took place, by which both gained considerable amusement for the moment, without any material loss of happiness to either, for Mrs. Jennings only exchanged one form of delight for another, and still without forfeiting her expectation of the first. 

So why does Austen create all this comic misunderstanding? (And yes, there is a significant omission of any discussion of Elinor's feelings above—an ironic admission for the truth is that Elinor had no happiness to lose to begin with—but I'll leave that for others to ponder.)

Well, I think the explanation is in Mrs. Jennings' reaction above. Unlike Seinfeld, where all the characters are calculating, manipulative jerks, the entire misunderstanding in this chapter is driven by charity. Everyone assumes that the others have the best motives whatever it is that they are doing. And they are correct in this. So the revelation, when it comes, brings not humiliation but good feeling. (And there is some terribly good advice about how to live our lives embodied in this.)

I say "everyone" above and not "both" because a similar misunderstanding soon crops up with Edward who shows up and is ushered upstairs to see Elinor by Mrs. Jennings. Elinor had been writing a letter to Edward to tell him of the living and now finds herself telling him in person.

And Edward promptly assumes that Elinor had something to do with bringing this generous action of the Colonel's about. So Elinor gets credit she doesn't deserve. Or does she maybe deserve something after all? She did not have anything to do with convincing the Colonel to do this generous thing to be sure but her response to an event that is against her hopes but in Edward and Lucy's interest is generous. This living will make it possible for Edward and Lucy to marry after all.

Edward praises Elinor for an imagined selfless act but what is selfless about her is her generous feelings. In fact, Elinor, Edward and, yes, even Mrs Jennings all display generous, selfless feelings here. Feelings that do connect with something outside them.

What is the "sense" that connects these feelings with something outside them? I think Austen is a profound and sophisticated moral philosopher but in this case I think the right answer is the one that is right on the surface. All three have feelings that connect with something outside the person feeling them because they are disciplined feelings. There is nothing more to it than that.

Then again, that is a little like saying that all you need to do to learn to play a musical instrument or a second language is to practice regularly. That is true enough but why do so many people fail then?


By the way, I finding I'm going at this very slowly again despite promising to go faster. I know, I know but Austen herself moves so deliberately in these final sections. Again, the contrast with modern attempts to do the same is strong. The final scene of The Jane Austen Book Club movie, for example, is just a montage of people kissing and taking one another's clothes off.

In a sense, this book is over now. However the details might work out, it's all inevitable from here on in. And yet Austen moves slower than ever.