Thursday, February 25, 2010

Wonderful Mrs. Jenniings

As with the Middletons, we could easily get quite down on Mrs. Jennings if we considered only the feelings she seems to evoke in others. Which others? Hard to say. Austen has a marvelous knack for expressing feelings without really tying them to a person. Sometimes we end up inside a certain characters head without knowing quite how we got there.

But what of the facts? Mrs. Jennings is always "discerning" love affairs in the behaviour of young women and disconcerting at least some of them by doing so. But here is what I wonder, How often is she wrong? She gets one thing wrong (but only sort of wrong), in the next few chapters, but off the top of my head I can't think of anything else. I'll have to make a note of any as I go through.

I'd forgive her almost anything given how much colour she adds. Charles Dickens created some wonderful characters and is rightly admired for it but I don't know that he ever came up with anyone as magnificent as Mrs. Jennings. I'd love to meet her.

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