#Austen250 #Austen_Sense_2025

Cows grazing. From Humphrey Repton, The Art of Landscape Gardening (Boston, 1907; reprint edition)

Mrs. Jennings's … she found in Elinor and her husband, as she really believed, one of the happiest couple in the world. They had in fact nothing to wish for, but the marriage of Colonel Brandon and Marianne, and rather better pasturage for their cows.

 #Austen_Sense_2025
III,14

#Austen_Sense_2025
A challenge — I really enjoyed it. Thanks, Christina. Are you continuing? With P&P?
😍

„I considered the past; I saw in my own behaviour since the beginning of our acquaintance with him last autumn, nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself, and want of kindness to others. I saw that my own feelings had prepared my sufferings“… [Marianne]

#Austen_Sense_2025
III,10

Old Abbey, Evesham. One of many pictures of the ruins of an abbey by a leading painter of the time. M. W. Turner. [From Geoffrey Holme, ed., Early English Water-colour Drawings (London, 1919), Plate I]

„we will often go to the old ruins of the Priory, and try to trace its foundations as far as we are told they once reached.“
#Austen_Sense_2025
III,10

Annotation DM Shapard
#HenryVIII_2025
Jane Austen, after denouncing the cruelties of Henry VIII, jokes that „nothing can be said in his

1+

„I do not know what I told her“, he replied, impatiently; „less than was due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all likelihood much more than was justified by the future.“
[Willoughby]

 #Austen_Sense_2025
III,8

#Austen_Sense_2025

I'm catching up after some busy work weeks, and I came across this awkward, wonderfully layered and nuanced pivotal sentence.

Marianne:
"Because your merit cries out upon myself, I have been trying to do it away."
(III.1)

Earl Stoke Park: an example of a moder country house (from the perspective of 1811), with some features similar to the Palmers'. [From John Preston Neale, Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen, Vol. V (1822)]

„Cleveland was a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping lawn.“

#Austen_Sense_2025
III,6
Annotation by DM SHAPARD

„Houses that were modern in 1811…were located on high ground to give them good views. Older houses had been built in lower positions for the sake of shelter“…

"I have just been thinking of Betty's sister, my dear. I should be very glad to get her so good a mistress. But whether she would do for a lady's maid“…

#Austen_Sense_2025
III,4
Annotation by David M Shapard

“A lady's maid would dress and groom her mistress and take care of her clothes.

…“they must get a stout girl of all works.“

#Austen_Sense_2025
III,2
Annotation by DM Shapard

„A girl of all works would be the sole servant in a household…Such servants would always be female, since women comprised the great majority of servants and were significantly cheaper than male servants—

„A Fashionable Mama“: a satirical print on the growing popularity of breast-feeding among the wealthy. From Works of James Gillray (London, 1849)

Annotation by David M Shapard
III,1
#Austen_Sense_2025

„Among the wealthy, it was standard to hire a nurse for a new mother … The nurse is probably not a wet nurse, someone who supplied the infant with milk. The use of wet nurses was a long-standing practice among the wealthy

#Austen_Sense_2025 #Sensibility Definitely pegged him as Sense, not Sensibility.

"Edward, it is so and I will say it." C13

Cheering for Marianne as she unabashedly & improperly sings the merits of the unexhilarated Edward Ferrars before Elinor, highly discomfited, and the conniving Lucy Steele.

#Austen_Sense_2025 Wk 6 vol. II ch.9-14 #LoveThisBook

"But while the imaginations of other people will carry them away to form wrong judgments of our conduct and to decide on it by slight appearances, one's happiness must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance." C14

#Austen_Sense_2025 Wk 6 vol. II ch.9-14 #Happiness #Chance

„Mrs. Dashwood … had given each of them a needle book, made by some emigrant“

#Austen_Sense_2025
Sense and Sensibility II,14

“This refers to the large numbers of people, mostly of aristocratic background, who fled France during the French Revolution to escape execution or imprisonment.

„of the quarter of an hour bestowed on Berkeley-street, she sat at least seven minutes and a half in silence“

#Austen_Sense_2025
Sense and Sensibility II,12

„Etiquette dictated an introductory visit be fifteen minutes. The precision of ‚seven minutes and a half’

„At her time of life, any thing of an illness destroys the bloom for ever! Her's has been a very short one! … I question whether Marianne now, will marry a man worth more than five or six hundred a-year, at the utmost, and I am very much deceived if you do not do better.“

#Austen_Sense_2025
II,11

„This lady was one of my nearest relations … I cannot remember the time when I did not love Eliza; and my affection for her, as we grew up, was such, as perhaps, judging from my present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you might think me incapable of having ever felt.“

#Austen_Sense_2025
II,9

So much is happening! Worried about their mother's reaction to Willoughby's falseness. May have to read all of next week's chapters today....

#Austen_Sense_2025 Wk 5 vol. II ch.3-8

Kensington Gardens: Where Elinor drives with Mrs. Jennings, and sees Lucy Steele. Mayfair: Wealthy and fashionable area where most of the novel's characters reside while in London. Marylebone: Fashionable area that developed after Mayfair did; Mrs. Jennings and John and Fanny Dashwood live there. Bond Street: See next page. St. James: Old aristocratic area where Colonel Brandon resides, and Edward stays briefly. Exeter Exchange: Popular zoo where John and Fanny Dashwood take their son, Harry, on their first full day in London. Drury Lane: One of the two principal London theaters; where John Dashwood tells Willoughby of Marianne's illness. Bartlett's Buildings: Small street where the Miss Steeles spend most of their time in London, staying with their cousins. The City: Principal commercial section of London.

„They arrived in due time at the place of destination, and as soon as the string of carriages before them would allow, alighted, ascended the stairs, heard their names announced from one landing-place to another in an audible voice,

#Austen_Sense_2025
Sense and Sensibility II/6

„… Marianne was all the time busy in observing the direction of the wind, watching the variations of the sky and imagining an alteration in the air“

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Sense and Sensibility II/5

„Since the death of her husband, who had traded with success in a less elegant part of the town, she had resided every winter in a house in one of the streets near Portman-square.“
[Mrs. Jennings]

#Austen_Sense_2025
Sense and Sensibility II/3
(D.M. Shapard)

"...and the restless state of Marianne's mind not only prevented her from remaining in the room a moment after she was dressed, but requiring at once solitude and continual change of place...avoiding the sight of everybody." 144 ch.7

#Austen_Sense_2025 Wk 5 vol. II ch.3-8

And the flurry of missives from Marianne in these week's chapters of #Austen_Sense_2025 !!!

#Austen_Sense_2025

I love these gorgeous spiralling sentences of Austen. It slows me down and forces me to unwrap the idea. And it invites us into Elinor's thoughtful internal processing.

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"These difficulties indeed, with a heart so alienated from Lucy, might not press very hard upon his patience; but melancholy was the state of the person, by whom the expectation of family opposition and unkindness, could be felt as a relief!"
(2.1)

„Sometimes“ continued Lucy, after wiping her eyes, „I think whether it would not be better for us both, to break off the matter entirely… But then at other times I have not resolution enough for it.“

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I/22

„But do you know, he says, he will never frank for me? He declares he won't. Don't you, Mr. Palmer?“

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I/20

„One privilege of members of Parliament and other important government officials was to frank letters, which meant signing them and getting them sent free of charge.

A gig. [From G. A. Thrupp, History of Coaches (London, 1877), p. 75]

„The law was allowed to be genteel enough; many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and drove about town in very knowing gigs.

#Austen_Sense_2025
I/19

#Austen_Sense_2025 I/18
(D.M. Shapard)

The picturesque was a concept that had become very popular at this time … The picturesque was used for scenery characterized by irregularity, roughness, and variation, features not fitting into either of the other categories.