“Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract by her conduct her most favorite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another-and that other, a man who had suffered no less than herself under the event of a former attachment, whom, two years before, she had considered too old to be married, and who still sought the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!”
Sense & Sensibility, volume 3, chapter 14
More on Marianne and Colonel Brandon in an article I wrote in response to Lori Gottlieb: Would Jane Austen Settle? (I think not, but I also think she would challenge our definition of love.)
The Jane Austen Guide to Life: Thoughtful Lessons for the Modern Woman (May, 2012)
I loved your article about settling. I think you hit it right on the head about love being a verb, an action. You go, girl!
I’m assuming it’s a coincidence that I used the same quote just last night in the comments on my blog review of the new S&S mini-with the precise same words in bold. How funny!
Thanks, Karen. Valancy-yes! Great minds, you know!
I liked your article. I’ve been listening to the Screwtape Letters on tape and at one point he says of humans: “They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life as something lower than a storm of emotion.” Proof of the power of words; for all that appealing stuff our word is ‘settling’.
Wonderful quote from Screwtape.