Marianne to Elinor
Sense and Sensibility, Vol 1, Ch 17
Category Archives: Happiness
Money & happiness
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Filed under Happiness, Marianne, Money, Sense and Sensibility, Wealth
What indeed?
“’What have wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?’” [Marianne]
‘Grandeur has but little,’ said Elinor, ‘but wealth has much to do with it.’
‘Elinor, for shame!’ said Marianne; ‘money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it. Beyond a competence, it can afford no real satisfaction as far as mere self is concerned.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Elinor, smiling, ‘we may come to the same point. Your competence and my wealth are very much alike, I dare say; and without them, as the world goes now, we shall both agree that every kind of external comfort must be wanting. Your ideas are only more noble than mine. Come, what is your competence?’
‘About eighteen hundred or two thousand a year; not more than that.’
Elinor laughed. ‘Two thousand a year! One is my wealth! I guessed how it would end.’”
Elinor & Marianne discussing with Edward the need of money for happiness
Sense & Sensibility, volume 1, chapter 17 [emphasis mine]
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Filed under Competence, Elinor, Happiness, Marianne, Money, Sense and Sensibility, Wealth
A new period of existence
“He had made his fortune, bought his house, and obtained his wife; and was beginning a new period of existence, with every probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through.”
of Mr. Weston
Emma, volume 1, chapter 2
The charms of Miss Bates
Why is it everyone likes Miss Bates so much?
“Her daughter [Miss Bates] enjoyed a most uncommon degree of popularity for a woman neither young, handsome, rich, nor married. Miss Bates stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having much of the public favour; and she had no intellectual superiority to make atonement to herself or frighten those who might hate her into outward respect. She had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother and the endeavor to make a small income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, a woman whom no one named without goodwill. It was her own universal goodwill and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved everybody, was interested in everybody’s happiness, quick-sighted to everybody’s merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother and so many good neighbors and friends and a home that wanted for nothing. The simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a recommendation to everybody and a mine of felicity to herself.”
Emma, volume 1, chapter 3
Filed under Beauty, Character description, Contentment (or not), Emma, Happiness, Miss Bates, Money, Popularity, Poverty
Passion and virtue
“How Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable independence, she could not imagine. But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture.”
Lizzy reflecting on Lydia and Wickham’s hasty marriage
Pride and Prejudice, volume 3, chapter 8
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Filed under Happiness, Lydia Bennet, Money, Poverty, Pride and Prejudice, Sex, Wickham
Never loving by halves
” . . . that Marianne found her own happiness in forming [Col. Brandon’s] was equally the persuasion and delight of each observing friend. Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband as it had once been to Willoughby.”
Sense & Sensibility, volume 3, chapter 14
Filed under Col. Brandon, Happiness, Love, Marianne, Marriage, Sense and Sensibility
Willoughby’s fate
“…he long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy and of Marianne with regret. But that he was forever inconsolable, that he fled from society, or contracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a broken heart, must not be depended on; for he did neither. He lived to exert, and frequently to enjoy himself. His wife was not always out of humour, nor his home always uncomfortable; and in his breed of horses and dogs, and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of domestic felicity.”
Sense & Sensibility, volume 3, chapter 14
Filed under Col. Brandon, Happiness, Marianne, Sense and Sensibility, Willoughby
Know your own happiness
“‘You are in a melancholy humour and fancy that anyone unlike yourself must be happy. But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by everybody at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.'”
Sense & Sensibility, volume 1, chapter 19
Mrs. Dashwood is speaking to Edward Ferrars, who is loathe to leave them after visiting Barton Cottage for a week (and generally distraught about having no occupation or skills)
Filed under Edward Ferrars, Happiness, Mrs. Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility
Learning to brook being happier than I deserve
Can’t resist posting one more from Persuasion today:
“‘It is a sort of pain, too, which is new to me. I have been used to the gratification of believing myself to earn every blessing that I enjoyed. I have valued myself on honourable toils and just rewards. Like other great men under reverses,’ he added with a smile, ‘I must endeavor to subdue my mind to my fortune. I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.'”
Captain Wentworth, during the card party at the Elliots, after he learns that Anne would have accepted him had he come back to her much sooner
Persuasion, volume 2, chapter 11
I love the hint of grace here.
Filed under Anne Elliot, Capt. Wentworth, Contentment (or not), Grace, Happiness, Persuasion
The gravel walk
“There they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other’s character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting.”
Of Anne and Captain Wentworth’s engagement along the gravel walk in Bath.
Persuasion, volume 2, chapter 11
I believe I walked along this gravel path in Bath, but didn’t realize what it was while I walked there.
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Filed under Anne Elliot, Capt. Wentworth, Character, Happiness, Persuasion, Proposals
The Jane Austen Guide to Life: Thoughtful Lessons for the Modern Woman (May, 2012)