Sense & Sensibility Chapter 6

The Dashwood ladies arrive at Barton Cottage, Daisy makes a dash for it and Rachel has her eyes on Sir John

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Transcript

Chapter 6

Frances: Kia ora, welcome to this episode of the amateur austinite. i am frances duncan, author, austinite life coach. my lovely cohost is rachel Pilois book buyer, austinite, and all around nerd. hi. and our canine cohost is daisy. daisy. today, we're discussing chapter six of sense and sensibility. the dashwood ladies arrive at barton cottage and are overwhelmed with their welcome from sir john middleton. there's a description of the cottage and the valley that it's in and all the woods and the little town and it sounds lovely, but i also can't picture it in my head. austin's making a joke that it's not an appropriate cottage because the roof is tiled. i assume that the roof is supposed to be thatched, not tiled. the wood shutters are not painted green, and the walls aren't covered with honeysuckle. it's not doing very well for a picturesque cottage.

Rachel: yeah. it's a little bit of a disappointment.

Frances: because it's actually relatively modern. it said that it was built recently.

Rachel: yes. which surprises me because the main description of the cottage is that it's fairly rundown. sir john says that he's happy to make any changes that they deem appropriate or necessary. and i'm actually like, girls, you should have taken them up on that.

Frances: i think the point that austen's making is it's not run down. but because they're used to a grand house.

Rachel: it is in comparison.

Frances: it's got two sixteen feet square, sitting rooms either side of the entrance. that's about five meters squared ish. but it also has four bedrooms. it's quite large for what i'd think a cottage is, and it sees two garrets, which are like the attics. so that's where the servants would sleep. so i'm assuming the two maids share a room, and then the man has a room to himself.

Rachel: my brain forgot that they still had servants. yes, you guys are, in quotations, destitute now. but y'all are still living a pretty cushy life.

Frances: compared to some people. yeah. compared to some. yeah. compared to the life that they knew, not so much. the cottage had not been built many years and was in good repair. but in comparison of norland, it was poor and small indeed. that's the difference. austin's making fun that they've got a house to live in, and it's quite a nice cottage, but it's not picturesque to be a real cottage. and it's not as nice as the house that they had to leave, which it isn't because it's a cottage. it's not an estate.

Rachel: i feel like i could believe that this description was given by mary anne.

Frances: because she wants a romantic cottage.

Rachel: she wanted the romantic cottage, and this doesn't do it. she's lamenting how bad it is.

Frances: she wants it to be tumbled down, rambling.

Rachel: yeah. perfect every way.

Frances: Mrs dashwood's talking about improvements she's talking about maybe adding another room and another attic and making the parlors together she's renting this. are you allowed to do big changes to a house when you're renting at this period of time? or is it again showing that Mrs dashwood has no idea what she's doing? because austin also is like, there's no way she's gonna be able to afford this because she's never saved a penny in her life.

Rachel: yeah. she never had to.

Frances: austin likes to make jokes about cottages because there's a whole thing with robert ferrars later because it was fashionable for rich people to build what they considered a cottage, which is not a cottage. and then be like, we are rusticating.

Rachel: this is my quaint little holiday home that's bigger than most people's regular homes.

Frances: kinda like what happened in new zealand, like, twenty, thirty years ago about baches yep. so a batch is a holiday home by the sea, and they used to be very simple, kinda one room things, often without power. you stayed in them for a week or so during the summer. lots of people had them. but at some point, it became really fashionable, people were building houses, not little shacks. it was a whole house. and now people expect baches as we call them in parts of new zealand, to be really fancy instead of really pared back like it used to be. and that was kind of the point of it, that you go away to have a break and you leave everything behind. yeah. the simple life, which is what these rich regency people were talking about doing but weren't actually doing.

Rachel: yeah. that's a really good analogy, actually.

Frances: thank you. i'm quite proud of me for bringing that back around to relevance.

Rachel: appause. appause. i guess this kind of is that because they're closer to the sea now as well.

Frances: i like the 2007 adaptation where they really emphasize the sea. they have, like, hanging shells and stuff. in particular, they talk about unpacking Marianne's anne's pianoforte and hanging Elinor's drawings. the sisters are both really strongly tied to their interests. i'm not sure if we'd say hobbies, their employments, perhaps. but there's no mention of margaret. she's too young to have interests or employments yet maybe? genuinely,

Rachel: so much of this first part of this book, i've just forgotten margaret existed because she's just barely been mentioned.

Frances: jane austen jenga. if you remove margaret from the novel, does the novel fall over?

Rachel: oh, man. that is a good question. i can't think of a part where she's, super vital. my main memories of margaret when reading this book or watching any of the adaptations is just her announcing to her family when people are showing up to the house. someone's coming, and it's edward. someone's coming, and it's willoughby carrying mary anne back from the fall

Frances: is she there so mary anne's not alone when she's walking because you can't really go walking alone on the open downs. you could in grounds, it's slightly different. because if eleanor were there, eleanor would deal with the situation. you could argue that might be a reason for margaret to be there.

Rachel: she could also be there as a way to kind of show edward's character more, because there's lots of little bits where he is, like, playing with her or being, like

Frances: no. you're thinking of a movie.

Rachel: am i not? you're thinking

Frances: of the 1995 movie.

Rachel: oh, i thought that it was a scene in the book as well. it's been a while. i haven't gone through the whole thing yet.

Frances: that's okay. we don't want you read ahead. having the extra child does increase the pressure on the dashwood family. that's another mouth to feed.

Rachel: i think that maybe the main reason is maybe just for missus dashwood to have more strength because it changes her from being a mother who is just wanting to get her daughter's wed so that they have homes and stuff to being like, well, actually, i have a young child. she's not getting married for for a long time. she's not gonna have independence for a long time. it's not just me who needs to be taken care of. it's margaret, and that adds another level to the

Frances: necessity of their living situation. yes. agreed. another woman not of marriageable age or not marriageable because he would probably say missus dashwood is not marriageable.

Rachel: yeah.

Frances: so wrong. Sir john is introduced. and all the stuff that we've been talking about previously about how great this guy is, he wants to offer every accommodation from his house and garden that they don't have in their cottage. it does say he's only 40, but he tends to be cast older in the movies, etcetera. so i see him as older, which is why i thought of him more as santa than a superhero.

Rachel: hold up a dang second, because he's described as a handsome man in his forties. this is not how he's been portrayed in any form of the media. he is always shown as a man of at least 50, always rounder and not like, you know but i'm like he's good looking. this is a hot eligible man. i wrote in my notes icon sir john introduction. good looking, good manners, good humor, all green flags. excellent. and i also then started questioning, if anyone listened to our previous season, they'd know that i stan robert martin from emma. love him. Sir john might be a contender for new favorite some of you might have played the jane austen inspired board games trying to find a suitor and it's always the leading men, darcy, bingley, edward ferrars i'm like, no. give me robert martin. give me sir john middleton. those are the ones i want to romance.

Frances: well, you're thinking about the practical things. does that make you a little bit of a charlotte lucas?

Rachel: shit. yeah. i am the kind of best friend. i'm not the protagonist. i'm the best friend character of a story. but i could do better than mister collins.

Frances: i'm a side character too.

Rachel: although, in saying that, i have always said if i was a bennett sister, i'd be kitty.

Frances: yeah. so side character. yeah. yeah. i'm probably closest to mary.

Rachel: it's the tism.

Frances: it's the tism. sir john is missus dashwood's cousin, and he had visited them at their previous house before they moved to Norland but the girls don't remember him. he's the same age as Mrs dashwood, but he's only been married about seven years to his wife of twenty seven.

Rachel: which is wild. because he's about 40 or in his forties.

Frances: so there's a thirteen year age gap. it's not bad.

Rachel: not bad. look, it's still smaller than, Emma and knightley's. i find the description of, his wife of lady middleton. really interesting,

Frances: reserved, cold, and nothing to say for herself beyond the most commonplace inquiry or remark?

Rachel: yeah. it's like complete opposites. they could say opposites attract,

Frances: that's the real description once they get an idea of her. the initial description, she was not more than six or seven and 20. her face was handsome, her figure tall and striking, and her address graceful. her manners had all the elegance which her husbands wanted. but then they realized that, you know what? she might be well bred, but she could have some of that frankness that her husband has. it would make her a bit warmer.

Rachel: we do get this kind of cold first description of her, which as we get to know her, even just in the next couple of chapters, you actually daisy doesn't care for, lady middleton. daisy wants to leave, the recording room. it seems like we're getting a slightly biased perspective of her from their first encounter,

Frances: i'm not sure she improves on closer acquaintance because she just wait. where are you going?

Rachel: daisy. we've had a daisy on the loose.

Frances: but the point is that lady middleton never gets better. she's always just very wooden and doesn't have anything to say for herself. the whole point is she brings her oldest child because she has nothing to say for herself.

Rachel: is that a biased perspective because of how she relates to the dashwoods? is that what she's like behind closed doors with her husband?

Frances: you remember in the last episode, you're talking about how much you hate Fanny dashwood? yeah. those two become friends.

Rachel: oh, okay. yeah. nah.

Frances: how? they like each other.

Rachel: okay. yeah. lady middleton's got some deficiencies of character.

Frances: thank you. that was my point.

Rachel: why did sir john marry her then?

Frances: presumably she had a certain amount of money and she's elegant and pretty, so she's the correct sort of person that you marry. but she would do very well in a drawing room, but you don't get to know someone intimately until you marry them

Rachel: and spend time

Frances: with them. although, some people still lived pretty separate lives when they were married.

Rachel: that's true. she was very lucky with who she got to marry.

Frances: yeah. he could have sucked. he was great. he does make it difficult for her because he likes to throw parties, and she's like, yes, everything has to be very elegant. and he's like, but bear. kind of.

Rachel: reserved introvert meets frat boy extrovert.

Frances: yes. exactly. back to sir john. the ways that he's great, he actually seems excited by their arrival, and he actually wants them to be comfortable. and he's not just talking about stuff. he sends them stuff from the garden, fruit, game. he wants to send me letters for them and send them his newspaper. he's thinking about practical things to help them and save them money because this stuff is all really expensive. and because they don't live directly in the village, also kinda difficult for them. lady middleton does the appropriate thing by sending a civil message to see if she could visit when it's not an inconvenience. she's very good about following the rules. this is the thing that you're supposed to do, but it doesn't make her warm.

Rachel: when you've got a character like sir john who is going so above and beyond, it makes the actual, meant to do thing seem less kind and polite than it is. like, lady middleton is still polite and, doing the civil thing, by following the rule, but it just seems like she's not doing much because sir john is doing everything.

Frances: really everything. it says that they really wanted to meet lady middleton because their comfort would depend on her. but, really, i kinda think that their comfort at barton depends on sir john. yeah.

Rachel: i would agree. the way that lady middleton would affect their comfortability would be when sir john invites them over for dinner and how she behaves, because i don't know what lady middleton would be doing that would make them uncomfortable otherwise. god, can you imagine if sir john wasn't giving them all this food and stuff? they would be stressing more about their money.

Frances: they would. and if he wasn't sociable and lady middleton wasn't sociable as she is, it would be really awkward for them. so maybe they help balance each other out. yeah. and we'll learn more about missus jennings in the upcoming chapters, but missus jennings and sir john are two sides of the same coin. and i kind of wonder if it was missus jennings that got her daughter married to him. it does say she likes to get people married off.

Rachel: i would believe that. this chapter does a really good job of also portraying, the john dashwoods worse, or at least john dashwood himself. we've been introduced to two johns so far. one of whom thinks he is giving by doing absolutely nothing, and one who doesn't feel like he's doing that much but is giving everything.

Frances: he'd do more.

Rachel: he'd do more if he could.

Frances: and he's not being asked. no. and he's not

Rachel: required. make a promise to anybody on their deathbed to do this. no. it's an interesting discussion on, familial duty this is the kind of stuff that john dashwood should have been doing.

Frances: definitely.

Rachel: and it's not coming from him. it's coming from a distant relation who they're just lucky to have and just lucky is kind.

Frances: without sir john middleton, their fates would be very different.

Rachel: they would be living in a

Frances: really bad cottage, a poor cottage somewhere. even though they're looking down on the place that they're living, it is new, it is in good repair, and they're getting a bunch of free shit in addition to the very cheap rent, which means that their lives are gonna be a lot more comfortable

Rachel: yeah.

Frances: than they otherwise could have been.

Rachel: i think that was the best decision that they moved out there. because, they originally didn't want to move so far away, but just to get away from fanny. maybe that's the best thing fanny does in the whole book is be enough of a bitch to get them to accept sir john's offer.

Frances: and that is our discussion of chapter six of sense and sensibility. i've been frances duncan. this has been rachel Pilois bye. and, daisy, you wanna say bye? she's not sure about it. thank you for listening. we wish you happy reading.

Rachel: maybe this is what the podcast should be. we just let daisy decide what we're gonna talk about and it should

Frances: show follow her and go,