Sense & Sensibility Chapter 10

We get to know Willoughby and learn he's not a fan of the Colonel

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Transcript

Frances:  welcome to the amateur austinite. i'm frances duncan, author, austinite life coach. i'm joined by my lovely cohost, rachel Pilois book buyer, austinite, and all around nerd. hi. today, we're discussing chapter 10 of sense and sensibility. they've just met willoughby. he turns up the next day and then is basically there all the time, and they're super into each other almost immediately. eleanor discovers that colonel brandon is actually into mary anne and kinda indicates that perhaps he wasn't when missus jennings was saying it before, but he is now. and willoughby says some shitty stuff about colonel brandon.

Rachel:  yeah. this is the chapter of mary anne and willoughby falling in love, which for viewers who are listening because we're not recording this videoily, i'm using air quotes. he sucks. i say falling in love in quotes because i can't trust that he is actually genuinely falling in love with marianne or if he's just faking it because he thinks he's gonna get something out of it.

Frances:  he does seem to agree with her on everything in this chapter. anything she sees, he's like, yes. exactly.

Rachel:  and anytime he says something that she disagrees with, she was able to persuade him to her way of thinking no. that doesn't sound genuine.

Frances:  it starts off talking about how he's learned about their family, they're sensible, elegant, mutual affection, domestic comfort, and the personal charms of the entire family. but the thing that bothers me is at this point, he's quite happy to destroy this family by his selfish behavior. just had a list of how wonderful they are, and he's learned this. but we know that at this point, he definitely has no actual good intentions. he's like, i'm just gonna kill some time while i'm here.

Rachel:  he knows from literally the first time he meets marianne and drops her home that these aren't people with much money. he also knows he has no funds. you know you can't provide a good life for her, but you're making it seem like you can.

Frances:  he's also 25, and she's 17. this is normal. much larger age gaps are normal at this period. but as we know, at 25, your brain is fully matured.

Rachel:  yeah. but this is willoughby, so i doubt that.

Frances:  i'm just saying there shouldn't be any excuse for his behavior. no. he's old enough to know better. we've gotta consider that mary anne's never really been out in the world. she is 17.

Rachel:  yeah.

Frances:  so she must have only just come out and has only ever been at norland and now barton.

Rachel:  yeah. she's an incredibly naive person. and most of what she knows from the world is things she probably would have read in books. and that's where she would have a lot of her, romantic ideals and notions from. so when she first meets willoughby in chapter nine, and he rescues her because she's hurt herself and carries her home. genuinely, that is a good meet cute.

Frances:  oh, yeah. she's had a meet cute. yeah. she's got the romance of this novel.

Rachel:  that is actually a really kinda cute and romantic way to meet someone. and so, you know, she's 17. she's like, i just had the most romantic experience of anybody's life ever, and i'm gonna marry that man. and then he keeps coming back to, see her every single day. and first, he's like, oh, i'm just checking in to see how she is because she was hurt. and then eventually, she's fine, and he's like, i just wanted to say hi. what else is she gonna think? that is romantic. that's romance.

Frances:  and she gets the romantic description of her beauty as well.

Rachel:  yes. that's true.

Frances:  though Austen still manages to make a joke about it. basically, she's so lovely that when she's called beautiful, truth is less violently outraged than usually happens. what a roundabout way to say that she's actually beautiful.

Rachel:  the way that austen sometimes just describes people's skin, i'm like, this sounds like you want to be taking it off and wearing it. her skin was very brown, but from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant. i'm like, just sounds like you wanna eat it, which is what we thought about mister elton when we did emma.

Frances:  jane austen wants to wear mary anne's skin.

Rachel:  hey. hot take. hot take. this is my take. jane austen is writing characters whose skin she wants to be inside.

Frances:  at the start, though, mary anne holds back not exactly trying to be proper, but she's embarrassed because he picked her up and carried her, and that's a little close. but that changes so quickly. he charms her and, she's got that eagerness. eager is a word that's used to describe her really often in this novel.

Rachel:  yeah.

Frances:  he loves music and dancing just like she does, and she gives him this look of approbation to say, yes. you. that wonderful. she's given him the feedback that he needs to know what to say to engage her. and it says it's only necessary to mention her favorite amusement to engage her to talk. exactly what he did. and it turns out that they agree on everything. and she wanted a guy that agrees with her on everything, but does he really or is he just

Rachel:  saying that? is he just saying that? we eventually get to learn the inner workings of some of these characters' minds and their intentions. but mary anne meeting willoughby, how is she supposed to know what his intentions are or who he actually is? she can't go to facebook and stalk him or check his instagram history and see what he's been up to. she has to take his word for what he's saying. but then the other person who i think is at fault is sir john because anytime he's asked about willoughby, he's saying, oh, yeah. he's as good a bloke as any. how well does sir john actually know willoughby? because he's vouching for him to people who trust him, who he's been very kind and lovely to. these women took a lot of trust and faith that you had provided home, and you did it, and you smashed it. so you've set yourself as the highest form of trust in this situation because you have and you followed through, and that's well deserved. but then you vouch for this guy do you know him very well or are you just saying that? this is someone we trust saying he's a good bloke. this is the background check we're getting.

Frances:  if we're going back to social media, we only know about people from social media what they portray. yeah. and that's the same here. Sir John only knows what willoughby portrays, and the dashboards only know what willoughby portrays. and, unfortunately, can you ever really know someone, particularly in this society where politeness means that you keep a lot of things internal.

Rachel:  mhmm. if you're only meeting people at, like, community events, balls, say you're an aggressive and abusive person. that's almost always gonna be happening behind closed doors. the public and just general acquaintance isn't going to see that.

Frances:  whichever society you're in. yeah. he works fast, though, so much so that eleanor is poking fun at mary anne after his first visit because they're conversing like long established acquaintance. she jests, you'll have exhausted every favorite topic. he only has to talk about the picturesque and second marriages. and then you've talked about absolutely everything. and it takes a while for mary anne to realize that she was joking.

Rachel:  yes. she gets a bit upset until their mother comes in saying she was only jesting. that is also very just, marianne in character of just taking things too seriously in that respect she's very defensive of her opinions and anything about her.

Frances:  and this guy's perfect. they read. they talked. they sang together. his musical talents were considerable, and he read with all the sensibility and spirit which edward had wanted. mhmm. remember how painful it was for her? and austin says he was exactly formed to engage mary anne's heart, which makes it sound like he is intentionally doing this perhaps.

Rachel:  i mean, she's essentially creating her own ideal young man because he is just being a yes man. he's just agreeing with everything. what she wants in a man is someone who is identical to her in every way, because she wants them to conform to all of her opinions, and so she's falling in love with basically a version of herself.

Frances:  mary anne date a woman.

Rachel:  yeah. because she's just like, oh, he agrees with everything i'm saying. that's perfect. you're perfect and beautiful. i love you because you agree with me.

Frances:  they are a bad influence on each other because one way that they're similar, he displayed a want of caution, and he tended to say too much what he thought on every occasion without attention to persons or circumstances. and that's something that two of them do.

Rachel:  and again, identical. mary anne just wants to date herself including the insensibility.

Frances:  but Austen's joking about it as well. mary anne previously was like, i will never meet a man who is good enough for me, who will meet my ideas of perfection, but here he is.

Rachel:  he's right there because you made him.

Frances:  and before the end of a week, missus dashwood assumes that they're going to be married.

Rachel:  which is crazy my daughter only met this man, like, a week ago. they're gonna be married. i'm just gonna call it now. and i'm like, girl, maybe feel them out for a bit longer before you place your bets. everything does happen quicker in this time.

Frances:  we get the impression that people marry on very slight acquaintance. they're talking about the picturesque because mary anne has particular views about what is picturesque. and edward says to her, i like things to be clean and tidy. i get that you like things to be unusual i just like it to look nice rather than picturesque, and this is something Austen talks about in multiple of her novels. it lizzie uses it as a joke when she's at netherfield to say, oh, you're too picturesque in a three, so i will run off. so you're not in a four. and katherine learns about it from the tilneys in northanger abbey and says that bath isn't worth painting because it's not picturesque. so this is the sort of movement that mary anne is into, the very romantic beauty of things. remember, we're talking about the cottage that it's not ramshackle enough, and that's probably mary anne's thoughts.

Rachel:  yes. because she finds beauty and the kinda strange,

Frances:  willoughby is this perfect guy. he's handsome, and he matches all her things. should she not prefer someone who's a little odd yeah. that's more picturesque?

Rachel:  someone say, like, colonel brandon has a picturesque kind of beauty about him i think we're a quite picturesque brand.

Frances:  we are. we are. we're absolutely gorgeous.

Rachel:  coming back to this this little argument well, not argument, but eleanor, poking fun at mary anne and mary anne, defending herself she's actually not really, listened to anything that eleanor has actually said. she's making up the objections eleanor is saying, you know what he thinks about, all these poets and, oh, you guys have talked about every topic. there'll be nothing left to learn about him. mary anne is just being like, i've been too much at my ease. i'm too happy, too frank. you're telling me that i'm, not being good or not being, an appropriate lady, and you're attacking me another really good example of marianne's character she's not actually really listening to what anyone around her is saying. she's just hearing what she wants to hear, which again is why willoughby can so easily manipulate her. but it's why when people try and warn her, she just doesn't listen to anything they say. because she's just like, you have said one thing against me regardless of whether or not you're

Frances:  attacking me. you disagree with me you're attacking me?

Rachel:  yeah. was there any hope for mary anne avoiding this situation?

Frances:  we do need to remember she's 17, and this is pretty accurate. i'm sorry for any 17 year olds listening, but, yeah, when people would say things that were different to what i believed at that age, i would get very upset. these days, i'd just be like, well, you're wrong. but anyway

Rachel:  you're wrong, and i'm walking away. exactly.

Frances:  i'm less likely to get my back up about it. i'd be like,

Rachel:  walk away. yeah. that's fair. the

Frances:  whole second half of the chapter is about colonel brandon. so eleanor now perceives colonel brandon's attraction to mary anne, which suggests this that, potentially, he did not actually have it before, but it has developed now. the attention and wit of the others were drawn off to make fun of willoughby and mary anne, which makes it sound like they only care about a laugh and not people's real feelings.

Rachel:  oh, oh, i definitely don't think they care about anybody else's feelings but their own. and by their own, i mean only mary anne's feelings.

Frances:  eleanor is now realizing that when missus jeannings said this earlier. she assigned these feelings to colonel brandon for her own satisfaction. but now she can see colonel brandon watching willoughby and mary anne. eleanor can see it herself.

Rachel:  i don't think it's so much that it wasn't there before, but maybe it was just like you know, you and me don't really, um, have crushes and feelings for people the same way that a lot of other people do. but, you might see someone on the street and be like, wow. i've kind of put a little crush on them because they're so cute. i feel like maybe that's how brandon first saw mary anne was like, wow. she's so beautiful. and all of his friends picked up on, he's got the hots for her. and then, eventually, once that passed, they were just like, now this other hot guy's come along and, they obviously have this chemistry. but by this point, now brandon does have genuine emotion towards marianne. don't understand why, bro. you could do better.

Frances:  he likes that she's eager and excited and musical and reminds him of his lost love, but he's actually had time to develop those feelings for her. it wasn't an initial thing. we've kind of read into the novel that it was, but here it's saying that, no. it wasn't there initially. it's there now. so he's had time to develop that stuff. maybe missus jennings does really know him and went, this is exactly your sort of girl.

Rachel:  yeah. that's true.

Frances:  colonel brandon's a real hero, though. willoughby, surface level hero. handsome, charming, all of that. but colonel brandon is an ex military man. he is wounded both physically and emotionally. and Sir John kind of drops hints about his past and of him being an unfortunate man his reserve is the oppression of his spirits rather than he's just a bit grumpy in general. this should excite mary anne's interest, but because she's so enamored with the hot young guy, she's not noticing the real true romantic hero that's in their midst. and willoughby is a dick about him. everybody speaks well of him, but nobody actually cares about him. we're delighted to see him, but nobody actually remembers to talk to him.

Rachel:  which is really sad.

Frances:  rude thing to say about somebody.

Rachel:  i think willoughby can see brandon's feelings. he is so wrapped up in mary anne and, paying attention to her, and he knows he's secured mary anne's affections. but, he's probably heard people say, oh, brandon likes marianne. and so he's kind of, gonna be extra mean about it just to spite the guy for no reason.

Frances:  yeah. exactly. no reason. yeah. he comes up with a ridiculous reason for disliking colonel brandon. three unanswerable reasons. he threatened me with rain when i wanted it to be fine. he's found fault with the hanging of my curricle and i cannot persuade him to buy my brown mare like, what? that's not a reason to dislike somebody. and you kinda gotta wonder whether he knew that eliza was colonel brandon's foster daughter or not. that's i don't think ever explained whether he did.

Rachel:  it wouldn't surprise me if he did if she had mentioned colonel brandon by name, and then when he finally meets this guy, colonel brandon, he's like, oh, it's this guy.

Frances:  i'm sure he must have known him from being at barton before.

Rachel:  probably. it would make sense. but brandon doesn't really say much on willoughby or, having a previous acquaintance with willoughby.

Frances:  willoughby wants the privilege of disliking colonel brandon without interference. he makes fun of the information that the colonel has from the east indies mary anne's like, i bet he said it's hot, and the mosquitoes are annoying. and Willoughby's like, oh, maybe he talked about nabobs and all that sort of thing. i wonder if part of it is actually jealousy as well because colonel brandon has traveled. he has been places. he's done things. and willoughby specifically points out that he has more money than he can spend.

Rachel:  he's jealous of his money, jealous of his experience.

Frances:  potentially. eleanor suggests that since they don't like lady middleton and missus jennings, and those people like colonel brandon. perhaps the fact that mary anne and willoughby talk shit about colonel brandon is, in its roundabout way, praise. because willoughby says, who would submit to the indignity of being approved? by lady middleton and missus jennings. who could command the indifference of anybody else?

Rachel:  just because these two insufferable women like him, i think it says more for his character that he puts up with it or at least acknowledges it because he's a nice guy. he's polite

Frances:  they say nice things about willoughby too.

Rachel:  yeah. that's true. they're very, congratulatory of willoughby and mary anne at what point is anyone saying something good about brandon okay to them? and it's almost like there isn't because, then they make they make fun of eleanor for saying nice things about him.

Frances:  what if eleanor had not met edward? yeah. colonel brennan seems like the type of guy that she might like. she said he's seen a great deal of the world, and he's read a lot. he thinks. he gives me good information. he is good natured. i know that he thinks about things. i know that he cares about people, and he has sense which will always have attractions for me. even if he is 34, mary anne, the way that's put in there is, like, you can tell that mary anne opens her mouth, and eleanor's, jumping on it before she says anything.

Rachel:  yep. she's like, shut up, you dummy. i do kind of like the thought of eleanor and colonel brandon as a couple. they would be a good match. maybe more so than edward, but it just happened who met who first.

Frances:  i think, potentially, if mary anne had died and edward had married lucy, maybe they would have married and consoled each other. i don't know. there is one fantastic line which i intend to make a t shirt out of. you are endeavoring to disarm me by reason and to convince me against my will. this is willoughby saying, no. don't try to tell me he's a good guy. i just want to dislike him. okay? don't give me logic.

Rachel:  i mean, i do get that a little bit.

Frances:  yeah. i tell people off when they give me logical reasons for things.

Rachel:  i'm like, no. shut up. don't wanna like that thing. but also, normally, i have a better reason to dislike it than who threatened me with rain when i wanted sunshine.

Frances:  bro. why do you reckon willoughby actually dislikes brandon?

Rachel:  because he's a dick. willoughby,

Frances:  that is.

Rachel:  willoughby's a dick. mic drop.

Frances:  i feel like that's a good place to end. and that's our discussion of chapter 10 of sense and sensibility. i've been frances duncan. this has been rachel Pilois bye. thank you for listening, and we wish you happy reading.