Sense & Sensibility Chapter 21

The Miss Steeles burst onto the Barton scene and make waves.

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Transcript

Frances :  Kia ora, welcome to the amateur austinite. i'm frances duncan, author, austinite, and life coach. my cohost is emma dunning. floored who is apparently floored today. we're discussing chapter 21 of sense and sensibility. in chapter 21, the palmers leave in the very first sentence and are replaced by the missus steel, who ingratiate themselves at the park, and Sir John attempts to force a friendship between them and the dashwoods. edward is mentioned by miss steel somewhat mysteriously.

Emma:  my first comment is nothing to do with the main gist of the chapter, eleanor wondering about charlotte palmer being so happy without a cause. eleanor finds that strange because most of the world needs something to make them happy. but charlotte is one of the more rare people who simply is a happy and optimistic person and subsequent science has proven these people do exist. we are not those people, frances and i, but they do exist. and the interesting thing about them is that the rest of us tend to read them as being less intelligent.

Frances :  because what i'd heard prior to this was that the research shows that people are scanning for negativity. they're scanning for things to be concerned about, and charlotte, it seems, is just naturally happy, possibly even scanning for things to be happy about. and we're like, oh, you're gonna get into some trouble for

Emma:  that. yeah. it's necessary for the survival of the human race for most of us to be scanning for danger, but there is a proportion of the human race who are just happy, and charlotte palmer is one of them. probably means she ovulates every month and has lots of babies.

Frances :  well, she's pregnant at this point.

Emma:  there you go.

Frances :  so there is that i think it would be a bit draining to be around someone who was always so happy. if you weren't happy you'd probably want to slap them.

Emma:  i think it would be draining to be around someone who talks so much with so little to say. it would actually probably be really delightful to be around someone who is happy

Frances :  all the time. that's a really good distinction. thank you. i wonder whether charlotte doesn't notice the negative of things, doesn't let them affect her, or ignores them.

Emma:  well the closest negative thing to her her is her husband.

Frances :  and she's delighted by him. yes. and she recognizes that he's like, he never listens to me. he doesn't hear. he's always grumpy. i like him. i wonder if she gets joy from provoking him into grumpiness by her happiness.

Emma:  or maybe she sees what we will later see, that he has a good heart and he is reliable.

Frances :  a good heart and reliable is probably more important than temperament in the long term, but in the short term i imagine that would be quite hard to live with someone who's always grumpy even if they have a good heart

Emma:  absolutely it is. it's so curious with these two. why did he marry her? presumably he was less grumpy when they were courting.

Frances :  she's hot, you need to remember that about charlotte. yeah. she's hot. and eleanor herself is wondering about the strange unsuitableness existing between husband and wife. which often existed, so it sounds like this is something she's seen before. i mean, we see it with charlotte's sister's relationship. the middletons in some ways are a good match. they both have the rank and the money that they want, they both need lots of people around them, but the way that they do that is a bit unsuitable between each other.

Emma:  i think that's enough, though, for the middle tons

Frances :  but then you see fanny and john dashwood. and they seem to be good. happy. i'm not sure we have any other unsuitable partners, in this particular novel that eleanor could be drawing from that we know of.

Emma:  well, not that eleanor knows about yet, but she's going to. so off to exeter they go and mrs jennings has the satisfaction of discovering two young ladies to be her relations

Frances :  what you gotta wonder, that they just ran into each other, or is this a scheme by lucy? that's quite a great scheme, but we know that lucy's a good schemer. how could they possibly?

Emma:  i don't know. but lucy's a fantastic schemer. so

Frances :  missus jennings is so delighted to have met third cousins, which means they are her cousins' cousins?

Emma:  would it be something like having one great grandparent in

Frances :  common? which is saying something about, where the jennings have come from. we know that missus jennings has a lot of money. her husband was in trade, a concern for her daughter, lady middleton, when missus jennings and sir john returned from exeter hey. we're having visitors. two girls you've never met that are my third cousins are coming to stay with you. she's not sure of the elegance and gentility even though missus jennings and sir john are like, but they're family so it's fine.

Emma:  yes. there are some black sheep in this family, the dark side, the trade

Frances :  side. but their appearance when they arrive is by no means ungenteel or unfashionable. so lady middleton's okay with it. and then they are so good at playing the game that the Miss Steeles are enraptures with the furniture and dotingly fond of the children that within the first hour she's like, they're great, i love these girls.

Emma:  i just love this writing, that phrase enraptures with the furniture. the juxtaposition of raptures and furniture. so furniture, commonplace every day. raptures, completely overblown. it's like a spiritual enlightenment about your furniture. also in raptures about the children. it's beautiful.

Frances :  there's something similar said about her gowns.

Emma:  they have unceasing delight at one of lady middleton's new dresses, so they have to take a pattern from them actually.

Frances :  elegant new dress note. not just any new dress, it must be elegant. but they're playing the game really, really well with her. we know lady middleton isn't necessarily the smartest from what we told of her but because she's a mother who loves her kids, she's quite happy to swallow anything without the smallest surprise or distrust. this is

Emma:  such a great phrase, i feel like it could be, on a mug, a fond mother in pursuit of praise for her children is the most rapacious of human beings is likewise the most credulous. her demands are exorbitant but she will swallow anything. i feel like jane austen has been exposed to so many of these mothers in her life. she's been a childless woman and she's been surrounded by these women seeking praise for their children. you can see people doing this. they seek praise for their own child and other people are prepared to give it. as long as they get it back for their own children. and if you don't have children of your own, you end up in this one-sided conversation where you have to give all this praise for someone else's children, but you never get the return.

Frances :  for single women there are a lot of issues around things like this. when people get married and people have babies, these are giant celebrations that everybody wants to be involved in the single females around support those things, but there's not a way for them to get that in return. absolutely,

Emma:  i've always thought that everyone should get their la creuset casserole dishes. it's like you're just an endless supply of wedding presents for other people, and you never get your kitchen supplied if you don't get married.

Frances :  sir john is so excited about the steel sisters, he's referring to them as the sweetest girls in the world, but eleanor is well aware that this description can cover many women throughout england under every possible variation of form, face, temper, and understanding. but sir john is insistent, pray come, you must come, i declare you shall come. and it reminded me of emma, when she's telling harriet to visit hartfield. the layers on top of each other. she invited her, encouraged her, and then just told her. same sort of the steamroller.

Emma:  and he's come within an hour of the missteals arriving at barton park, he's come down to barton cottage to say come up and look at them.

Frances :  he cannot keep even a third cousin to himself. this must be really difficult for the people involved because sir john is using so much hyperbole in describing the people to each other. he's telling the missteals how wonderful the misdashwoods are. he's telling the misdashwoods how wonderful the missteals are. and then just throwing them together and expects that they'll be friends. there is a description of the two missteals. the eldest missteel is nearly 30, plain, and not a sensible face. nothing to admire.

Emma:  not great. plain looks a bit stupid. austin's using sensible to mean thoughtful, like not a good thinker here, not a good feeler. like we talked earlier about the meanings of the word sensible, and she's using this to mean that anne is silly. but also how can you tell from someone's face whether they are silly or thoughtful? do you think someone's expression can be kind of vacant? we're about to discover from what she says

Frances :  that she is. you're not saying that the dashwood girls are being snobs this time, that you're like, no, we've got enough description of the miss steels to know why they don't wanna hang out with them.

Emma:  well, i might accuse them of being snobs again

Frances :  later. the second miss steele, who we'll come to know as lucy, is two or three and 20 with considerable beauty. her features are pretty. she had a smartness of air, and though it didn't actually give her elegance or grace, it gave a distinction to her person. but the one thing that stands out that is more of a character description than a physical description is she had a sharp, quick eye. that's a big difference between her and the elder sister, this is austin bringing in some of the judgements of the dishwood sisters, or eleanor probably. what they're reading of the missteals as they meet them, not just this is what they look like, but getting a sense of who they are?

Emma:  whatever it is that makes anne's face not sensible, the opposite is true of lucy. a sharp quick eye is presumably observant. her eyes are presumably moving around the room and noticing things.

Frances :  perhaps this is something that she's cultivated because her elder sister, not so great at this sort of thing, and then she helps steer conversations and her sister's actions. miss steele randomly mentions edward, it notes that lucy generally made an amendment to all her sister's assertions. so she's modifying everything that her sister says. she's more quick, she's more with it.

Emma:  and she's more aware of the social implications of her sister's vulgar outbursts and the consequences that that could have in this higher level company. she's not the only sister who modifies her sister's statements because eleanor quite commonly and will do shortly modifies mary anne's statements to make them more socially acceptable too.

Frances :  that's a very good point.

Emma:  shortly after we discover that, anne has not a sensible face, the word sense appears again. elinor moore soon allowed the steele sisters, credit for some kind of sense when she saw what constant and judicious attention eleanor acknowledges that it is sensible for them to be sucking up to lady middleton. so at this point, she's not saying it's a bad thing that they're sucking up to lady middleton. she sees it but she's not judging them for it on this first meeting.

Frances :  so maybe she's not such a snob?

Emma:  just wait, she'll judge them for it later.

Frances :  the children of the middletons, as we know, are kinda little shits. but most children are, right? waiting for emma to contradict me? no? right? one of the girls has a tantrum because she's scratched by her mother's headdress it's referred to as agonies which you pointed out was excessive language for this situation. everybody is fawning over her, the two misdeals are both knelt up next to her, her mother's holding her and they're trying to do everything they possibly can to make her feel better. and of course, the child, anna maria, is too wise to stop crying,

Emma:  realizing that, she's getting

Frances :  all this attention. and they're teaching her, attention. and they're teaching her to continue to do that, by their behavior and by going, oh, last week when she had a bruise, we gave her apricot marmalade and

Emma:  that fixed it. that doesn't fix a

Frances :  bruise. it calms the child, actually make

Emma:  actually make me wonder whether they put the apricot marmalade on her skin. but it becomes clear that they actually fed it to her. it's austen's way of joking about how people are about their kids, as she has this whole chapter that lady middleton will just be taken in if you're nice about her kids.

Frances :  little anna maria's taken off by lady middleton, and the conversation that happens when she leaves says a lot. mary anne thinks this is a way of heightening alarm when there's nothing to be alarmed at, and then stops contributing to the conversation because it's impossible for her to say what she did not feel. accurate.

Emma:  marianne. can't make small talk, she can't make the mass noises that smooth social interactions.

Frances :  so it falls to eleanor. it always does the whole task of telling lies when politeness requires it. if mary anne worded things a little bit differently, she could get away with a lot more. eleanor's willing to make a few white lies here and there to be able to smooth things over, but mary anne is so against any kind of lies. everything must be complete honesty.

Emma:  that's that black and white thinking that is very common when you're 17. it's a bit short sighted on mary anne's part because we're to believe she's so beautiful. she could probably have married extremely well if her manners had been better.

Frances :  you reckon? mhmm. i think Elinor was bothered that the misdeals continue going on about how great the kids are and how great the middletons are when they're not there. it's not necessary and lucy calls her out. you think the little middletons rather too much indulged. i wonder whether she's trying to get eleanor to bitch about them here, because of course then that could be repeated eleanor's response is so diplomatic and one of the best lines in austin. while she's there with the middleton children, she never thinks of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence.

Emma:  that is a very diplomatic answer. she yearns for tame and quiet children when she's surrounded by the middleton children.

Frances :  don't we all?

Emma:  no. we don't all. you want loud, noisy? i want children to be themselves. yeah. that's true.

Frances :  there's this awful thing that we think children are misbehaving when they're being loud and running round, and that's just who they are, but it's inconvenient for us. so we label it as misbehaving.

Emma:  i feel like the situation is important. if you've got adult visitors in your parlor five adults, at least, and i don't know how big this room is, but you've got three children in a room with five adults, and the children have a lot of energy. i feel like maybe they just need to be in different

Frances :  places. because the kids are abusing the adults, untying their sashes, pulling their hair, going through their bags, stealing their knives and scissors. children should not have those. but lady middleton, thinks that everybody's enjoying that. what a great game.

Emma:  she's not being a marvelous host.

Frances :  Lady middleton is so confusing because she doesn't seem like the sort of person who would enjoy noisy kids.

Emma:  i'm sure she doesn't enjoy other people's noisy kids.

Frances :  is that the thing that people say when you're around noisy kids and you're like, this is horrific, and they're like, it's different when it's your own, to try and convince you to have children?

Emma:  no. no. it's the thing where you think your own children can do no wrong, but other people's are repellent. you can tolerate more things from your own children than other people's children. changing nappies is an excellent example.

Frances :  miss steele, we are learning very quickly, doesn't have a filter and is acting really over familiar and asking about beaus all the time. did you have many smart beau do you have many here was your brother a beau before he married? ellen was like, what the hell is a beau? my brother's the same he's always been. i don't know what you're talking about. this specimen of the missus steele was enough. they refer to this conversation as vulgar freedom and folly of the eldest miss steel. they're not blinded by lucy, by her beauty and her shrewd look, the word used is artlessness, but i think they're talking about that she's scheming. that might be the sort of word that we might use. they can see that she's calculated in the way that she does things. eleanor, after this first meeting, is like, i'm good. i don't need to see them again. knowing that she probably will because they're staying and Sir John is Sir John

Emma:  i find it really interesting, Sir John's idea of how friendships are made?

Frances :  sitting an hour or two together in the same room almost every day, that's all that's needed to be intimate. i think that it takes more than proximity. it shows a little of sir john's lack of knowledge of people. but also we learn, in a few chapters how loud and busy things are at the middletons, that there's not actually an opportunity for you to build closer relationships because they're playing noisy games. you're not actually able to sit and talk to anybody.

Emma:  if sir john and lady middleton just sat in a room together for a few hours on a few days and that was enough for them to get engaged, proximity and being of the right age and class, if that makes a relationship, maybe that's his only requirement.

Frances :  yeah, that logic makes sense. what do you think makes a friendship?

Emma:  shared interests, a willingness to listen to the other person's point of view. or a willingness to share and listen. so eleanor is obviously not wanting to share anything with lucy. lucy is superficially probably quite chatty, but not wanting to share her true self with eleanor. but eleanor can see

Frances :  a little bit beneath the surface, and lucy does quite quickly try to form an intimacy with her, what appears to be an intimacy because it's still quite surface level for her own ends.

Emma:  yeah. but as they get to know each other, it'll be more clear why they don't become friends, but the things that eleanor values about reading, art, conversation, virtue, are not the things that lucy values. so maybe shared values is important for friendship?

Frances :  i agree. i think that, as you say, being able to talk about differing views, but i think there needs to be at least some shared value as well.

Emma:  you can have friends that are more different from you values wise than partners. politically, it's quite rare to have a romantic relationship where political views are opposite, but you're more likely to have a friendship where your political views are different.

Frances :  my parents are on opposite ends of the voting spectrum.

Emma:  i think there's more variation in values among friendships than there are among romantic relationships. maybe you can't make that generalization.

Frances :  i think it actually depends on whether, you just have your spouse as the person you host dinners with, like the middletons, or whether you want someone to be more your partner,

Emma:  well, i think we'd probably say in the nineteenth century, in this class, marriages weren't about what we expect them to be about now.

Frances :  now we place far too much on an intimate partner. we expect them to be multiple people in one as opposed to having a larger support system.

Emma:  well, that's what mary anne is expecting of a husband to be what your modern woman is expecting from her husband, i think. yeah. she's expecting the center of her universe like any romantic young lady today.

Frances :  and that way leads to devastation, as we shall find out.

Emma:  but lucy's not expecting that. no. lucy expecting money and nice frocks.

Frances :  as much as eleanor doesn't wanna be friends with the miss steeles, sir john is just determined it's gonna happen, and i reckon this might be the first time that Elinor was a little bit on mary anne's side of the argument when it comes to the middletons. this is a bit much. he thinks he's doing a good thing promoting the unreserved by telling them each other's secrets.

Emma:  must have been absolutely excruciating, what's been going on over dinner parties, over the dinner table. sir john kind of hearty teasing of eleanor who must be sitting there as stiff as a board with a fake smile on her face. how i love you teasing me with all these nods and winks and teasing me about the letter f. it just must have felt excruciating. and she especially said she did not want them joking about him. that's too close for her.

Frances :  but the miss steels also know all about willoughby, so they wanna know more about him miss steels says, they'd meet edward at the uncle's house. i know him. and and this is the bit where lucy jumps in to amend what anne is saying. we've met him once or twice. it's rather too much to pretend to know him very well. lucy we know is backpedaling because of the secrets they're holding. and eleanor for the first time is like, why are people not asking more questions? because she's like, who is this uncle? where does he live? how did they come to get acquainted? and the way that miss steele says that she knows edward sounds to eleanor like she knows something to his disadvantage. and anne does know about the engagement. anne is the only person that lucy has told.

Emma:  she's absolutely useless at keeping secrets. i changed my mind part way through. okay. she's not absolutely useless, but the key to keeping a secret is not to by any indication suggest that there is a secret. the minute it appears there is a secret, it will always come out. you have to forget that there is a secret.

Frances :  it must be really stressful for lucy to have this elder sister who's a bit stupid because she's constantly under stress of her secret being revealed. because miss steele says things without thinking.

Emma:  i wonder how much lucy doesn't want her secret revealed. i guess she just wants to control the timing of it because she knows that missus farrah's has to be carefully handled.

Frances :  if she's not the one to reveal it to eleanor, it won't have the same weight.

Emma:  oh, i mean generally, not specifically in eleanor.

Frances :  but in this particular situation, she needs to be the one to reveal it to eleanor so she can her the evidence, and she can watch eleanor very closely because she suspects that something's been going on with eleanor and edward even though she knows that edward would never. we assume she knows that edward would never, actually. but because she's not a faithful person, maybe she thinks that he's not either.

Emma:  i think she doesn't know. i think she is fearful of losing him.

Frances :  sadly, not because she loves him, but because that's her meal ticket. though can we blame her, a woman in her position, just trying to do what she can for herself?

Emma:  no. we can't blame her. don't like the way she goes about it. but

Frances :  no.

Emma:  there was one other brilliant phrase when sir john's gone off to exetor with his mother and come back and told his wife, oh, and we're having two guests that you've never met before. and lady middleton doesn't like it because they might be vulgar, but she resigns herself to the idea of it and contents herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times every day, which i thought was a beautiful little snapshot of married life and it illustrates lady middleton's character perfectly.

Frances :  that's our discussion of chapter 21 of sense and sensibility by jane austen. i've been frances duncan, and this has been emma dunning. thank you for listening, and we wish you happy reading.