Sense and Sensibility, Volume the Second, Chapter Nine

In which much is revealed by Colonel Eeyore, chiefly pertaining to his personal history, and we discover the enormity of Willoughby's perfidy; and in which the narrator insists that yes, he's using those words correctly.



Wow, well THAT was a shocker of a chapter, wasn't it? With the forced marriages, the infidelity, the multiple illegitimate children, the wasting death, etcetera? Dang, no wonder Colonel Brandon's so Droopy-Dog all the time.

Some short notes: at 13:43, Colonel Brandon says that he randomly found his lost love in a "spunging house," spelled more modernly as "sponging house." It wasn't exactly debtor's prison, but it wasn't exactly not debtor's prison either. Basically, it was a debtor's last chance to pay up -- squeezed out like a sponge, get it? -- while being confined to the house of, usually, so government official who took a cut. A charming place, by the sound of it.

Next, at 21:51, the good Colonel states that, after finding out what had occurred between him and Brandon's ward, he met Willoughby by appointment. As might be inferred from the text, he means that they met for a duel, at which they are both apparently terrible as no one is even wounded. BORING.

Sadly, no illustrations for this turning-point chapter, of the spunging house or otherwise, so here's another fun cover. For... certain values of "fun."

I mean, my but this is a cheerless cover. It's from a 2001 edition published by Broadview Press, an independent academic publisher, that actually sounds kinda cool and included some neat-sounding stuff in this edition (well, neat-sounding to people like me, I guess.) It's just... I mean, kudos for standing out from the seething crowd of other covers featuring two young women in pretty, vaguely-Regency-era-if-you-don't-know-much-about-fashion-history-which-I-don't-so-maybe-it-is-actually-accurate dresses, but it sure makes this book look somber. Jane Austen does tackle some heavy themes, and does some incredibly trenchant social satire, but her books are really anything but dour, especially this one. I guess maybe they don't want anything intended for an academic setting to look too... well, fun.

Aesthetics aside, I wonder about the image's source. It's not listed on the website that I saw, but it certainly appears to be a vintage 1800s photograph of some kind. Now, it obviously can't be from the time Austen was writing as that predated photography, but it's always possible they were in period costume (you know, 1870's ladies dressed in 1811's clothes, or something.) Maybe someone who actually knows something about fashion history can enlighten me: is this even remotely the right time period for the story?

These are the sorts of things that intrigue and bother me.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg, and high-res copies of the Thompson illustrations can be found in the British Library's Flickr stream. No reading ahead, though!