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Colonel Brandon is a fictional character in Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility. A quiet and reserved man, he forms an attachment to the younger of the Dashwood sisters, Marianne.
Background
editThe younger son of a landed family in Dorsetshire, Brandon made a career in the army, until at the death of his brother he inherited Delaford. We are told that at that point the estate was encumbered, but no less a market-minded man than John Dashwood informs us that at the time of the book's action they had all been resolved: “His property here, his place, his house, - everything in such respectable and excellent condition!”.[1]
Romantic hero?
editIn terms of activities and life experience, Colonel Brandon is perhaps the most Byronic among Austen's leading men.[2] He attempts to elope with his teenage cousin Eliza for whom he has a passionate attachment; he has the mortification of seeing her married for mercenary reasons to his elder brother; he serves his country abroad and returns to rescue the dying Eliza from a debtor's prison; he raises her illegitimate daughter, only to have to fight a duel with her seducer; and he forms a second, passionate attachment to another vibrant seventeen-year-old girl, Marianne.[3] His very name links him to the rake in Richardson's Pamela – Mr B. of Brandon Hall – and his experiences are in many ways a benign retelling (rescuer, not seducer) of the latter's life.[4]
Yet in social life and in courtship, the Colonel is the dullest figure imaginable. Melancholy, taciturn, cancelling expeditions and intruding at inconvenient moments, speaking only to Eleanor and not to Marianne[5] - the Colonel could hardly have a less inspiring presence as a romantic suitor. It is clear that he is deliberately set up in opposition to John Willoughby – the latter having all the Romantic trappings and discourse, but marrying for money, the Colonel outwardly stodgy yet marrying for love.[6] But critical dissatisfaction with the starkness of the typology, and with the book's outcome, is pervasive.[7] The Colonel so lacks spark, seems so unlikeable, as to make his eventual success in wooing seem out of kilter to the modern eye – a rare Jane Austen failure.[8] For a figure closer to Jane Austen's time like Austin Dobson, however, the marriage was a mark of her realism: “Every one does not get a Bingley or a Darcy (with a park); but...not a few enthusiasts like Marianne decline at last upon middle-aged colonels with flannel waistcoats”.[9]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (London 1932) p. 61 and p. 337
- ^ R. Jenkyns, A Fine Brush of Ivory (Oxford 2007) p. 188
- ^ R. Jenkyns, A Fine Brush of ivory (Oxford 2007) p. 188
- ^ J. Harris, Jane Austen's Art of Memory (2003) p. 37 and 49
- ^ G. B. Stern Talking of Jane Austen (London 1946) p. 139-144
- ^ E. Auerbach, Searching for Jane Austen (2004) p. 113
- ^ R. Jenkyns, A Fine Brush of Ivory (Oxford 2007) p. 191-2
- ^ G. B. Stern Talking of Jane Austen (London 1946) p. 144-5
- ^ A. Dobson, 'Introduction', Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (London 1932 [1895]) p. xii
Further Reading
edit- E. Godfrey, The January-May Marriage in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (2009)