The Traumatic Experiences of Widowhood in Sense and Sensibility
[for conference presentation]
Kuo-jung Chen (陳國榮)
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Chung Cheng University
A standard definition of widow is “a woman whose husband is dead (and who
has not married again); a wife bereaved of her husband”; however, in extended
sense, it can also refer to “a wife separated from or deserted by her husband.”1
According to Ben-Zion Schereschewsky,
The Hebrew substantive almanah, usually translated “widow,” often does not
simply denote a woman whose husband is dead, but rather a once-married
woman who has no means of financial support, and is therefore in need of
special legal protection. . . . Thus, the almanot as a class in Israelite society in
biblical times were often considered as comprising not merely women whose
husbands had died but, rather, once-married women who no longer had any
means of financial support. (40)2
The above definitions emphasize lack of financial support as an essential attribute of
a widow. Since widows are often considered as a financial burden to their husbands’
relatives in patriarchal societies, they will unavoidably encounter all kinds of
confinement or limitation in the name of either conjugal chastity or societal mores.
For instance, certain Slavs of the sixth and seventh centuries were proud that “their
womenfolk were ‘chaste beyond measure’ and so devoted to their husband that
many regarded widowhood as ‘no life at all,’ and some willingly killed themselves on
the loss of a husband” (Waldman and Mason 761); however, what lies beneath such
a grand concept of chastity is the grim reality of difficulties and lack of economic
shelter a widow has to face. Death may sometimes be a better choice if they are
1
“widow, n.1.” OED Online. September 2011. Oxford UP. 7 October 2011
<http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/228912?rskey=1QLEf1&result=1&isAdvanced=false>.
2
Such a definition would exclude those women “who could rely on the support of a new husband (by
levirate marriage or otherwise), an adult son, or a father-in-law” (40). Using the story of Tamar, the
earliest personage given the title of almanah, as example, Schereschewsky points out that “it is
interesting to note that Tamar was called an almanah only when Judah, her father-in-law, sent her out
of his house. It might reasonably be asked whether Tamar would have been called an almanah at all
had she remained in the house of her father-in-law” (41).
1
deprived of any kind of patriarchal protection.
In the practice of sati in some Indian states, “in which a widow is expected to
commit suicide by throwing herself on [her husband’s] funeral pyre” or forced into it
by her in-laws if she resists, financial motives, “such as repossession of the widow’s
inheritance by her husband’s family,” may be hidden behind the ostentatious façade
of religious sacrifice (Gee 308).3 As Margaret Owen maintains, even in some Third
World countries today, the treatment of widows is still “harshly discriminatory”:
Patriarchal kinship systems, patrilocal marriage (where the bride goes to the
husband’s location), and patrilineal inheritance (where succession devolves
through the male line) shore up the concept that women are “chattels” who
cannot inherit and may even be regarded as part of the husband’s estate to be
inherited themselves (widow inheritance). . . . Widows across the spectrum of
ethnic groups, faiths, regions, and educational and income position share the
traumatic experience of eviction from the family home and the seizing not
merely of household property but even intellectual assets such as pension and
share certificates, wills, and accident insurance. . . . “Chasing-off” and
“property-grabbing” from widows is the rule rather than the exception in many
developing countries. (948)
From the biblical time to the modern world, financial concern always plays an
important role in the issue of widowhood. Economical factors thus dominate almost
every aspect of widowhood.
It cannot be denied that the death of husband is emotionally and economically
difficult for the surviving widow, especially in a conventional society in which women
have limited resources. A widow’s emotional trauma may not be easily overcome,
particularly at the initial stage of widowhood. Horace Walpole writes about the
precarious situation of a young lady, “being left in the terrible situation of a young
and . . . rich widowhood; which is walking blindfold upon stilts amidst precipices,
though perhaps as little sensible of her danger, as a child of a quarter old would be in
the paws of a monkey leaping on the tiles of a house” (Letter 112). Upon her
husband’s death, a widow will also face all kinds of demands from relatives after her
mourning period. As Kate Davidson maintains, widowhood is often conceptualized as
3
There is another “bright prospect of the glory” for the widow who commits sati. As Catherine
Weinberger-Thomas points out, “Not only was the sati ensured that her sacrifice—in which she would
experience no pain—would bring her eternal bliss with her husband in the beyond, she was also
persuaded that she would redeem the sins of seven generations in her father’s, mother’s, and in-laws’
lineages, and never be born again into the ‘impure’ female sex”; sati has become “the ultimate
criterion of a woman’s ‘wifely duty’ and an icon of caste purity (and thereby, status)” (932).
2
“role loss” and “role exit”: when a woman changes her role from wife to widow, she
has actually become a powerless and “roleless wife” without (though involuntarily)
“any duties towards others in the social system” (5260). Since a widow does not have
a “constructive” role in society, she is easily put aside as a nonentity, though still
bound with all sorts of constraints.
Moreover, widowhood is more often than not regarded as a form of moral
decorum. A passage from Sarah Fielding’s The Cry: A New Dramatic Fable (1754) may
best exemplify such obligatory conformity:
Harpasia was a widow, who had continued in that state for twenty years, in all
which time she had been endeavouring to impose on herself the belief, that she
was a true pattern of conjugal fidelity to her dead husband; but what a
vexatious companion she was to him whilst living, our history shall not here
enlarge upon. She highly valued herself upon not having been twice married,
although she had lived a life of errant coquetry with almost every man that
came in her way; nor, if she could have prevented it, would have suffered either
maid or widow (herself only excepted) to have had one lover in peace. (145)
Such pride in formal “fidelity” to one’s deceased spouse is deeply rooted in many
cultures, as shown at its extreme by the practice of sati or more commonly by the
idea of “husband sanctification.” As Helena Znaniecka Lopata argues, “The process of
sanctification performs several important functions for the widow. It removes the
dead husband from current life into the safety of sainthood, and thus from
watchfulness and the ability to criticize. Besides, if such a saintly man was married to
her, then she must not be as bad as her depressive moments indicate” (942). In her
Letters on Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Mary Wollstonecraft also describes how a
young woman, a wet nurse, has to spend all her wages taking care of her own child
“in this most painful state of widowhood,” because “the father had run away to get
clear of the expense” (44). Eventually, financial issue must be brought up in any
discussion of widowhood because in many societies “loss of a husband meant a loss
of status, economic dependency, and social isolation” (Berardo and Berardo [2003]
1708). Widowhood may entail a period of emotional trauma, but the kind of financial
despondency it brings about may be more harrowing and tormenting to most
widows.
Since financial concern is the pivotal issue of widowhood, how to prepare for a
rainy day becomes essential in drawing up marriage settlements. Among the articles
in a marriage settlement, a jointure is the key asset to ensure a widow’s livelihood
after her husband’s death. As Peachum cries out, though ironically, in John Gay’s The
3
Beggar’s Opera, “Why, that is the whole scheme and intention of all marriage articles.
The comfortable estate of widowhood is the only hope that keeps up a wife’s spirits”
(28). Without the stipulation of a jointure, a widow may face the harsh reality of
being a total dependent. As Lloyd Bonfield points out, “widows were detrimental to
the family interest because they required the estate to support a second, if
somewhat more modest, household for a varying period” (344). According to
common law in most areas of England, a woman’s portion “all came under the
immediate control of her husband upon marriage: the personal property she lost
permanently; the land she might recover if she survived her husband. As a widow,
she did enjoy a lifetime right or dower to one-third of her husband’s freehold land”
(Erickson 24). Parents who can afford it will usually give the prospective son-in-law a
portion, reserved mainly for the use of a jointure in case of widowhood.4 Though
the jointure is usually proportioned to the portion or dowry a wife brings to her
husband, it is not always a lifetime warranty. As Stephanie Hodgson-Wright remarks,
“Where the wife predeceased the husband, this merely meant keeping her in food,
shelter and clothing, the scale of which was determined by the means and
disposition of the husband. Where the husband predeceased the wife, the ‘jointure’
was usually expressed as a lifetime’s interest in a property, so that the widow would
have the means and a place to live” (4). Without a jointure, a widow is destined to
live a miserable life, especially when the life interest in an estate is also deprived on
the condition of entailment. However, in the upper classes, according to Hamish
Scott, “widowhood was, as it had long been, the period when noblewomen’s
influence and power were at their peak,” because “they might personally conduct
negotiations for a marriage, and often ran the family estate and supervised the
education of the children, either during their husband’s absence at court or on
military campaign, or after his death” (100). No matter in what form widowhood
appears, the central concern always returns to its economic ramifications. Such
agenda is conceptualized dramatically in Jane Austen’s focus on marriage and
property. Most widows in her novels suffer from traumatic experiences either in their
financial despondency if they are left without a jointure or in their emotional
alienation even if they can exert unrestrained authority.
If we take a close look at Austen’s novels, we may be surprised at the
4
As Erickson further points out, “At a ratio of ten to one, a widow who survived her husband for over
ten years received more back in jointure than she had invested in portion” (30). That is also the reason
why “a wife who had the courtesy to waive her demographic ‘right’ to survive her husband by
upwards of fifteen years after having dutifully brought a substantial portion that had been intended to
provide for her widowhood, might likewise contribute to painless retrenchment” (Bonfield 344). Both
statements indicate the financial burden a widow may impose on the surviving family.
4
abundance of widows and widowers in them. The seemingly jovial façade of Austen’s
novels in actuality covers up many lamentable tales of widowhood. The reader may
perhaps be so impressed, though often unfavorably, with domineering widow
characters like Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice or Mrs. Norris in
Mansfield Park so as to forget other less fortunate widows like Mrs. Bates in Emma
or Mrs. Smith in Persuasion. Likewise, the reader may also fall unconsciously into
same sort of self-complacency with widower characters such as Mr. Woodhouse in
Emma or General Tilney in Northanger Abbey so that s/he tends to jump to the
wrong conclusion that widowhood is not really a key issue in Austen’s novels.5
However, if we carry out an in-depth analysis of widowhood in Austen’s Sense and
Sensibility, we may see how such a pervasive phenomenon/problem constitutes an
important subject matter in Austen’s works. We should in the meantime keep in
mind that without her brother Edward’s beneficent offer of Chawton Cottage, Austen,
her sister Cassandra, and their widowed mother may not even have a house to live in,
not to mention a place for her remarkable literary achievement.
At the very beginning of Sense and Sensibility, the issue of widowhood is
instantaneously brought up with Henry Dashwood’s death, leaving only ten thousand
pounds to his wife (at the age of 40) and three daughters (at the age of 19, 16, and
13, respectively) but not any place for them to live in. When John Dashwood (Henry
Dashwood’s son by his first marriage) declares his good “intentions” to provide for
his father’s widow and daughters, as promised on his deathbed, he is refuted
vigorously by his wife (Fanny) that such an act will “ruin himself and their poor little
Harry” (6). In a masterful stroke, Austen shows the reader in an ironical and even
farcical scene how John’s “kindness” is reduced from 1,000 pounds for each of his
sisters-in-law, to 500 pounds, to 100-pound annuity for the widow, to a present of
fifty pounds occasionally, to some seasonal presents of fish and game or furniture.
Eventually, John resolves that “it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly
indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of
neighbourly acts as his own wife pointed out” (10). Moreover, the widowed Mrs.
Dashwood and her daughters are also “degraded to the condition of visitors” upon
Mr. Dashwood’s death because Norland Park is entailed on John Dashwood according
to common patrilineal practice.
This early scene (Chapters 1 and 2) in Sense and Sensibility not only provides the
reader with essential background information about the characters but, more
5
The widowers, as Berardo and Berardo (2003) argue in “Widowhood” (Encyclopedia of Sociology),
“are encouraged to remarry soon and add progeny to the patriarchal line” while “widows often face a
difficult life that is influenced by vestiges of patriarchal and religious dogma and exacerbated by
economic problems that force them to become dependent on sons, in-laws, and others” (3255).
5
importantly, it imparts some detailed and extensive knowledge of the status of
widowhood during this period. First of all, there is the issue of entailment many
widows may face after their husbands’ death.6 Since the Norland estate is entailed
on John Dashwood after his father’s death, Mrs. Henry Dashwood immediately loses
the rights to live there in her widowhood. Facing Fanny’s “ungracious behaviour,” she
would “have quitted the house for ever, had not the entreaty of her eldest girl
induced her first to reflect on the propriety of going, and her own tender love for all
her three children determined her afterwards to stay, and for their sakes avoid a
breach with their brother” (5). Mrs. Dashwood’s seemingly undaunted reaction,
however, overshadows the great difficulties a widow and her daughters may have to
face in the outside world. In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet’s constant anxiety over
her daughters’ marriages is quite sensible because the Longbourn estate is entailed
on Mr. Collins after her husband’s demise. Mr. Collins’s marrying one of the elder
daughters will guarantee Mrs. Bennet (in her widowhood) and her younger
daughters a place to live in. Mrs. Dashwood’s imprudence, eagerness of mind, and
strong feelings do not lead to serious troubles thanks to Sir John Middleton’s (a
distant relative) timely offer of Barton cottage and Elinor’s “strength of
understanding and coolness of judgment” (4) in monitoring and controlling their
household expenditure. As Berardo and Berardo (2003) point out, “Widowhood
often leads to changes in living arrangements. Reduced income may force surviving
spouses to seek more affordable housing. They may also choose to relocate for other
reasons such as future financial and health concerns, a desire to divest of
possessions, or to be near kin or friends” (1711). Though Elinor has reservation
regarding their removal from the vicinity of Norland Park, financial concern gets the
upper hand in their acceptance of Barton cottage in Devonshire. From a sociological
and psychological viewpoint, a change of scene will also help Mrs. Dashwood to
recover from the traumatic experience of widowhood by the support of kin or friends,
which she is not able to gain in Norland Park.
Another important issue demonstrated in the early scene is a widow’s financial
distress. Left with ten thousand pounds (seven from her deceased husband and
three bequeathed to her daughters by the old Dashwood),7 Mrs. Dashwood has no
6
According to West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, to entail means “to abridge, settle, or limit
succession to real property. An estate whose succession is limited to certain people rather than being
passed to all heirs. In real property, a fee tail is the conveyance of land subject to certain limitations or
restrictions, namely, that it may only descend to certain specified heirs” (163). In Pride and Prejudice,
the Longbourn estate is entailed on William Collins, and in Persuasion Kellynch-hall is entailed on
Walter Elliot, another widower.
7
We may make a comparison among the characters in Austen’s novels to see how such amount of
money is worth at that time. For instance, in Pride and Prejudice, each of Bingley’s sisters has a
fortune of twenty thousand pounds; Miss King has ten thousand pounds; Georgiana Darcy has thirty
6
other recourses for living except for the interest generated from this legacy. Though
not really a small amount for common people, it is not sufficient for her to maintain a
“respectable” gentlewoman-like life. The five percent interest from ten thousand
pounds may perhaps be enough for daily expenses;8 however, any unforeseeable
incidents or misfortunes may place them in dire financial straits owing to its being
the sole income. Any kind of economic crises, such as the South Sea Bubble in 1720
and similar market crashes throughout the early modern period, would jeopardize
such financial sources. What Fanny Dashwood asserts to her husband, though quite
callous, is not far from truth:
Do but consider, my dear Mr. Dashwood, how excessively comfortable your
mother-in-law and her daughters may live on the interest of seven thousand
pounds, besides the thousand pounds belonging to each of the girls, which
brings them in fifty pounds a year a-piece, and, of course, they will pay their
mother for their board out of it. Altogether, they will have five hundred a-year
amongst them, and what on earth can four women want for more than
that?—They will live so cheap! Their housekeeping will be nothing at all. They
will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants; they will keep no
company, and can have no expenses of any kind! Only conceive how
comfortable they will be! Five hundred a year! (9)
However, for Mrs. Dashwood, who has been the actual mistress of Norland Park for
over ten years, such a drastic downward change (“no carriage, no horses, and hardly
any servants”) in social status and financial support will unquestionably bring about
some traumatic experience. Fanny’s exclamation also reveals the kind of life a widow
is supposed to live: keeping no company, having no expenses of any kind, and not
imposing any economic burden on relatives. In other words, a reclusive and frugal life
is expected for a widow of no large fortune.
Though Mrs. Dashwood’s traumatic experience as a widow is not elaborated in
the novel, it finds its way out in her valuing and cherishing the excess of Marianne’s
sensibility:
thousand pounds. However, like Elinor and her sisters in Sense and Sensibility, Elizabeth and her sisters
will have only one thousand pounds (in the four/five percents) only after her mother’s death.
8
According to Daniel Pool, “If you were a widow or single maiden lady or other soul without a grand
establishment, at least until the middle of the century, you would have put your money into other
things,” namely, national debt or the funds, which “generally paid a perfectly respectable 5 percent”
and “was backed up by the government and didn’t involve the risks entailed in buying privately issued
securities” (86-87).
7
They encouraged each other now in the violence of their affliction. The agony of
grief which overpowered them at first, was voluntarily renewed, was sought for,
was created again and again. They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow,
seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and
resolved against ever admitting consolation in future. (4-5)
Analyzed from a psychological and sociological perspective, this passage (and Fanny’s
declaration) unwittingly discloses the “role loss” or “role exit” of a widow’s life.
Indulgence in seemingly unending sorrow provides an outlet for her to escape from
financial straits. Such emotive, self-abandoned extravagance also testifies to some
standard symptoms of trauma. As Cathy Caruth argues, “The pathology consists . . .
solely in the structure of its experience or reception: the event is not assimilated or
experienced fully at the time, but belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one
who experiences it. To be traumatized is precisely to be possessed by an image or
event” (4-5). The loss of Norland Park (an image) and the death of Mr. Dashwood (an
event) thus constitute two principal sources for both Mrs. Dashwood’s and
Marianne’s traumatic experiences. Only through Elinor’s wisdom in cutting the
number of their servants to three can the Dashwood widow and daughters face a
future life without any foreseeable patriarchal support.
Aside from Mrs. Dashwood, there are three other widows—Mrs. Smith, Mrs.
Ferrars, and Mrs. Jennings—in Sense and Sensibility.9 However, they represent
aspects of widowhood quite different from that of Mrs. Dashwood. Mrs. Smith, the
elderly owner of Allenham Court, is in appearance a dominant matriarchal figure (not
unlike Mrs. Ferrars) upon whose favor John Willoughby’s fortune depends entirely.
The ulterior excuse Willoughby uses to extricate himself from Devon (and Marianne)
is her peremptory order: “Mrs. Smith has this morning exercised the privilege of
riches upon a poor dependent cousin, by sending me on business to London”; Mrs.
Dashwood’s reluctant reply—“But Mrs. Smith must be obliged”—indicates the kind
of power a rich widow can wield over her dependent relatives (65). Willoughby is not
only in fear of offending her but also desperately hoping to mend his fortunes by her
death, which can “set [him] free” but is “uncertain and possibly far distant” (277).
Mrs. Smith is depicted as a woman of moral character, and she duly punishes
Willoughby by disinheriting him in the end. As Willoughby tells Elinor, “The purity of
9
Mrs. Eliza Brandon, the divorced wife of Colonel Brandon’s elder brother, can certainly be regarded
as a widow according to the definitions given at the beginning of this article. As Colonel Brandon says,
“Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance,
and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before
to another person.” Deserted and without financial support, Eliza gradually “sink[s] deeper in a life of
sin” (177).
8
her life, the formality of her notions, her ignorance of the world—everything was
against me. . . . And I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house” (280).
However, what lies behind such a life of righteousness is the obscure side of a
widow’s traumatic life. The narrator tells us that Mrs. Smith “was unfortunately too
infirm to mix with the world and never stirred from home” (34-35). It does not take
our great imagination to guess what kind of widowed life Mrs. Smith has been
leading. She does not have a social life as Mrs. Jennings, and she does not really have
dependents or children over whom she can exert control as Mrs. Ferrars. To some
extent, her life at Allenham is like a living death an elderly widow may often have to
experience in a patrilocal (where the bride goes to the husband’s location) world.
Allenham in fact symbolizes a kind of prison in which she may be readily incarcerated
but from which she can never hope to escape.
If Mrs. Smith assumes a behind-the-scene authority as a rich widow, Mrs.
Ferrars acts as an overwhelming power with her “strong characters of pride and ill
nature” both on and behind the scene, though “she was not a woman of many words”
(200). Mrs. Ferrars does not really appear until the middle of the novel, but her
presence is always felt from the beginning. She is resolved that “both her sons should
marry well,” and she is hostile to “any young woman who attempted to draw him in”
(referring to Edward) (18). However, Mrs. Ferrars’s designs for her sons soon turn out
to be mere illusions. Edward’s clandestine engagement with Lucy Steele, Lucy’s
secret marriage with Robert, and Edward’s choice of Elinor at the expense of his
legacy, all these defiant acts make Mrs. Ferrars look not only ridiculous but also
helpless. To a widow of enormous wealth and fierce pride, what can be more
humiliating than her older son’s defiant union with a young woman of little fortune
and her younger son’s secret marriage to a woman of no money and social position?
Though Austen brings out in an ironical way John Dashwood’s comment, “Mrs.
Ferrars was the most unfortunate of women,” after what happened, such kind of
things-fall-apart scenario is undeniably a devastating traumatic experience for a
patriarch-like widow. As John Dashwood continues, “Robert’s offence was
unpardonable, but Lucy’s was infinitely worse. Neither of them were ever again to be
mentioned to Mrs. Ferrars; and even, if she might hereafter be induced to forgive her
son, his wife should never be acknowledged as her daughter, nor be permitted to
appear in her presence” (323). However, in the comic world of Jane Austen’s novel,
such traumatic experiences are seldom foregrounded. The reader has to read
critically between the lines or fills actively the textual gaps to explore such an issue.
With Austen’s typical ironical and comic resolution in most of her works, Lucy’s
“selfish sagacity,” “humility, assiduous attentions, and endless flattery” (327) soon
win over Mrs. Ferrars. An apparent, though inconclusive, order is achieved, and Mrs.
9
Ferrars fades into background and is no longer of much account.
Of all the widows in Jane Austen’s novels, Mrs. Jennings stands out quite
uniquely. She is first presented as “a good-humoured, merry, fat, elderly woman,
who talked a great deal, seemed very happy and rather vulgar” (29). Without Mrs.
Dashwood’s financial difficulty, Mrs. Smith’s lonely seclusion, and Mrs. Ferrars’s
imperious personality, Mrs. Jennings is a sort of typical merry widow, who “began the
world anew on her own foundation, and set sail down the stream of pleasure,
without the fears of virginity to check her, or the influence of a husband to controul
her.”10 Though she does not appear as a likable character initially, she eventually
emerges as a kind and caring mother figure for the Dashwood sisters. Instead of
enjoying flirtations herself as a merry widow, she regards lovers and husbands as her
favorite subject and matchmaking as her major concern. A meaningful life is no
longer denied to a widow like Mrs. Jennings. As Berardo and Berardo (2000) point
out,
Borrowing from occupational career models, some researchers have suggested
that adopting a “career of widowhood” orientation may facilitate the recovery
and well-being of these survivors. . . . In this perspective, the widowed are
encouraged to seek control over their existence by actively construing their own
life courses. The assumption is that they will adapt better if they plan for where
they want to be at different potential stages during the entire course of
widowhood. This plan might include the following phases: “a time for emotional
recovery; a time for taking stock, reestablishing or restructuring support
relationships, and formulating personal directions for the future; a time for
discovering a comfortable and satisfying independent lifestyle, and for
determining an approach to maintaining economic, psychological, and social
functioning; perhaps a time for personal growth and change; and a time for
reasoned consideration of one’s last years and assertion of a degree of control
over the arrangements surrounding one’s own decline and death.” (3259-60)11
Such a sociological model of “career of widowhood” is exemplified fittingly in Mrs.
10
This quotation is from Francis Coventry’s The History of Pompeii the Little. Though Mrs. Jennings is
not likely to attract suitors as Hanna Glawari does in Franz Lehár’s famous operetta, The Merry Widow,
the kind of freedom she enjoys and the merriment she brings about are representative of a merry
widow.
11
They also quote from Robert O. Hansson and Jacquline H. Remondet another passage to show how
a “career of widowhood” is a constructive method for a widow’s remaining life: “for most persons,
widowhood need not be considered the end of productive life, but rather the beginning of a major
segment of the life course, and one that should be pursued vigorously in order for it to be successful
and fulfilling” (3260).
10
Jennings’s way of life in Sense and Sensibility.
Though Austen does not provide any information about Mrs. Jennings’s
“emotional recovery” (except that her husband “had traded with success in a less
elegant part of the town” [129] and “had got all his money in a low way” [197]), her
representation testifies to a widow’s positive attitude toward “discovering a
comfortable and satisfying independent lifestyle.” Mrs. Jennings “takes a very lively
interest in all the comings and goings of all [her] acquaintance” (60) and shows
“active zeal in the cause of society” (101). With her “natural hilarity” (167), “impulse
of the utmost good will” (172), “blunt sincerity” (229), and “active good nature”
(296), Mrs. Jennings in fact appears as one of the most positive figures in the novel.
Mrs. Jennings can even experience “a time for personal growth and change” in her
interactions with the Dashwood sisters. As the narrator tells us,
Mrs. Jennings was a widow with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters,
both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now
therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world. In the promotion
of this object she was zealously active, as far as her ability reached; and missed
no opportunity of projecting weddings among all the young people of her
acquaintance. (30)
Matchmaking—“she was always anxious to get a good husband for every pretty girl”
(31)—has indeed become a career move from her widowhood. Unlike the
hypochondriac widower Mr. Woodhouse in Emma, who has become “a much older
man in ways, than in years” in his widowhood and hates “change of every kind”
(“Matrimony, as the origin of change was always disagreeable”) (2, 3), the vivacious
Mrs. Jennings undoubtedly adapts much better to her widowed life in seeking control
over her own life course. She also serves as a strong contrast to the insipid Mrs.
Dashwood, who tends to lose herself in her emotional indulgence, and to the
overbearing Mrs. Ferrars, who fails in her irreconcilable authority over her children.
Economic issue is undeniably a primary concern in a case of widowhood. Aside
from emotional ordeal owing to her role loss, a widow’s traumatic experiences may
often result from sudden deprivation of financial support. These two factors (role
loss and monetary loss) interact with each other only to make a widow’s traumatic
experiences more intensive and extensive. As Anne Whitehead points out, “The
experience of trauma has not yet been assimilated by the individual and so cannot
be possessed in the forms of memory or narrative. On the contrary, trauma assumes
a haunting quality, continuing to possess the subject with its insistent repetitions and
returns” (12). Apparently, in the comic world of Jane Austen’s most novels, widows’
11
traumatic experiences are not supposed or ready to be developed fully in the form of
memory or narrative.12 However, as demonstrated earlier, financial difficulties will
exacerbate the haunting quality of trauma at the initial period of widowhood. We
may perhaps keep in mind that Mrs. Dashwood does not so much mourn for her
husband’s death than her dispossession of Norland Park (as shown in Marianne’s
excessively romantic apostrophe): “Many were the tears shed by them in their last
adieus to a place so much beloved” (22). Nonetheless, Austen seems to reconcile
various dismal facets of a widow’s life—Mrs. Smith’s role loss, Mrs. Ferrars’s role exit,
and Mrs. Dashwood’s repetitive grief—into Mrs. Jennings’s more meaningful
existence through adoption of a “career of widowhood.”
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Austen’s last novel, Persuasion, with its strong autumnal atmosphere, may be an exception. Further
analysis of this novel will follow this article after its presentation at the conference.
12
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