On December 10th, 2022, the NYC chapter of JASNA met for our annual birthday meeting. The talk, by Stephanie Insley Hershinow, was entitled “Widow Watching: Reading the Marriage Plot Aslant”. In Jane Austen’s time, it was a social death sentence to be a single woman of a certain age. The only exception to the rule was the widow. By the rules of the era, she had played her part. She had married as expected, (hopefully) brought children into the world, and was now legally and socially free.
In Sense and Sensibility (1811), the character in question that Insley Hernshinow focused on is Mrs. Jennings. A cousin-in-law of the Dashwoods and a mother of married daughters, she would like nothing more than to have Elinor and Marianne in the same state. Due to the fact that her husband is no longer in the land of the living, she has freedoms and rights that single (unmarried) and wedded women do not have. She has an air of respectability from this status that allows her to chaperone her young charges and hopefully guide them to a good match.
Adina Bernstein