#discretion advised on giving up your own secrets to Mrs Jennings

[an-extraordinary-fate]

There is something so motherly and yet a little bit wicked all at once about Mrs Jennings. She’s no image of perfection. She’s vulgar and embarrassing with her penchant for gossip and teasing. But she isn’t just that. She’s loyal and generous and good-natured. She can tell when people are cold-hearted like Mrs John Dashwood, so she doesn’t just like everyone. She doesn’t hold back on passing judgment when people disappoint her like Willoughby, Mrs Ferrars, and Lucy. She lacks the level of refinement and sensitivity that the highest order of Austen’s characters have, but she isn’t one to just disregard as ONLY comic relief. One of the best things about her is she often spouts a bit of nonsense in with wise things that make you check you understood her correctly. She is good-hearted and sincere in her affection for Marianne and Elinor, but she isn’t always self-aware, sensitive or even logical. This combination allows her to say some of the most delightfully silly things with utmost sincerity. Mrs Jennings is one of my favorite characters because she keeps you on your toes with her ability to say something nonsensical after saying something so wise.

Wise with a a dash of silly (because her being pretty is irrelevant)

“Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such things! -- "

Wise and prudent. Willoughby COULD marry Marianne if he wanted and was patient. It would just be a less financially extravagant lifestyle. He is not a victim. He makes his own choices.

“Fifty thousand pounds! and by all accounts it won't come before it's wanted; for they say he is all to pieces. No wonder! dashing about with his curricle and hunters! Well, it don't signify talking, but when a young man, be he who he will, comes and makes love to a pretty girl, and promises marriage, he has no business to fly off from his word only because he grows poor, and a richer girl is ready to have him. Why don't he, in such a case, sell his horses, let his house, turn off his servants, and make a thorough reform at once? I warrant you, Miss Marianne would have been ready to wait till matters came round. But that won't do, now-a-days; nothing in the way of pleasure can ever be given up by the young men of this age."

And then a hilarious and nonsensical observation, hypothesis, and advice all wrapped in one. Has she actually met her good friend Colonel Brandon? She certainly doesn’t understand his or Marianne’s depths if she thinks he will laugh over M’s misfortunes or that M will just quickly transfer her affections to him if she can just forget Willoughby exists.

“Well, my dear, 'tis a true saying about an ill wind, for it will be all the better for Colonel Brandon. He will have her at last; aye, that he will. Mind me, now, if they an't married by Midsummer. Lord! how he'll chuckle over this news!…One shoulder of mutton, you know, drives another down. If we can but put Willoughby out of her head!"

#Mrs Jennings has the best tea to spill #Mrs Jennings is a favorite #Sense and Sensibility #she would embarrass you but also give you the shirt off her back #discretion advised on giving up your own secrets to Mrs Jennings #Jane Austen