Mrs. John Dashwood is like the "Grinch" who stole Christmas in
Sense and Sensibility. On his deathbed, Mr. Henry Dashwood extracted a promise from his son, John, to take care of his stepmother and half sisters. In a masterful scene that only Jane Austen could write with such biting wit, John's wife, Fanny, persuades John to give them next to nothing. A portion of the couple's remarkable conversation sits below:
[John] "A hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable."
His wife hesitated a little, however, in giving her consent to this plan.
"To be sure," said she, "it is better than parting with fifteen hundred pounds at once. But, then, if Mrs. Dashwood should live fifteen years we shall be completely taken in."
"Fifteen years! my dear Fanny; her life cannot be worth half that purchase."
"Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty."
This week we ask you:
Which actress played a Regency Grinch best?
Whose portrayal of Fanny Dashwood is most believable?
Amanda Boxer, Fanny Dashwood 1981
Harriet Walter, Fanny Dashwood 1996
Claire Skinner, Fanny Dashwood 2008
The Morgan Library's website features a film by Harriet Walter, who reflects on Jane Austen: "I think one of the reasons people love Jane Austen is that she's quite wicked, but she's not really viciously cruel. She's sympathetic towards the people she's laughing at."
