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The Big Books of Summer 2025
Jacie Robinson asked this question about Sense and Sensibility:
Someone please enlighten me on the connection between Colonel Brandon and Marianne. I understand he is taken with her at first because of her similarity of his first lover, Eliza, but how does he actually fall in love with her? More importantly, how does Marianne come to marry him in the end when he is twice her age and nothing like her? She doesn't even appreciate his company at the beginning of the novel.
kellyjane I think that Colonel Brandon was written as falling in love with Marianne almost as quickly and easily as he was smitten with her. Jane Austen doesn't…mǰI think that Colonel Brandon was written as falling in love with Marianne almost as quickly and easily as he was smitten with her. Jane Austen doesn't really explain it (she never takes us inside the mind of Colonel Brandon); but apparently he sees qualities in Marianne (passion, loyalty, intelligence, exuberance) that he had been prone to admire through his adult life, beginning with Eliza. (That ventured, I don't think that Colonel Brandon was a particularly well-written character, truth be told.)

My sense of Marianne was that she was written as someone who undergoes a rather profound shift in her consciousness, outlook, and values as a result of almost bringing her own destruction upon herself. She accepted Elinor's ethos of 'emotional self-government' rather than impulsive emotional reactivity-- along with accepting more of Elinor's outlook on social proprieties and etc-- and therefore, it seems to me, was open to the more 'sensible' choice of marrying a mature and stable and decent man who would be devoted to her. It seemed to me that Jane Austen hinted something like that Marianne would come to love Colonel Brandon over time, because it was her nature 'never to do anything by halves'. It was more a respect and gratitude that would evolve into a feeling of love because of Marianne's strong sense of loyalty to whatever she could genuinely appreciate. All of her surrounding loved ones wanted the marriage to take place, and she acquiesced.

But for me personally, it wasn't a particularly satisfying arc of the story's drama. I can understand it; but I can't help feeling that Marianne sacrificed a part of herself in marrying for respect rather than organically passionate love.(less)
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Sense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen
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