"Only to Sink Deeper": Venereal Disease in Sense and Sensibility

"Only to Sink Deeper": Venereal Disease in Sense and Sensibility Marie E. McAllister Jane Austen is not a writer ordinarily associated with venereal disease. Indeed, some admirers ofAusten still cherish the fantasy, initially bequeadied byJ.E. Austen-Leigh, ofa "dearAuntJane" whose works need not ever be associated widi that embarrassing topic, sex. Sense and Sensibility, however, contains an undeniable reference to venereal disease, one undiscovered by previous commentators. Like die indirect references to die pox diat scholars have already spotted in Emma and Persuasion, die syphilis in Sense and Sensibility at first appears minor, a glancing euphemistic allusion in a small embedded scene. Once decoded, however, die allusion and its implications reveal a good deal aboutAusten and about several points in Senseand Sensibility diat critics have long found contentious. The reference in question occurs almost exactly halfway dirough Sense and Sensibility, in die story ofdie two Elizas: die invisible motiler and daughterwhose lives turn out to be deeply intertwined with diose of Colonel Brandon, Willoughby, and the Dashwood women. This curious story—melodramatic, digressive, structurally problematic— has provoked considerable critical comment, especially since the EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 17, Number 1, October 2004 88 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYFICTION advent offeminist criticism. Critics have read it as an echo of Clarissa, as a doubling of the Marianne plot, as a lens dirough which to view Brandon or Marianne or Willoughby or Elinor or Edward (orJane Austen herself), and as a fascinating and complicated political treatise in miniature. On a more basic level, however, the Eliza story actually functions as a metaphor for deadi by venereal disease—a metaphor that would have been familiar to Austen's readers from the novelistic and medical literature ofthe time—and diis metaphor has important consequences for current understanding ofdie novel and its audior. Every commentary on the Eliza story must begin widi die obvious problem diatits contents exceed its nominal purpose. Shortly before the story is told, Willoughby has cruelly jilted Marianne. Colonel Brandon relates the story ofthe two Elizas to Elinor (who passes it on to Marianne) in hopes that his revelations about Willoughby's true nature may ease Marianne's despair at losing her first great love. As far as it concerns Willoughby, the story is a simple one: before meeting Marianne, Willoughby had seduced, impregnated, and abandoned Brandon's ward Eliza. "He had left die girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a situation of die utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no friends, ignorant ofhis address! He had left her promising to return; he neitiier returned, norwrote, nor relieved her."1 The story dismays both sisters and is well calculated to rouse Marianne from her continuing idealization ofa man who in no way deserves her regret Eliza's plight, however, represents only the tail end of a multi-generational story. This Eliza, Brandon's ward, is die daughter ofanodierEliza, Brandon's first beloved and die woman he thinks Marianne resembles. Her story proves far more complex: an interrupted elopement, aforced marriage to Brandon's elder brother, an adulterous affair conducted in die depuis ofunhappiness, a divorce, and worse: "I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and diere was every reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeperin a life ofsin" (207). By die time Brandon finds her, die elder Eliza lies on her deadibed—but all this remains irrelevant in illuminatingWilloughby 's character. Austen does need to establish a reason for Brandon to have a ward, and it does not hurt to give Brandon a past 1 Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, ed. R.W. Chapman, 3rd ed. (1811; reprint, Oxford and NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1988), 209. References are to diis edition. I would like to diank die contributors ofdie C18-L online listserv, especiallyJudidi Mesa-Pelly, Shelley King, andJulie A. Schaffer, for references used in diis article, and my perceptive readers William Kemp, Lucy McDiarmid, and Linda Merians. ONLYTO SINK DEEPER89 that can explain his present bachelor state and his attraction to Marianne.Yetwhy, for these purposes, does Austen choose the melodramatic and narratologically excessive story ofa fallen woman? The deathbed scene itselfbegins to explain Austen's choice and sets...