#eliza brandon

[bethanydelleman]

it’s funny you just answered a different ask about S&S, because I’ve been mulling one over that I’ve been meaning to drop in your inbox. I listen to S&S on the regular - it’s become one of my fav comfort stories. But I’m always disturbed by Brandon talking about how relieved he is when he finds Eliza 1.0 dying of tuberculosis. I know he cares for her, both emotionally and in the sense of providing excellent care for her at end of life. But I do wonder.

What if she wasn’t dying when he found her? Would he still have loved her and wanted to marry her? Or would her life as a sex worker, her illegitimate child, the drop in her social status, and the fact she was his (then still living) brother’s ex-wife make that a non-starter? After everything that happened, did Brandon harbor some Captain Wentworth-like resentment against Eliza, irrational though it may be? And if he had rescued her and married her, could they have been happy with how much both had changed since they were first in love?

Obviously it’s all conjecture, but I think Brandon would have done for Eliza 1 the same he did for Eliza 2. Bankroll her into a nice cottage in the country and maybe visit on holidays.

First, I want to address that he's "happy" that Eliza is dying. We in Western society are very uncomfortable with death these days and agree to extraordinary measures just to retain life without considering quality of life. What Brandon is saying is that Eliza Brandon had no further chance at quality of life. The relief that he feels that she will die soon is because she's suffered so much and he wants her to find peace:

So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind! hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had once doted. What I endured in so beholding her—but I have no right to wound your feelings by attempting to describe it—I have pained you too much already. That she was, to all appearance, in the last stage of a consumption, was—yes, in such a situation it was my greatest comfort. Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death; and that was given. I saw her placed in comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I visited her every day during the rest of her short life: I was with her in her last moments.

I have had two relatives embrace their ending because their suffering had become intolerable. It is a source of relief, as much as it may be mixed with sorrow. I don't find this paragraph disturbing at all, I've lived through it and he's right. And remember, he's a Christian and he believes that she is going to heaven, so she is only being released from this mortal coil to go somewhere far better.*

Anyway, here's the thing, according to British law/morals at the time, Colonel Brandon was not "allowed" to marry Eliza Brandon. Your brother's wife was considered your sister, so while these marriages did occasionally happen, they could be voided if anyone brought a suit against someone and they were definitely frowned upon. (Remember Emma saying that her and Mr. Knightley weren't really brother and sister, that refers to this law).

If they did marry, their children may be considered illegitimate, which would make it hard for them to inherit if Delaford is entailed. And you know if a cousin stood to inherit, he'd challenge the children's right to the estate.

Because it was considered immoral, I have a hard time seeing Colonel Brandon marrying Eliza even if she had been healthy. His chances at marrying her ended not when she fell from status, but the second she married his brother. If he had found her healthier, he probably would have provided her a home and cared for her as his sister, but not considered marriage as might as he may loved her still. I don't think he resents her at all, he's very forgiving in his speech.

Anyway, I hope that helps!

*I have worked in medicine for a while and I know that medically assisted dying is a hot button issue, I don't want to debate it on this here Jane Austen blog. Having experiences relatives refusing treatment after living in severe pain for a long time, I understand Brandon's explanation here. That is what I'm saying.

[firawren]

[eurosimmer]

Primrose: I can't believe we almost made it to the end of a generation.

[curiousb]

The Bennet Family Album: Volume V

Bertram and Beth are back home from honeymoon, and reunited with their young son Brandon.

They also seem to have brought a memento back with them.

Yep, another son! Welcome, Giles! Also with the Bennet deep brown eyes, but blonde hair, like his grandma Marianne.

Giving birth works up quite an appetite. Even for festering pizza.

High five, little man, it’s your birthday today! (And the toilet needs cleaning again.)

All the family is invited to the party, of course.

Brandon is raring to go!

~ Scorpio 7 / 10 / 10 / 7 / 9

~ Dog Person / Bookworm / Virtuoso

~ OTH: Music & Dance

~ Favourite Colour(s): Green

Interesting topic of conversation for a child’s birthday party, between two people who hardly know each other...

It's a double celebration, and little Giles follows swiftly in his big brother’s footsteps.

~ Cancer 8 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 8

~ Brave / Over-emotional

~ OTH: Music & Dance

He makes an immediate start on getting to know his aunt Eliza.

The event is somewhat marred by some unexpected rivalry in the kitchen over Mary. (Robert also seems to have perfected the art of standing around awkwardly.)

But both Edmund and George are far too nice to part on bad terms, and everything is smoothed over pretty quickly.

[heavenboy09]

30 YEARS AGO TODAY, ON MAY 13TH, 1994

LIONSGATE STUDIOS

PRESENTS

THE GREATEST DARK SUPERHERO/ ANTI HERO FILM 🎥 THAT WAS EVER MADE & BY THE SON OF 1 OF THE GREATEST ACTORS/ MARTIAL ARTISTS, GREATEST PERFORMANCE 🎭

THE NIGHT 🌙 BEFORE HIS WEDDING 💒 , MUSICIAN ERIC DRAVEN 🎸 (BRANDON LEE)

AND HIS FIANCÉE ARE BRUTALLY MURDERED BY MEMBERS OF A VIOLENT INNER-CITY GANG.

ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR DEATH, ERIC RISES FROM THE GRAVE

AND ASSUMES THE GOTHIC MANTLE OF THE CROW 🦅 , A SUPERNATURAL AVENGER.

TRACKING DOWN THE THUGS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CRIMES AND MERCILESSLY MURDERING THEM

IN THE FINAL PERFORMANCE OF HIS LIFE, JUST LIKE HIS FATHER.

THIS FILM GAVE THE SON OF BRUCE LEE, HIS OWN RISE TO FAME.

BELIEVE IN ETERNAL LOVE 💘

BELIEVE IN THE AFTERLIFE

PEOPLE ONCE BELIEVED THAT WHEN SOMEONE DIES.

A CROW CARRIES THEIR SOUL TO THE LAND OF THE DEAD.

BUT SOMETIMES...

JUST SOMETIMES...

THE CROW CAN BRING THAT SOUL BACK.

TO PUT THE WRONG THINGS RIGHT.

BELIEVE IN REVENGE

BELIEVE IN ANGELS 😇

REAL LOVE IS FOREVER ❤

BRANDON LEE

IS

THE CROW 🦅 🖤

HAPPY 30TH ANNIVERSARY TO LIONSGATE STUDIOS

THE CROW 🦅 🖤

FOR BRANDON & ELIZA 🥺😭

#TheCrow #BrandonLee #ElizaHutton #JamesOBarr #RealLoveIsForever #BelieveInAngels

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Still thinking about this.

If you put 35 year old Tilney in the role of Brandon, so many things in the novel hit extremely hard, even for me, who has been a Brandon fan since forever. Maybe S&S would work best as a seq- *gets shot*

[lunarwildrose]

29 years ago, a few days ago, on May 11th ... my and Hubby's special movie, for mysteriously paralleling our life at the time in my imaginary world and psychosis the first time we watched it. 🧸🤍

Karasu means "crow" in Japanese, and ... he is also my Eric, as much as he is my Beast, and I am his Shelly and Belle, "forever and ever ... there, I've promised." 🤍

I always loved the quote, "people die, but real love is forever" ... ever since I heard it at the end of "Even in Death", by Evanescence ... I love Eternal Love that transcends Death and eternity, and who doesn't love an Avenging Angel who comes along to 'make right what was once wrong'? 🤭 (Karasu loves Quantum Leap, too. He's my Al, and I'm his little wifey, Beth. ☺🤍)

Coincidentally - or is it synchronicity? - Karasu’s Japanese voice actor shares a birthday with the late Brandon Lee on February 1st ... and my Hubs told me "Today we will celebrate my birthday" on March 31st in a dream, and when I told Micky @octobernocturne to get a cake for my SO, Micky informed me it was also the Death anniversary of Brandon Lee, which really, really surprised me! 🙀 I guess it was just one of those Fate things, as my role model, Amy Lee, would say. 🥰🤍

[dagostini-time]

[zaenight]

*WANHEDA COMMANDER OF DEATH CHARACTERS*

[princesssarisa]

My post about whether or not Lydia should be saved from Wickham in modern Pride and Prejudice retellings has gotten more likes and reblogs than I expected. It's made me think of another possibility of why Austen didn't save her from him.

Presumably, Lydia and Wickham's marriage could have been avoided in only three ways that would have left Lydia's reputation intact. The first is if they had only been planning to elope, but it was prevented, as with Georgiana. The second is if they had been found earlier and separated before Lydia lost her virginity. Or else Lydia could have listened to Darcy and left Wickham, and then Darcy could have used his influence to protect her honor: e.g. by claiming that she was kidnapped, or by arranging a decent marriage for her.

If Austen had wanted to make any of those choices to free Lydia, she could have done it without drastically changing the plot. But if she had, it might have felt a bit too "literary" and unrealistic.

I've just been re-watching some of Dr. Octavia Cox's literary analysis videos on YouTube. They reminded me that Austen always loved to skewer the tropes and clichés of other literature, especially Gothic melodrama, whether in outright parody or in subtler deconstruction.

Dr. Cox's video on the elder Eliza's fate in Sense and Sensibility particularly highlights this trend in Austen. She argues that Eliza's story is a classic, clichéd Gothic melodrama (a beautiful orphan, an abusive uncle, thwarted romance, forced marriage to a cruel man, a "fall" into a life of "sin," and ultimate illness and death, all narrated by Colonel Brandon in heightened, poetic language), and that Austen's point in including it was arguably to highlight that this wouldn't be the fate of her heroines. Marianne comes close to it with Willoughby and with her near-fatal illness, but in the end she's saved. Austen's point was arguably to say "Yes, I know all about this type of melodrama, I know all the clichés, but I'm relegating it to the backstory, because that's not what I want to write."

(I don't know if everyone would interpret the elder Eliza's storyline this way, but it's how Dr. Cox reads it.)

Maybe with Lydia's fate, and with the backstory of how Georgiana was freed from Wickham, Austen was doing something similar.

I'm not enough of an expert on Georgian literature to know if the rescuing of girls from predatory men with their virginity and honor intact was a cliché or not. But it does appear in late 18th century comic opera. For example, Mozart's Don Giovanni: the title character is the ultimate womanizer, but he has no success with any of the women he tries to prey on over the course of the opera. His seductions are stopped by the timely, chance arrivals of his enemies, his victims get away unscathed, and he pays for his crimes with his life in the end. Or The Marriage of Figaro: the Count's designs on Susanna are thwarted, and he's humiliated and forced to beg his wife's forgiveness.

If stories of womanizers being thwarted and punished, and their female victims saved with virtue intact, were as common in the literature of the day as they are in opera from that era, then maybe Austen used Wickham and Lydia to deconstruct them.

We definitely see some skewering of poetic cliche in the fact that despite Mrs. Bennet's fears/hopes, Lydia's honor is saved with a bribe instead of a duel.

Maybe like the Eliza backstory in Sense and Sensibility, the backstory of Georgiana's near-elopement can be read as a more perfect "literary" example of a girl escaping a cad's clutches. The elopement was thwarted partly by pure chance, as Darcy paid a surprise visit just before Wickham and Georgiana meant to run off, and partly because Georgiana was a “good victim,” whose conscience got the better of her and who chose her family and honor over her whirlwind romance.

But similar luck isn't on Lydia's side, nor does she make the right, “virtuous" choices. Darcy doesn't find the lovers until Lydia has already been living with Wickham, and like a typical reckless teenager, she cares nothing for either her reputation or her family compared to her infatuation with him. So Darcy is forced to bribe Wickham to marry her, Wickham goes unpunished except that he loses his hope of marrying rich, and all the characters have to live with the results of the scandal for the rest of their lives.

By having Georgiana's successful escape from Wickham be mere backstory while foregrounding Lydia's lack of escape, maybe once again Austen was saying "I could have freed Lydia this way – I know the tropes other authors might have used to free her – but I'm a more cynically realistic writer than that, so I won't."

I have no idea if this is valid or not, but it's a theory.

[bethanydelleman]

Jane Austen was meta before "meta" existed. Look at this sentence from Pride & Prejudice:To be sure, it would have been more for the advantage of conversation had Miss Lydia Bennet come upon the town; or, as the happiest alternative, been secluded from the world, in some distant farmhouse.

"Come upon the town" means fall into prostitution. Now let’s forget for a second how horrible Meryton is being (Wouldn't it be better for gossip if she was ruined forever?) Jane Austen just referenced her last book and teased her next one!

In Sense & Sensibility, Eliza Brandon, the divorced and disgraced love of Colonel Brandon, was found by him in a sponging house, probably dying of syphilis, after falling into a life of either prostitution or becoming several people's mistress. "I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of sin."

Then, in Mansfield Park, Maria Rushworth, also disgraced and divorced, ends up in a distant farmhouse with Mrs. Norris, "It ended in Mrs. Norris’s resolving to quit Mansfield and devote herself to her unfortunate Maria, and in an establishment being formed for them in another country, remote and private, where, shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other no judgment, it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment."

All three women were failed by their guardians/parents and we see the three possibilities: prostitute/mistress, banishment, or married to an unworthy man.

I also get the feeling that Jane Austen couldn’t bear to leave a woman suffering. Even though Lydia is in a terrible marriage, we know that Elizabeth and Jane provide money and allow her to stay with them. She is safe. And as awful as it would be to live with Mrs. Norris, Maria has the benefit of her aunt’s income and the provision from her father. Both of them are in bad situations, but they will be okay. Eliza Brandon dies, but she receives the best care at the end. There is mercy for the fallen women in Austen.

[rottindecay]

hi～sorry to disturb you！I'm new to this fandom and in the hope of talking with someone else.🥺🥺🥺 i notice that you write requests for Eric Draven👉👈...could you please write something like a crossover head canon👉👈like David from lost boys being bestie with Eric （as i just read somewhere yesterday that Kiefer Sutherland was close to Brandon Lee and even the one who introduced Eliza Hutton to Lee. 👉👈）Or maybe just write a vampire Eric Draven AU please🥺🥺🥺🌹.

OH MY GOD ANNON. THATS SUCH AN AMAZING IDEA! Thanks for the request!

I haven’t seen THE LOST BOYS movie in like a million years and sadly, I don’t write for them. that might change though!

So this post is gunna be about Vampire!Eric Draven x Reader !

𝑹⛧𝑻' s Note (1): also soo sorry I made this super late, lots of stuff is happening in my life such as school and other things so I hope you don’t mind too much! I've also been grounded for some time now so if this layout looks a bit weird, I'm writing this on computer.

𝑹⛧𝑻' s Note (2): also im so sorry if this is ass i dont know much about vampires.. lol

𖤐 . . Vampire!Eric Draven who writes poetry about you and for you. whether it’s about how much he loves you, or how beautiful you look under the moonlight. anything that comes to mind when he thinks about you, he is writing down on paper and giving it to you once he’s done or he's putting them in a pile full of other his poetry he has written for you but didn't gift.

𖤐 . . Vampire!Eric Draven who feels bad when you give yourself up to him for when he is in need of blood. He hates hurting you in any way and will always feels guilty when he does do it, even after you say how it’s completely okay and you’re fine with it.

𖤐 . . Vampire!Eric Draven who when is done feeding on you, would patch any wounds up he might have left on you. he would hug and cuddle you and tell you how amazing and lovely you are as he kisses your patched up scars.

𖤐 . . Vampire!Eric Draven who would give you nicknames such as love, dove, my rose, angel…

𖤐 . . Vampire!Eric Draven who is overly clingy towards you, but it’s not like you mind at all.

𖤐 . . Vampire!Eric Draven who stalks you at night when you’re at walking around or doing anything outside of your guy's shared apartment. He doesn't tell he does this; he just wants to make sure nobody is going to hurt you.

𖤐 . . Vampire!Eric Draven who watches you sleep at night since he isn't tired from sleeping all day. He admires your beauty from the one lit candle he has in the room and is astonished by how or why you chose him out of any other good-looking guys.

𖤐 . . Speaking of sleep.. Vampire!Eric Draven who will see you randomly taking a nap on the couch or bed and would just sit there and just stare admire you. He could do this for hours and hours on end and wouldn't get even the slightest bit of boredom.

𖤐 . . Vampire!Eric Draven who is like an actual crow. He would randomly give you things that reminded himself of you like roses, or just any cute looking trinkets he finds laying on the ground when he's out patrolling the night.

𖤐 . . Vampire!Eric Draven who when gifting you roses, would cut the thorns off of it first before handing it to you because he's scared that if you prick yourself on one of those thorns and smell the blood running down from your wound, he doesn't know if he could handle himself with the smell of your sweet... delicious... tasty... blood...

𖤐 . . Vampire!Eric Draven when you do accidently get pricked by something, would walk up to you and try to contain himself. He would ask if you're alright, but you can see the hunger in his eyes when he looks down at your freshly cut wound. After noticing this, you would ask him if he wants some of your blood but he's hesitant (as always) but gives in once he knows your 100% fine with it.

[imtryingbuck]

Prologue

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x OFC!Theo

Summary: Bucky has to marry a woman who surprises him more and more as their story goes along.

Word count: 726

Warnings: angst? forced marriage. Bucky's dads the worst.

Masterlist   Series Masterlist

Of course Bucky has thought about marriage, dreamt about coming home after a long day at work to his wife cooking dinner or happily playing with the kids, slow dancing with her throughout the house whilst the children are tucked in bed. Sharing his dreams, fears, stories and life with his other half, a wife who he can spoil with gifts and love.

A wife he can hold during the night.

Another dream he's always had, having children, he's not picky about the gender (not like he can control it) as long as they are healthy, and he's happy to have as many as his wife wants.

So yes Bucky has thought about marriage.

The dream of having a wife will be coming true sooner than he anticipated however being forced to marry a complete stranger is something he's very against, all he's ever wanted was to marry for love.

He's furious and feels betrayed by his father who just told him he has to marry one of the daughters of another mafia boss, that in marrying her it will secure an alliance.

Michael Murdock who's notoriously known for being ruthless and cunning. A man who happily gets his hands bloody, a man who rules his empire with an iron fist. From what Bucky knows of the man's family is that he has a wife Eliza and from what he's heard is that she's just as bad as her husband. They have two sons Brandon and Matt, and four daughters Carla, Olivia, Marie and Lucy.

Then there's Theodora, the daughter that he had with a mistress who died after the baby was born. However no one has ever seen her or even heard about her, most people think she's a myth. A story that gossipers had made up to keep people entertained.

The thought of being married to one of Michaels daughters made him feel physically sick. He had seen photos of them in magazines or on the internet of their latest trip to the plastic surgeon, or of their lifestyles.

Don't get him wrong he lives a lavish life but has never once flaunted it and he likes his women more natural.

The idea of being married into the Murdock family and having Michael as his father in law makes his skin crawl despite his father telling him that he'd always be protected.

Reluctantly getting into the car, muttering under his breath as he goes.

"James you need this, you've taken over the business now and you need a wife by your side. Stop acting like a child" his father George speaks from the other side of the Range Rover.

"I don't know her. She's not even going to want this."

"It doesn't matter what she wants son, you are the man of this marriage. Marry her, keep her wallet full, and have your mistresses and if she steps out of line just smack her back into place" he chuckles as he continues to text on his phone.

Instead of responding Bucky pushes himself further into the leather seat.

As the car pulls up to a huge manor that sits behind large steel fences, the double gates have an 'M' on each sides. Bucky notices that there are many high branded, expensive cars all lined neatly on the grey stone gravel. There's a marbled fountain in the middle that had neatly placed flowers circling around it.

The last time Bucky was nervous was when he was nineteen, it was he first official meeting he was holding on his own. No matter what situation he found himself in he was always calm and confident, but still sitting inside the warm, matte black Range Rover he's doing everything in his power not to be sick.

"Dad is this really necessary?" He tries, he knows it himself that it's pointless but he's still going to try.

"I swear you should have been born a girl with how much you bitch and moan."

"But dad this is my lif-"

"Stop crying it's your wedding day" George smiles sarcastically as the car comes to a stop in front of the many steps.

Bucky, his father and bodyguards are lead up the steps and into the high ceiling hallway, their greeted by Michael, who's standing there with a large grin on his aging face.

"Welcome to my home and family".

Next>

Tags: @sapphirebarnes

[curiousb]

The Knightley Family Album: Volume XII

Veteran scientist Mary has recently become a bit of a mentor to the new junior researcher in her department, Georgiana.

Meanwhile, Bertram and fiancée Beth have struck out on their own...

renting a spacious apartment in nearby Sanditon.

There are far more interesting things to do than make make lunch!

Beth’s stats:

~ Capricorn 8 / 4 / 9 / 7 / 8

~ Kind / Virtuoso / Supernatural Fan / Born Performer / Natural Cook

~ OTH: Music & Dance

~ Favourite Colour(s): Pink / Blue

~ Aspiration: Popularity / Fortune

~ Turn-ons / -off: +Cultured / +Well-liked / -Infamous

~ Major: Drama (3.8)

~ LTW: Become Rock God

Sadly, there’s another goodbye to be said too, to everyone’s favourite kitty, Kevin.

It’s OK, Kevin, I have it on very good authority that Grim likes cats!

As she’s got older, Mary has become intrigued by the afterlife, and takes it upon herself to install Kevin in his final resting place, hoping to catch sight of a ghost. (Do I have to do something special to get ghosts in my cemeteries? They never show up.)

Sadly for Mary, the dead were not feeling restless tonight, but there was a bonus witch, so her nocturnal vigil wasn’t a complete disappointment.

And then it’s back home, for some quality time with George.

While recently-graduated daughter Eliza takes a well-earned soak in the bath, after a hard day wrangling algae in her new job.

~ Gemini 9 / 5 / 9 / 1 / 4

~ Brave / Genius / Bookworm / No Sense of Humour / Perfectionist

~ OTH: Science

~ Favourite Colour(s): Blue

~ Aspiration: Knowledge / Fortune

~ Turn-ons / -off: +Intellectual / +Serious / -Charismatic

~ Major: Mathematics (3.7)

~ LTW: Become Mad Scientist (her mum Mary is absolutely her role model!)

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Thinking again about the darknesses that lurk underneath the surface of Sense and Sensibility (I have talked before about how Edward despite being the eldest is subjected to what we can argue is emotional and financial abuse by his family for years, and how the Dashwood women are disinherited on a whim of their great uncle), and this time specifically about the Brandons.

We get so little about them, and what we do get about them is all bad:

This lady was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father... At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian. My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her... I have never told you how this was brought on. We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland. The treachery, or the folly, of my cousin’s maid betrayed us. I was banished to the house of a relation far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement, till my father’s point was gained... My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly.

Mr Brandon Sr is shown to us as being a greedy man, a bad administrator of his estate, and a cruel father. His first son seems cut of the same cloth, and his pleasures were not what they ought to have been is one of the most, if not the most sinister line between all the Austen novels. But there's more about him!:

Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it, that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to dispose of it for some immediate relief.

The Brandons were married for two years; the colonel returns to England and starts looking for her 3 years later. Young Eliza was then a 3 year old toddler. We are obliquely told that Brandon cut all ties with his brother:

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family, no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of the family property,) she visited me at Delaford.

Eliza is now 17, so the eldest brother died when she was 14, which is 16 years after his marriage with the older Eliza. In that period of time, he managed to squander the whole of her fortune, and put the estate in debt again, as we are told earlier on by Mrs Jennings:

Poor man! I am afraid his circumstances may be bad. The estate at Delaford was never reckoned more than two thousand a year, and his brother left everything sadly involved. I do think he must have been sent for about money matters, for what else can it be? I wonder whether it is so. I would give anything to know the truth of it. Perhaps it is about Miss Williams and, by the bye, I dare say it is, because he looked so conscious when I mentioned her. May be she is ill in town; nothing in the world more likely, for I have a notion she is always rather sickly. I would lay any wager it is about Miss Williams. It is not so very likely he should be distressed in his circumstances now, for he is a very prudent man, and to be sure must have cleared the estate by this time. I wonder what it can be! May be his sister is worse at Avignon, and has sent for him over. His setting off in such a hurry seems very like it. Well, I wish him out of all his trouble with all my heart, and a good wife into the bargain.”

We know the Bennets, with five daughters, and without a saving mindset, still manage to live very comfortably with 2000 a year, and if they had had any mind to save money, they could have provided all five of them with decent dowries/money enough to keep them out of poverty when their father died if they were single. It is clearly not that the money isn't enough, or that Delaford is an unproductive estate; in fact, it is described to us as almost paradisiac:

Delaford is a nice place, I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice old fashioned place, full of comforts and conveniences; quite shut in with great garden walls that are covered with the best fruit-trees in the country; and such a mulberry tree in one corner! Lord! how Charlotte and I did stuff the only time we were there! Then, there is a dove-cote, some delightful stew-ponds, and a very pretty canal; and every thing, in short, that one could wish for; and, moreover, it is close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile from the turnpike-road, so ’tis never dull, for if you only go and sit up in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all the carriages that pass along. Oh! ’tis a nice place! A butcher hard by in the village, and the parsonage-house within a stone’s throw. To my fancy, a thousand times prettier than Barton Park, where they are forced to send three miles for their meat, and have not a neighbour nearer than your mother.

One interesting character, though forgotten because only mentioned in passing, is the Brandon sister. On one of the quotes above we get that she's in Avignon for her health, and we know her husband is wealthy (and probably abroad with her) because it is his estate that the planned picnic is for:

A party was formed this evening for going on the following day to see a very fine place about twelve miles from Barton, belonging to a brother-in-law of Colonel Brandon, without whose interest it could not be seen, as the proprietor, who was then abroad, had left strict orders on that head. The grounds were declared to be highly beautiful, and Sir John, who was particularly warm in their praise, might be allowed to be a tolerable judge, for he had formed parties to visit them, at least, twice every summer for the last ten years. They contained a noble piece of water; a sail on which was to form a great part of the morning’s amusement; cold provisions were to be taken, open carriages only to be employed, and every thing conducted in the usual style of a complete party of pleasure.

It is implied that Brandon and his BIL are in very good terms (and we know he's not afraid of cutting ties with bad relatives), and one can safely guess that at the very least he cares enough about his wife as to have her travel for her health. Another guess can be made about her getting married about 10 years before the events of the book. Whether she lived at home before that, or was at school or somewhere else, it isn't said.

But this way you can feel there's a parallel in a way, between the Brandons and the Tilneys: a greedy, cruel father, a son that follows on his steps, and a younger brother and sister managing the toxicity as best they can. Talking about this with @bad-at-names-and-faces, she brought up the idea that in that scheme, Cathy would be Eliza (if it wasn't her not being an orphan, or a rich heiress, and how that connects with Austen's line about Cathy not being born to be a heroine at the beginning of Northanger Abbey). Certainly part of it is the romantic gothicness of the Brandon backstory, united with NA's commentary on Gothic tropes, but to me it drove home with even greater force how such a situation would break a man; losing Cathy that way would have definitely broken Tilney, and if we had met him 14 years down the line, would he have appeared to the unacquainted much different than Brandon appeared to the Dashwood sisters?

[didanagy]

Lovers of series and movies. Part 2.:

1. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (1995): Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars

2. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (1995): Marianne Dashwood and Colonel Brandon

3. QUEEN CHARLOTTE: A BRIDGERTON STORY (2023): Charlotte and George

4. DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY (2013): Lizzy and Darcy

5. MISS SCARLET AND THE DUKE (2020-): Eliza and William

6. LITTLE DORRIT (2008): Amy and Arthur

7. LEONARDO (2021): Caterina and Leonardo

8. PENNY DREADFUL (2014-2016): Vanessa and Ethan

9. THE ALIENIST (2018-2020): Sara and John Moore

10. THE ESSEX SERPENT (2022): Cora and Will