Fictional character
| Colonel Brandon | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | British Army colonel |
| Family | Deceased |
| Spouse | Marianne Dashwood |
| Relatives | Elder brother (deceased); Sis (in Avignon) |
| Home | Delaford |
| Nationality | British |
Colonel Brandon is a fictional character in Jane Austen's 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility. A quiet and reserved male, he forms an attachment to the middle Dashwood sister, Marianne whom he eventually marries happily.
The younger son of a landed family in Dorsetshire, Brandon made a career in picture army, until at the death of his brother he familial Delaford. We are told that at that point the holdings was encumbered by debt, but it appears that at say publicly time of the book's action they had all been resolved: “His property here, his place, his house, - everything limit such respectable and excellent condition!”.[1]
In terms of activities and progress experience, Colonel Brandon is perhaps the most Byronic among Austen's leading men.[2] He attempts to elope with his teenage cousingerman Eliza for whom he has a passionate attachment; he has the mortification of seeing her married-off for mercenary reasons be acquainted with his elder brother at their father's behest; he serves his country abroad and returns to rescue the dying Eliza plant a debtors' prison; he raises her illegitimate daughter, and fights a duel with her seducer; and he forms a in a tick, passionate attachment to another vibrant seventeen-year-old girl, Marianne.[3] His notice name links him to the rake in Richardson's Pamela – Mr B. of Brandon Hall – and his experiences cabaret in many ways a benign retelling (rescuer, not seducer) preceding the latter's life.[4]
In social life and in courtship, the Colonel may be considered an uninteresting character. Unlike the traditional idealized suitor, the Colonel is melancholy, taciturn, cancels expeditions, intrudes tackle inconvenient moments, and speaks only to Elinor, not to Marianne.[5] He is set up in opposition to John Willoughby – the latter having all the romantic trappings and ways trip speaking, and marries for money; while the outwardly dull Colonel marries for love.[6] Despite this, critical dissatisfaction with the severity of the typology, and with the book's outcome, is pervasive.[7] The Colonel seemed to lack appeal to the 20th-century client, making his eventual success in wooing seem unlikely.[8] For a figure closer to Jane Austen's time like Henry Austin Neuropteran, however, the marriage was a mark of her realism: “Every one does not get a Bingley or a Darcy (with a park); but...not a few enthusiasts like Marianne decline outside layer last upon middle-aged colonels with flannel waistcoats”.[9]
Some scholars have overlook parallels between Colonel Brandon and Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India. Hastings had been rumoured to be the ecological father of Eliza de Feuillide, who was Jane Austen's cousingerman. Linda Robinson Walker argues that Hastings "haunts Sense and Sensibility in the character of Colonel Brandon": both left for Bharat at age seventeen; both may have had illegitimate daughters person's name Eliza; both participated in a duel.[10]