Indifference in
Sense and Sensibility
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depends on extinguishing his residual affection for his relations
and on replacing it with unconcern. John promises his dying
father to make the lives of his wife and daughters comfortable
presumably because, on that solemn occasion, he understands
and sympathizes with his father’s apprehension. Fanny
maintains that this sympathetic bond is unreasonable and
therefore untenable: “[Your father] did not know what he was
talking of, I dare say, ten to one but he was light-hearted at the
time. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have” made
such a request (Austen, 2006: 10). After questioning the
binding nature of her husband’s promise, Fanny moves on to
undermine his sibling love. John wishes to be a good brother:
“I would not wish to do any thing mean” (11). Fanny
challenges this wish by pointing out that he is not really a
brother of Elinor and Marianne and that such affection is
unnecessary: “What brother on earth would do half so much
for his sisters, even if
really
his sisters! . . . only half-blood!” (11;
original emphasis). John’s personal attachment to his
half-sisters is also overwhelmed by Fanny’s cold “truism”: “It
was very well known that no affection was ever supposed to
exist between the children of any man by different marriages”
(10). Fanny’s last sleight of hand comes when John brings up
the idea of giving his step-mother Mrs. Dashwood an annuity.
Fanny overrules this idea, not least by citing the trouble her
mother once had in paying such a money to “old
superannuated servants” (12). Here Fanny draws an analogy
between Mrs. Dashwood and old servants, stressing the
inability of both to contribute to her family income. Just as
Mrs. Ferrars feels no affection for the latter, Fanny suggests, so
should John alienate himself from the former. This comparison
allows Fanny to instill cruel unconcern in her husband, one
that involves the cancellation of warm sympathy.
Fanny succeeds only too well. By the end of their
conversation, John becomes indifferent to the potential
