Defending Edward Ferrars

"Edward Ferrars was not recommended to their good opinion by any peculiar graces of person or address. He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behavior gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart."
~Sense and Sensibility, chapter 3

Though he's not at the top of my Favorite Jane Austen Heroes list, I believe that Edward Ferrars is a greatly under-appreciated character. I think it's a real shame that many people find him boring and bland. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Edward is a wonderful person with character, integrity, kindness, a sense of humor, blah blah blah, and, yes, a great deal of awkwardness. But he's not inanimate, nor is he "un-heroic". I realize that many people do believe that he's boring, and I do hope I won't offend anyone by contradicting them in this post. I respect all your opinions, but I'm going to freely state my own. Besides, if no one ever wrote anything controversial, we'd never have anything interesting to talk about, would we? Blog posts would be dull and predictable, and the comments would consist merely of "How true!" and "Yes, I agree entirely!" and we blogging ladies would kill each other with boredom.

Ahem. Back to my point.

Jane Austen describes Edward better than I ever could--see the quote at the top of this post. Edward Ferrars is not the kind of guy who leaps off the page. He's quiet. He's not strikingly handsome. (No, I am NOT going to digress into a litany about the respective appearances of Hugh Grant and Dan Stevens. Sorreeee.)

But Edward, though his manners "require intimacy to make them pleasing" is a kind and tenderhearted person. He thinks primarily of making other people happy, and isn't focused on impressing those around him. The more I think about it, the more I realize that Edward honestly doesn't care what people think of him. I like this little thing he says in the '95 movie: "All I want, all I've ever wanted, is the quiet of a private life, but my mother wants me distinguished." Edward doesn't care about pomp and splendor. He's not a knight on a white horse. (I didn't say anything about a black horse, though...)

Edward's rapport with Margaret Dashwood exemplifies this. Okay, so he and Margaret didn't have much interaction in the book, but the movies really do a good job of showing their relationship. Think about it--most young men from Respectable Families in those days didn't go around playing pirates with little girls. It simply wasn't Proper. Edward, however, is more interested in making Margaret happy than in being Proper and Stuffy and sitting on an Uncomfortable Chair in a dark and gloomy Parlor.

Plus, Edward is FUNNY. Yes, he is. Maybe he's not laugh-out-loud hilarious like Henry Tilney, but he does have a sense of humor. When he and Margaret are discussing what the Dashwoods would do if they had "a fortune a-piece", he suggests that Marianne would buy up every copy of her favorite books "to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree. Should not you, Marianne? Forgive me, if I am very saucy." (ch. 17)

(Love this scene. Just sayin'.)

But when I say Edward isn't interested in being Proper, I'm referring to endless rules and regulations about Polite Society. I'm not talking about good manners, character and integrity. Because Edward has all those, without a doubt. Now, when he was younger he might not have had much sense. I don't dispute that. I mean, seriously, who falls in love with a moron like Lucy Steele? There are a thousand reasons: he was young, she was pretty, her uncle encouraged the match, he didn't want to marry some other goofy girl his mother was trying to force him on, etc. etc. etc. (Et cetera, according to a friend of mine, stands for End of Thinking Capacity. This struck me as being highly amusing, and though it has nothing to do with this post, I thought I'd stick it in there.)

Anyway, though we don't know why Edward proposed to Lucy Steele in the first place, we do know that he is much too honorable to break off the engagement. He made a promise, he's going to stick to it. I admire that. Too many romance stories involve someone promising to marry someone else, then meeting their soulmate and snapping off the engagement without another thought. Look, that may sound romantic, but it's not. Think about it. How do you know that the said person isn't going to break off THIS engagement?

Hmmm, I seem to be going off on a lot of irrelevant tangerines tangents today. My apologies.

Let me also add something here on that topic. I've heard it said that Edward had no business "leading Elinor on" when he was engaged to Lucy, and that he should have told Elinor exactly what was up with him and Miss Stingy Steele. I don't agree. Edward promised Lucy that their engagement would be kept secret, and he kept his word. Lucy didn't keep hers, but what else would you expect from a girl like her? (Oh, and Edward did not lead Elinor on, for the record. It wasn't his fault that Marianne and Mrs. Dashwood read too much into his friendship with her.)

Well, Edward might be much too honorable to break off his engagement with Lucy, but we have to be glad that Lucy wasn't that honorable. "I'll marry Edward! He'll have lots of money when his mother dies. Oops! His mother found out that he's going to marry me. I need to get some duct tape for my sister Nancy's mouth... Where was I? Oh, yes, Edward isn't rich anymore. Ooh, but his younger brother IS... Hi Robert! Want to dance?"

So we can all give Lucy a round of applause. (Why? Because now the E's can get together, that's why!) Whether or not you are armed with rotten tomatoes as you "applaud" Lucy is your business and I will not be held liable.

And so Mr. F and Elinor were married. And Edward's mother's sister came to live with them soon after, and was known as Mr. F's Aunt. Okay, not really, but I had to stick that in.

And they lived happily ever after.