Weather Watching

The characters in Jane Austen's novels are susceptible to changes in the weather. Indeed, their ability to read the weather or talk about the weather proves important in plotting. Two examples.

Take Marianne's proclivity for bracing walks hampered in Sense and Sensibility:

[...] and an evening merely cold or damp would not have deterred her from it; but a heavy and settled rain even she could not fancy dry or pleasant weather for walking.

Our second example, upon re-reading the novel, provides warning against the facile charm of conversing about the weather — Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice:

Mr. Wickham was the happy man towards whom almost every female eye was turned, and Elizabeth was the happy woman by whom he finally seated himself; and the agreeable manner in which he immediately fell into conversation, though it was only on its being a wet night, and on the probability of a rainy season, made her feel that the commonest, dullest, mot threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker.

Sunshine does not generate such attention.

And so for day 801
21.02.2009