Colonel Brandon

The younger son of a landed family in Dorsetshire, Brandon made a career in the army, until at the death of his brother he inherited Delaford. We are told that at that point the estate was encumbered by debt, but it appears that at the time of the book's action they had all been resolved: “His property here, his place, his house, - everything in such respectable and excellent condition!”.Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (London 1932) p. 61 and p. 337

In terms of activities and life experience, Colonel Brandon is perhaps the most Byronic among Austen's leading men.R. Jenkyns, A Fine Brush of Ivory (Oxford 2007) p. 188 He attempts to elope with his teenage cousin Eliza for whom he has a passionate attachment; he has the mortification of seeing her married-off for mercenary reasons to his elder brother at their father's behest; he serves his country abroad and returns to rescue the dying Eliza from a debtors' prison; he raises her illegitimate daughter, and fights a duel with her seducer; and he forms a second, passionate attachment to another vibrant seventeen-year-old girl, Marianne.R. Jenkyns, A Fine Brush of ivory (Oxford 2007) p. 188 His very name links him to the rake in Richardson's Pamela – Mr B. of Brandon Hall – and his experiences are in many ways a benign retelling (rescuer, not seducer) of the latter's life.J. Harris, Jane Austen's Art of Memory (2003) p. 37 and 49

In social life and in courtship, the Colonel may be considered an uninteresting character. Unlike the traditional romantic suitor, the Colonel is melancholy, taciturn, cancels expeditions, intrudes at inconvenient moments, and speaks only to Elinor, not to Marianne.G. B. Stern Talking of Jane Austen (London 1946) p. 139-144 He is set up in opposition to John Willoughby – the latter having all the romantic trappings and ways of speaking, and marries for money; while the outwardly dull Colonel marries for love.E. Auerbach, Searching for Jane Austen (2004) p. 113 Despite this, critical dissatisfaction with the starkness of the typology, and with the book's outcome, is pervasive.R. Jenkyns, A Fine Brush of Ivory (Oxford 2007) p. 191-2 The Colonel seemed to lack appeal to the 20th-century reader, making his eventual success in wooing seem unlikely.G. B. Stern Talking of Jane Austen (London 1946) p. 144-5 For a figure closer to Jane Austen's time like Henry Austin Dobson, 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 at last upon middle-aged colonels with flannel waistcoats”.A. Dobson, 'Introduction', Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (London 1932 [1895]) p. xii

Some scholars have seen parallels between Colonel Brandon and Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India. Hastings

had been rumoured to be the biological father of Eliza de Feuillide, who was Jane Austen's cousin. Linda Robinson Walker argues that Hastings "haunts Sense and Sensibility in the character of Colonel Brandon": both left for India at age seventeen; both may have had illegitimate daughters named Eliza; both participated in a duel.{{cite journal |last1=Walker |first1=Linda Robinson |title=Jane Austen, the Second Anglo-Mysore War, and Colonel Brandon’s Forcible Circumcision: A Rereading of Sense and Sensibility |journal=Persuasions On-Line |date=2013 |volume=34 |issue=1 |url=http://jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol34no1/walker.html |access-date=6 June 2020 |publisher=Jane Austen Society of North America}}

• Robert Swann in the 1981 TV mini-series, directed by Rodney Bennett.{{Cite book|title=Jane Austen on Film and Television: A Critical Study of the Adaptations|last=Parrill|first=Sue|publisher=McFarland|year=2002|isbn=9780786413492|location=Jefferson, NC|pages=37}}
• Alan Rickman in the 1995 film with Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award winning screenplay written by Emma Thompson, and directed by Ang Lee.{{Cite book|title=Byronic Heroes in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing and Screen Adaptation|last=Wootton|first=Sarah|publisher=Palgrave MacMillan|year=2016|isbn=9781349555376|location=New York, NY|pages=55}}
• Mammootty in the 2000 Tamil film Kandukondain Kandukondain, directed by Rajiv Menon.{{Cite book|title=INDIAN FILMMAKERS AND THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL:REWRITING THE ENGLISH CANON THROUGH FILM|last=McHodgkins|first=Angelique Melitta}}
• David Morrissey in the 2008 BBC television serial aired by PBS, directed by John Alexander.{{Cite news|url=https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/film-and-tv/new-years-day-sense-and-sensibility-1014923|title=New Year's Day: Sense And Sensibility (BBC1)|date=21 December 2007|work=Manchester Evening News|access-date=8 March 2019}}

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• E. Godfrey, The January–May Marriage in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (2009)

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Category:Fictional British Army officers

Category:Fictional colonels

Category:Fictional gentry

Category:Literary characters introduced in 1811

Category:Sense and Sensibility characters