Jane Austen's Short Lexicon of Fine Names

LIKE MR. WESTON AND EMMA, Jane Austen plays games with first names. She plays an especially tricky game with given names in Sense and Sensibility. of the five most prominent male characters, three are named John without the reader's feeling the sameness, and to heighten the challenge, the three are the men mentioned most often throughout the text--John Dashwood, Sir John Middleton, and Willoughby. The reader does not register that these characters are mentioned more often than the successful romantic leads, Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon, or that the name John is used on more than one hundred pages; no one reels away from Sense and Sensibility overwhelmed by all the Johns. Austen seems to have challenged herself to see how many times she could assign the same first name to different characters without its becoming obtrusive, or to see how effectively she could prevent the multiplied name from becoming obtrusive, in a game played against herself, for herself, and probably for family, since neither Austen's father nor any of her six brothers was named John. Authorial technique overcomes uniformity every time; the commonest, dullest, most threadbare sameness may be rendered interesting by the skill of the author. Delicate tricks camouflage the sameness. One authorial tactic is to differentiate the name when introducing the character; when the Dashwood sisters' half-brother appears, on the third page of Sense and Sensibility, his first name is coupled with his last--"Mr. John Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the rest of the family" (5). A reinforcing tactic is to repeat the name thus introduced, early and often enough so that the tag sticks: "But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself;--more narrow-minded and selfish" (5). "John Dashwood" is repeated five times in four consecutive introductory paragraphs, interchangeably with either Mr. or Mrs., a repetitious coupling that hints at some traits of the couple as characters, while also distinguishing Fanny from the elder Mrs. Dashwood. Edward is often Edward, as well as Edward Ferrars; Robert is "Robert" as well as Robert Ferrars; but their brother-in-law is never "John, always "John Dashwood. The combined name that distances him from, and uncomfortably yokes him with, his half-sisters, also distances him from the other Johns in the novel, who receive different appellations. When Mrs. Dashwood's relative John Middleton is introduced, by letter, he is referred to as either "Sir John or Sir John Middleton, given name always preceded by the title. "Sir John" is then repeated in all the introductory references, and a further sixty or so reiterations in the book still leave him invariably "Sir John." The two characters' having the same first name does not distract the reader, even with extensive reiteration, because the name sounds different--especially with "Mrs. John Dashwood" thrown into the mix. The duplicitous John Willoughby is camouflaged with a vengeance; we do not even learn that Willoughby's given name is John until volume 2, chapter 7. He introduces himself by his last name--"His name, he replied, was Willoughby" (42)--and he unveils himself fully only when he signs his first name with his last to the letter jilting Marianne (183). The signature conveys a hint on more than one level. Willoughby may be determined to go out with a flourish, but it is not a Byronic flourish; as an engaged man, he instantly becomes less Byronic--no longer "Willoughby" in the gothic-romance style affected by Isabella Thorpe ("'Indeed, Morland, I must drive you away'" [120]), but just another John. His letter is composed by his affianced bride, of course; there is some authorial playfulness in Austen's version of myth domesticated, though masked by the seriousness of the plot points. The playfulness crops up again in the next chapter, when Colonel Brandon tells Elinor of hearing the "name of Willoughby, John Willoughby, frequently repeated'" (199). No one elsewhere in the story has heard the name "John Willoughby" repeated, frequently or at all. …