What will Mrs. Dashwood and her daughter Margaret do when her two older daughters go on a trip?
“We shall go on so quietly and happily together with our books and our music,” Mrs. Dashwood stresses in Jane Austin’s Sense and Sensibility.
I am sure that I wouldn’t want to live in England in the 1800s when women lived with their parents until they were married. Of course, they didn’t go to college or have careers.
However, it does sound inviting to live for a while without TVs and email and cell phones—and, instead, to live quietly and happily with books and music.
–Joy