Sense and Sensibility
Mrs. Jennings
The gossipy matchmaker
A cheerful, talkative widow who loves to tease and match-make and turns out to be a loyal friend.
Mrs. Jennings is Sir John’s mother-in-law and the mother of Lady Middleton and Charlotte Palmer. She is hearty, good-natured and generous, an irrepressible gossip who is always on the lookout for a match. She teases Marianne about Colonel Brandon and asks which fine young man Elinor has left her heart with.
She means well, though she does not always know when to be quiet, and she has the money and the heart to be useful.
“And which of the fine young men in Sussex did you leave your heart with, my dear?”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Mrs. Jennings invites Elinor and Marianne to London for the winter and welcomes them to her townhouse in Berkeley Street. When Willoughby’s engagement to Miss Grey becomes known, she brings the town’s gossip, saying that he has bought a fortune and sold his happiness.
She stays kind to the sisters throughout the crisis, and she is part of the circle at Cleveland when Marianne is ill. Her loyalty is stronger than her talk.
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