The narrator seems to underscore Sir Edward’s ridiculousness by recounting his description of the sea. The diction and tone used in this paragraph represents satire and criticism towards the romantic era and over-fixation of nature during Jane Austen’s time. She states that his phrases are “usual”, a diction that represents the mediocrity of his language. Austen states that his descriptions are  “undescribable”, which he then proceeds to list with great flourishment.


Sir Edward is a weird guy who tries hard to seduce women. Austen hypes up the sentence by increasing the reader’s expectations with “great object in life”, prepping the reader for a mind-blowing objective, to be let down by the one word “seductive”. Disappointed but not surprised?

In layman terms: Sir Edward thinks novels are silly and useless. Again this is ironic because Austen places his statements about novels within a novel. Most likely her readers are fans of novels who will read Sir Edward’s critique and disagree with him, making him a more undesirable character. In addition, the flowery meaningless language strongly weakens his argument. Novel > Sir Edward

A major shift here similar to Charlotte’s change in opinion of Edward. Before, Charlotte was excited to talk to Lady Denham and found her agreeable. Now, she clearly states her opinion that she finds her “thoroughly mean.”

Sir Edward says women can’t understand what a man says because they are too driven by their emotions, even though Charlotte “could not but think him a man of feeling”. He digs himself deeper in a hole with Charlotte by disrespecting women.

Clearly Sir Edward is VERY passionate about poetry. He shows his expressive and passionate language with describing the poetry as “delicious”. This type of expression and passion unfortunately for him, turns Charlotte off.

In the quick course of a conversation, Charlotte shifts her opinion of Edward from “Sir Edward was much her superior in air and manner” to this thought. The bluntness of the statement and the abrupt shift in opinion shows how shallow Edward’s personality truly is.

Rote: mechanical or habitual repetition of something to be learned

The juxtaposition between the diction “commonplace” and the ironic praise given to Sir Edward criticizes the human tendency to lower their standards for people who look beautiful on the surface, a very shallow judgement of character that is usually held by women towards handsome men.