James Thomson’s Spring and Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility both concern themselves with the relationship between parents and their children. Thomson’s poem features an anthropomorphized bird family, in which the bird parents truly seem to love and care for their young, much like how human parents are expected to act and feel towards their children. Though Sense and Sensibility does not include anthropomorphized animal parents, it also explores parenthood through characters such as Mrs. Dashwood and Mrs. Ferrars. Nonetheless, parenthood in Sense and Sensibility is very different from parenthood in Spring. The bird family in Spring represents ideal parents who, out of love, prioritize their children’s wellbeing and let them go completely free when they have come of age. Sense and Sensibility depicts the much less idealized reality of parenthood, specifically through Mrs. Ferrars, that prioritizes family wealth and social status at the cost of the children’s individual freedom and ultimately fails to live up to the parental ideal in Spring.
The birds in Thomson’s Spring come across as perfect parents that, out of tender care, prioritize the survival of their young regardless of the potentially heavy cost to themselves. Though the entire bird family is “Fortune sunk” (line 681), the members of the bird family each possess “Cares beyond the vulgar Breast” (Thomson, line 682). They do not just care for what is instinctual and stereotypically animalistic, in which one prioritizes the fulfillment of one’s own basic needs for survival and sustenance without consideration for others. Rather, the bird parents’ actions demonstrate a selfless love for their own children, though they themselves may be starving. What they first automatically notice with their senses is not their own stomachs but, while “weeping,” which betrays real sympathy and distress, they initially “eye” their “infant Train,” clearly considering their children first and foremost (Thomson, line 685). What the parent birds end up doing further emphasizes how they prioritize their children’s hunger and need for nutrition before even beginning to consider what they need to eat to survive. They “Check their own Appetites and give them [their children] all” (Thomsom, line 686).
When the baby birds face some kind of external threat, the bird parents show a similar determination to ensure the welfare and survival of their children, without caring about their own death or injury. When, from the birds’ perspective, a much larger and insensitive monster in the form of an “unfeeling School-Boy” (line 694), a group of “wandering Swain,” or a “hot pursuing Spaniel” threatens the nest that holds the bird children, the bird parents, regardless of what species of bird they belong to, act swiftly and aggressively in order to defend their offspring (Thomson, line 701). “With stealthy Wing” (line 690), they “whirring thence, as if alarm’d, deceive / the unfeeling School boy” (Thomson, line 693-694). In the case of the “white-winged Plover” (line 695), she uses her own body in flight to “tempt [the Swain] from her Nest” (Thomson, line 698). “The Heath Hen” uses a similar strategy (line 700): she “flutters … to lead / The hot pursuing Spaniel far astray,” distracting the dog’s attention away from her offspring (Thomson, lines 700-701). In all of these cases, out of loving care for their young’s safety, the bird parents unhesitantly transfer the external threat towards their children onto themselves without fear for their own safety. In these cases of potentially life-threatening danger, the birds, acting the part of ideal parents, automatically think about how to ensure their children’s lives with little thought for their own survival while actively and directly facing the threat. Once again the bird parents prioritize their children’s wellbeing.
But regardless of how much the bird parents selflessly care for and love their young, when the time comes for their children to leave the nest, they are willing to help them achieve their independence. Thomson describes how at a certain point that seems instinctive in the bird children’s development, “the feather’d Youth their former Bounds, / Ardent, disdain; and … Demand the free Possession of the Sky” (lines 739-731). At this point, these “former Bounds” (line 739) of “Parental love” are “now needless grown” (line 733), so that once they “[dissolve],” the separation is essentially permanent (Thomson, line 732). All this is part of the coming-of-age of the bird children, in which they further develop lives of their own and independently “Visit the spacious Heavens, and look abroad / On Nature’s Common” (Thomson, lines 738-739). During this coming-of-age process, the bird parents show no tyrannical desire to prevent their children’s desire to be free and act according to their own inclination in order to experience a wider world at their own pace. Instead, the parents actually aid their children’s attempts to fly away permanently from the nest. When the bird children experience moments of fear and doubt in which they “to trust the Void / Trembling refuse” (lines 743-744), their parents act as “Parent-Guides” (line 745) who lead the way “and chide, exhort, command, / Or push them off” (Thomson, lines 745-746). Therefore, the parents are sometimes more determined than their children in helping them depart for a wider world in which they have the power to make their own choices. When their children finally enter into “lengthening Flight’” (line 753), with “every Power / Rouz’d into Life and Action,” the bird parents feel no regret, anger, or negative feelings of any kind over the perpetual loss of their parental authority (Thomson, lines 751-752). In fact, their children “never [knowing] them more” actually leads to “rejoicing,” a shared happiness in their children’s triumph (Thomson, line 754). Once again, the bird parents are a paragon of parenthood who lovingly share their children’s joy after succeeding in helping them to stand on their own two feet and find their own way without any continued need for parental guidance.
Unlike the bird parents in Thomson’s Spring, Sense and Sensibility’s Mrs. Ferrars does not consider the wellbeing and unique desires of her son Edward. When it comes to his marriage, Mrs. Ferrars is unable, in contrast to the bird parents, to check her own appetite, which in this case is for a match that will increase the Ferrars’ wealth and social standing. John Dashwood, explaining his mother-in-law’s reason for why the marriage she plans between Edward and Miss Morton is “‘A very desirable connection on both sides’” specifically mentions that Miss Morton is the “only daughter of the late Lord Morton, with thirty thousand pounds’” (Austen 212). Mrs. Ferrars insists on the match because of the connection it will establish between the Ferrars and a “‘Lord’” and the large sum of “‘thirty thousand pounds’” it will bring into the Ferrars family. When, after meeting Mrs. Ferrars face-to-face with Elinor, Marianne bluntly asks Mrs. Ferrars, “—what is Miss Morton to us?—who knows, or who cares, for her?,’” Mrs. Ferrars once again hints at her motive of increasing her family’s wealth and status (Austen 222). She, “exceedingly angry, and drawing herself up more stiffly than ever” replies, “‘Miss Morton is Lord Morton’s daughter’” (Austen 222). Mrs. Ferrars’s explanation of Miss Morton’s importance, which merely includes her blood relation to a Lord, once again hints that all she desires from Edward’s marriage to Miss Morton is the Ferrars family’s increase in social standing and wealth that comes with being associated with the daughter of a Lord. Mrs. Ferrars appears to prioritize the Ferrars family’s survival through accumulation of wealth and social status, not her own son’s desires when looking for a marriage partner, which is the complete opposite of Spring’s bird parents. To that end, she is purposely scornful of Elinor, “whom she eyed with the spirited determination of disliking her at all events,” implicitly because Edward genuinely loves Elinor, whose marriage to Edward would not at all benefit the Ferrars socially or financially, and whose existence is therefore a challenge to, from Mrs. Ferrars’s perspective, an advantageous marriage with Miss Morton (Austen 219). In sharp contrast, the bird parents can completely overlook their own desires and survival for the wellbeing and happiness of their children.
Mrs. Ferrars’s lack of care for her son’s personal happiness that makes her so unlike Thomson’s bird parents receives even further emphasis following the revelation of his secret engagement to Lucy. She disregards Edward’s desire to honor the promise he has made to Lucy and how, in Mirs. Jennings’s words he has “‘acted like an honest man!’” (Austen 250). Instead, “‘Edward is dismissed for ever from his mother’s notice,’” without consideration of the moral standards he is attempting to uphold in maintaining his engagement to Lucy (Austen 251). After all, from Mrs. Ferrars’s perspective, what matters the most, unlike in the case of the bird family, is bettering the Ferrars family and ensuring its continued survival, not the desires and values of her son. Mrs. Ferrars’s lack of care for her son’s personal well-being receives further emphasis in John Dashwood’s evaluation of the scandal. While the idealized bird parents see immeasurable value in each one of their children, which could lead them to easily put their own lives on the line if it led to their own children’s welfare, Mrs. Ferrars, whose views on marriage largely match those of John Dashwood, seems to consider each of her sons as exchangeable when it comes to improving the Ferrars family’s standing. According to John Dashwood implicitly expressing many of Mrs. Ferrars’s views, “‘there can be no difference’” which Ferrars brother Miss Morton marries, “‘for Robert will now … be considered as the eldest son’” (Austen 278). Further diminishing Edward’s individuality, he continues, “‘they are both very agreeable young men, I do not know that one is superior to the other’” (Austen 278). Therefore, Mrs. Ferrars simply discards Edward for Robert when he is no longer useful for accomplishing her goals, treating him more like a tool instead of, like the perfect bird parents, loving him unconditionally as her child.
Though Edward has long come-of-age, Mrs. Ferrars is unwilling to allow him his own freedom and the independence to make his own decisions. In fact, she certainly does not rejoice, like Thomson’s bird parents when their children set off on their own after reaching the proper age to do so, and tyrannically tries to control Edward’s decision-making instead. She will only help Edward financially if he marries according to her wishes. As mentioned before, when Edward honorably refuses to end his engagement with Lucy for the more socially advantageous marriage with Miss Morton, Mrs. Ferrars goes through with the threat of banishing Edward from the family and does not receive the “‘two-thousand, five hundred a-year’” promised to him by Mrs. Ferrars if he marries Miss Morton (Austen 251). Instead, he is left with the comparatively insubstantial “‘interest of two thousand pounds’” (Austen 251). Mrs. Ferrars’s withholding of finances that would aid Edward in living more comfortably after marriage is her attempt to use money to control him to act according to her plans. She, unlike the bird parents, does not aid Edward in gaining the ability to think and make decisions for himself as an adult, but instead attempts to curtail his independence and make him act according to her commands.
Even after Edward has been banished from the Ferrars family, Mrs. Ferrars seems to maintain a contradictory interest in what happens to Edward. Though Mrs. Ferrars has not acted the part of a parental guide, who leads to way into helping Edward become a truly independent adult, her going through with her threat of dismissal without financial aid does forcefully push Edward into a position into which he must take action and make his own choices without considering the tyrannical opposition of his family, ironically the very situation that Mrs. Ferrars has been trying to prevent. She has unlovingly forced Edward from the nest into a condition in which he must no longer rely on her. However, according to John Dashwood to Elinor, though Mrs. Ferrars has gone through with “‘[casting] him off,’” “‘When Edward’s unhappy match takes place, depend upon it his mother will feel as much as if she had never discarded it … Mrs. Ferrars can never forget that Edward is her son’” (Austen 278). Mrs. Ferrars’s inability to forget about Edward being her son despite legally declaring him not to be reveals her persistent desire to maintain some kind of lasting authority over him, though she has seemingly cut all ties between. Unlike the bird parents, Mrs. Ferrars is clearly unenthusiastic about Edward’s newfound freedom forced by her hand, in which he can openly reveal his engagement to Lucy. Elinor, perhaps also sensing Mrs. Ferrars’s contradictory attempt to continue exerting power over Edward after banishing him, says of Mrs. Ferrars earlier in the conversation, “‘Surely, after doing so … She would not be so weak as to throw away the comfort of a child, and yet retain the anxiety of a parent!’” (Austen 278).
Though Thomson, with his bird family in Spring, provides an idealized image of parenthood with his depiction of the loving bird parents who have genuine affection for their children and always have their children’s best interests in mind, Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, with its portrayal of the drama between Edward and his mother, shows how, in reality, the relationship between a parent and child may not be so perfect. Within the natural world, the bird parents are free to be unconditionally loving, but Mrs. Ferrars, under the influence of London’s urban social world, in which rank and wealth are of the utmost importance, may not live up to such a perfect image of parenthood. Austen, with Mrs. Ferrars’s treatment of Edward, suggests the perhaps uncomfortable truth that those who, with goodwill and genuine wishes for our wellbeing as individuals, selflessly, like Thomson’s bird parents, guide their children into freedom and independence may not necessarily be their parents by blood. Notably, though Colonel Brandon is not close to Edward until much later in the novel, he says to Elinor, “‘I have seen enough of [Edward] to wish him well for his own sake, and as a friend of yours, I wish it still more’” and offers him “‘the living of Delaford’” after “‘[understanding] that he intends to take orders’” (Austen 264). By this act of goodwill born from sympathy, Colonel Brandon arguably does more than even Edward’s nearest relations in helping him gain happiness and independence to bafflement of family relations such as Mrs. Ferrars or John Dashwood, who finds it “‘very astonishing!’” that Colonel Brandon can perform an act of kindness with no strings attached for Edward with “‘no relationship!—no connection between them!—and now that livings fetch such a price!’” (Austen 276). With this turn of events, Austen’s Sense and Sensibility suggests that those with no direct blood relationship may more closely live up to the virtues of the parental ideal Thomson describes with the bird parents in Spring.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Penguin Books, 1995.
Thomson, James. “Spring.” Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, edited by David Fairer and Christine Gerrard, Wiley Blackwell Publishing, 2015, pp. 256-282.
Isabella Zhou 
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