Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang… he long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret…he always retained that decided regard …and made her his secret standard of perfection in woman; and many a rising beauty would be slighted by him in after-days as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Brandon.”
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, C50
Many of us want our exes to still think of us, to regret their behaviour and/or the break up. Marianne has the ultimate revenge; not only is she whole heartedly devoted to her husband (success is the best revenge after all) but Willoughby can’t forget her.
It’s debatable whether it was hard for Willoughby to leave Marianne. Though “he strongly partook of the emotion which over-powered Marianne” in their last individual meeting, it was his choice to leave and not propose as he has intended. He may have been fooling himself thinking that he would propose, he certainly had no issues abandoning Eliza Williams – perhaps his involvement with her, a much younger woman, puts him in the category of groomer with Wickham.
It should be noted that Austen does have a thing about men with the initial “W.” As discussed in a podcast episode she sends two Williams to sea, she doesn’t like either Sir Walter or William Walter Elliot in Persuasion (though Wentworth skirts this trend). Amme asks, quite reasonably, what William hurt her? Someone with the initial W did at some point.
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And then there’s Isabella Thorpe…
She thinks she’s captured Captain Tilney when she dismisses her current fiancé, James Morland. In the 2007 adaptation they show her faith in Tilney was due to them having a physical relationship, a faith which she quickly looses as soon as the deed is done. I like to think the last frame of this video is her thinking of James in regret.
Isabella asks Catherine, her friend and James’ sister, to intervene on her behalf, completely unaware that Catherine already knows she’s jilted James.
I am quite uneasy about your dear brother, not having heard from him since he went to Oxford; and am fearful of some misunderstanding. Your kind offices will set all right: he is the only man I ever did or could love, and I trust you will convince him of it.”
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, C27
It’s likely that Isabella, whether she slept with the Captain or not, will long think about James Morland and what she lost.