Touché: the Duel in Literature
John Leigh
Harvard University Press, 352pp, £20
Modern readers sometimes miss it, but there is even a duel in Jane Austen. In Sense and Sensibility (1811), Colonel Brandon tells Elinor Dashwood how he and Willoughby, the seducer of his ward Eliza, have “met by appointment, he to defend, I to punish his conduct”. Both men have survived the encounter “unwounded”. “Elinor sighed over the fancied necessity of this; but to a man and a soldier, she presumed not to censure it.” Colonel Brandon, a man of melancholy rectitude, has acted honourably. He and the villainous Willoughby can return to their respective stations in life and might come across each other in future without any further animosity.
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