Even in the depths of her despair, a lot of the time I feel like Marianne sees her life as a story with herself as the heroine and that she is acting scenes from her favourite stories. When Willoughby first came on the scene, we read how he was like what Marianne's fancy had drawn as the hero of her favourite story.

Although I felt so sorry for her when Willoughby rejected her and I understood that her attempts to acquit him were her way of dealing with the devastation his rejection caused, I was struck on this read at some similarities between Ch. 29 and 'Much Ado About Nothing'.

Marianne, rather than blaming Willoughby for his inconstancy, declares that the 'blackest art' has been employed against her to make Willoughby think ill of her. She says she has been 'cruelly used, but not by Willoughby'.

I know Marianne is grasping at straws here, but I also wonder how she could possibly believe this to be true, even for a moment. She imagines that the woman she saw him with has used some sort of 'art' and 'premeditated' method of turning him against her and that 'everyone is leauged together to ruin her' in his eyes. I wonder what she thinks anyone could have ever said to him to produce this kind of effect? Marianne must be suggesting that Willoughby has heard she has been inconstant to him or worse. Even for a moment when she says nothing can acquit him of the cruelty, she goes back to the same reason " Whatever he might have heard against me -- ought he not to have suspended his belief? ought he not to have told me of it, to have given me the power of clearing myself?"

In Act 4, Scene I of Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio and Hero break up literally at the altar because he has had a whole group of people in league against Hero feeding him lies about her loss of virtue.

Hero, in despair, cries out "Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death!"

To me, Marianne's words in Ch. 29 sounded as though she almost had this whole scene in her mind:

" leave me, hate me, forget me; but do not torture me so."