...Mrs Dashwood had picked up her sensibility, in which she is so obviously of the same mind as her daughter Marianne, in her youth (c1780-90) and had it indulged during her time with Henry, who perhaps made few practical demands on her of the type that would bring her "down to earth". She continues to display this blissful ignorance of mundane matters in the chapters we're reading this week, and it would be difficult to see how the habit of a lifetime will ever be broken. Meanwhile she indulges her daughter's similar tendancies, the fad for sensibility having shown no signs of abating during Marianne's youth in 1800-1810, although there had been a definite reaction against the excesses of this cult for some time.