His personality seems very different from his step-mother's or his half-sisters'. What little we read of Mr. Dashwood show him to have been unlike John. Perhaps John resented his father's re-marriage, and subsequent affection for his second family.

We can tell that Fanny at least believes that John's father had preferred them to his son, and that she and John had discussed the subject before: "Your father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes, for we very well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the world to them." Ch.2