Sense and Sensibility

Do you believe that Fanny is to blame for her husbands actions? Can a husband or wife be responsible for a spouse's actions?

Austen's narrator tends to blame john Dashwood's selfish nature at his wife fanny

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John Dashwood is not a nice guy but blaming his nasty disposition on his equally nasty wife doesn't make sense. Really, nobody can make somebody else, in this context, behave a specific way. In a patriarchal society like Victorian England, it was the man who usually set the tone of the relationship. Still, even if Fanny was rather a "shrew", Dashwood already had his own set of unlikable characteristics.