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"...you must and shall be delightfully, honourably and comfortably settled before the Campbells or I have any rest.” [Mrs.Elton said]

You may well class the delight, the honour, and the comfort of such a situation together,” said Jane, “they are pretty sure to be equal; however, I am very serious in not wishing any thing to be attempted at present for me. I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mrs.Elton, I am obliged to any body who feels for me, but I am quite serious in wishing nothing to be done till the summer. For two or three months longer I shall remain where I am, and as I am.”

Emma by Jane Austen chapter 35

Context: Mrs.Elton is saying she'll be sure that Jane will secure a rich and well established family to be their governess. And also presses on Jane that they should start looking soon, but Jane is not on a hurry and still wants to be with her aunt and grandmother for another 3 months. NOTE: The Campbells are the family that took care of Jane Fairax when she was a child.

I'm really not getting what Jane Fairax is saying in the bold parts.

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  • If Jane was a statistician, she might have joked that the delight, honour, and comfort are [co-]dependent variables. That's to say they tend to change "in lockstep", so they're not really separate things in the first place. Or at least, it doesn't mean much to hope that all of them should have high values, since it's in the nature of their interrelationship that if one has a high value, so will the other two. So there is a kind of meaning to the words, but mostly it's just "wordplay". Aug 18, 2022 at 14:42
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    I agree with @FumbleFingers - I also think that Jane is gently mocking Mrs Elton's over-enthusiastic language. Aug 18, 2022 at 14:45
  • @KateBunting: Whether that's what your also originally meant or not, rest assured I think the same about the "gentle mocking" (as opposed to that being something you thought in addition to agreeing with what I said). It's one of those contexts where if you'd said I too... I'd have known for sure that my use of the word "joked" correctly carried that (fully intended) implication. Aug 18, 2022 at 14:57
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    @FumbleFingers - I should have said I think also that... Aug 19, 2022 at 8:02
  • @KateBunting: I didn't think of that. You're quite right that also can be moved to come after the verb instead of after the subject, to unambiguously differentiate between additional "subject" and additional thought. But I feel that in practice, the version you originally used is more idiomatic for the second meaning anyway. In which context it's perhaps worth noting that in speech, we can place heavy stress on I also think... - which to my ear strongly implies I am another person who thinks the same, rather than I think another thing besides this. Aug 20, 2022 at 13:34

2 Answers 2

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“You may well class the delight, the honour, and the comfort of such a situation together,” said Jane, “they are pretty sure to be equal;

to class things together is the same thing as put things in the same category. "You may well do something" is an idiom that means: It is possible for you to do something.

pretty sure modifies the word sure. pretty is an adverb commonly used in English: pretty nice, pretty expensive, etc. "pretty sure to be equal" means those things (delight, honour and comfort of such a situation) are very likely equal to each other.

The character Jane takes what Mrs. Elton said: "...you must and shall be delightfully, honourably and comfortably settled before the Campbells or I have any rest.”, thanks her for those thoughts but says she has no need for anyone to do anything for her at that time.

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As with many things Jane says, there's both a literal meaning and a clever subtext.

The literal meaning is that "delightfully, honourably and comfortably" are likely to all happen to the same degree, so it's not necessary to mention them all.

The subtext is to point out that Mrs. Elton is artificially breaking up the ways Jane will be comfortable into three in order to impress her with how much she cares about her comfort. Jane is pointing out that she sees through this and doesn't appreciate it.

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