Sentence No. 41 · 7 May 2026
These were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments.
Jane Austen, Emma
Jane Austen — Emma (1815) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The relative clause "which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments" cannot open the sentence — relative clauses introduced by "which" always attach directly after the noun they modify ("disadvantages"), so the noun phrase must come first.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 6 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. Austen introduces her heroine — clever, rich, and dangerously sure of herself. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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