Sentence No. 59 · 25 May 2026
In vain have I struggled — it will not do — my feelings will not be repressed — you must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen — Pride and Prejudice (1813) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The dashes create a chain of four separate bursts, each a self-contained clause. When you see multiple short dash-separated phrases, order them by emotional logic — failed effort → resigned admission → bodily confession → declaration — rather than looking for a single grammatical hinge.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 7 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. Mr Darcy speaks to Elizabeth Bennet during his first, disastrous proposal. 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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