Sense and Sensibility: Why Elinor and Marianne Are Both Misunderstood

Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are often described as the sensible sister and the emotional one. In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, however, both women feel deeply. What separates them is how they express those feelings—and how much authority they give them when judging other people.

Elinor’s restraint can conceal distress even from her family. Marianne’s openness makes her affection unmistakable, but it can also make disagreement seem like a failure of feeling. Austen tests both habits through disappointed hopes, uncomfortable secrets and the sisters’ changing understanding of each other.

The most revealing question is not which sister is right. It is what each sister’s way of seeing allows her to notice, and what it encourages her to overlook.

Spoiler warning: This article discusses major relationships and the ending of Sense and Sensibility.

Elinor’s composure hides the work of feeling

Elinor does not stay composed because she has little to lose. Her attachment to Edward Ferrars makes Lucy Steele’s revelation of their secret engagement painful, yet she must listen without exposing her own disappointment. Lucy asks for confidence while placing Elinor in a position where she can neither speak freely nor easily withdraw.

That situation gives politeness a cost. Elinor has to manage her reactions while continuing to participate in ordinary conversation. The people around her see the successful performance and can mistake it for an accurate picture of her inner life.

The misunderstanding becomes explicit in Chapter 37, when Marianne learns how long Elinor has known about the engagement. Her surprise reveals how closely she has associated visible suffering with emotional depth. Elinor has been hurting while also trying to spare her family distress.

There is an uncomfortable recognition here for readers: the person who seems best able to cope may receive the least comfort. Elinor’s competence helps sustain the family, but it also makes her needs easier to miss.

Marianne’s openness expresses a sincere ideal

Marianne believes that affection should be wholehearted and recognizable. Shared taste in books, music and poetry matters to her because she sees it as evidence of a deeper connection. She wants the person she loves to respond to the world with an intensity that matches her own.

That ideal helps explain Willoughby’s appeal. Their apparent agreement seems to confirm that Marianne has found someone who understands her without explanation. Her mistake is to let that feeling of recognition stand in for knowledge of his character.

Austen makes the distinction painful. Enjoying the same poetry tells Marianne something about Willoughby, but it cannot establish how he treats vulnerable people or what he will do when affection conflicts with money.

Her sincerity remains valuable. She refuses to treat love as merely a useful arrangement, and her devotion to Elinor can be fierce. The difficulty comes when she assumes that people whose manners or tastes disappoint her must also lack worthwhile feelings.

Both sisters can mistake a partial view for the whole person

Marianne’s early judgment of Colonel Brandon shows how quickly a preference can become a verdict. His age and reserve make him seem incompatible with her idea of romantic happiness before she understands much about his life.

Elinor is more willing to wait for evidence, but she is still susceptible to a persuasive account. When Willoughby explains himself at Cleveland, his distress and charm soften her response. Understanding his suffering briefly makes it harder to keep the suffering he caused equally in view.

This is one reason the novel rewards rereading. Good judgment requires more than recognizing that a feeling is sincere. A person can experience regret, speak movingly about it and still have acted selfishly.

Elinor’s greater caution gives her an advantage, but Austen does not grant her complete knowledge. She, too, has to interpret people from incomplete information.

What Marianne learns about Elinor

Marianne’s growth involves a change in attention. Once she understands Elinor’s concealed unhappiness, she has to reconsider the idea that restraint signals a shallow heart.

After her illness, her self-examination also turns toward the effect of her conduct on other people. Her grief has been real, but it has not made her the only person in the household who needs care.

She does not have to stop loving music or feeling strongly to become more considerate. Her development asks her to make room for experiences that do not resemble her own.

Elinor’s response when she discovers that Edward is free to marry her supplies the companion revelation. Her tears of joy show the intensity that her earlier composure contained. The ending makes visible what has been present throughout.

A scene to revisit with your book club

Return to Chapter 4, where Marianne objects to Elinor’s measured language about Edward. Compare what Elinor actually says with what Marianne assumes those words reveal.

Then read their conversation in Chapter 37. What has changed in Marianne’s understanding of her sister? Has Elinor become more emotional, or has Marianne learned to recognize feelings expressed differently from her own?

That comparison brings the sisters’ relationship into focus. They grow closer through the difficult work of revising judgments about someone they already love. Austen makes that work as consequential as the romantic resolutions.

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Reading or rereading Austen? Find the Penguin Classics paperback edition of Sense and Sensibility on Amazon.

Read the original: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, free at Project Gutenberg.

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