What Elinor Doesn’t Say … Elinor Dashwood’s Quiet Sensibilities.

Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are about as different in character as any two siblings could be - Elinor being responsible, reserved, and full of sense and propriety, and Marianne, much more emotional, open, and dramatic. At first it’s tempting to think of this novel as being about Elinor’s sense, and Marianne’s sensibility, but it doesn’t take long to see that there is more to it than this. We know from the start that Elinor feels much – she has “an excellent heart, her disposition [is] affectionate, and her feelings [are] strong” - but we’re also told that she knows “how to govern” these feelings (8). When her father dies, she is “deeply afflicted”, but unlike her mother and sister, “still she [can] struggle, she [can] exert herself”(8). This is something Elinor does throughout the novel, both for her own sake and for the sake of those around her. She is very keenly aware of the feelings of others, and makes great efforts to see that other people are not made to feel uncomfortable or unhappy by any actions of hers, or indeed her sister’s.  She is actually a very kind person, and even though her coolness under pressure might sometimes make her seem unfeeling, maybe even calculating, she is actually thinking deeply about all sorts of things, and is trying to figure out how best to handle situations without doing anyone any harm.

Elinor suffers plenty of heartaches of her own, including her father’s death, and the loss of the family home, not to mention her agonies regarding Edward, and she bears them all without ever talking about it. But she also considers other people’s feelings and notices their pain. When Marianne is distraught over Willoughby, Elinor is there to comfort her, and is in fact so upset on Marianne’s behalf that she bursts into tears herself - tears that were at first “scarcely less violent than Marianne’s” (129). When she finds out about Edward’s engagement to Lucy, she doesn’t want Marianne or her mother to have to hear about it without first preparing them by implying that she thinks of him as nothing more than a friend, even though she herself has had to find out in a much more painful way and has had no comfort from anyone. She takes care not to put them through any extra anguish, even at the cost of her own feelings. As she says to Marianne – “I would not have you suffer on my account” (185). Elinor chooses to say nothing rather than spread the pain around.

 Words are important to Elinor, and she uses them wisely. When she feels that something ought to be said, she says it, but when she thinks silence might be the better course of action, she is silent, no matter how anguished, or enraged, or just plain contemptuous she feels. She doesn’t like it when Marianne and Willoughby mock Colonel Brandon behind his back, and she tells them so (39). However, when forced to listen to Robert Ferrars talking about how easy it would be to host a large party in a cottage, she doesn’t even answer him because she doesn’t think he deserves “the compliment of rational opposition” (178). To Robert Ferrars, she may have appeared to agree with him, or at least to have no opinion, which was probably what he would have expected of a woman, but inside the mild mannered exterior there is an intelligent, opinionated, and decidedly unimpressed person, who is deciding to keep her mouth closed.

What Elinor doesn’t say is just as important an indicator of her character as what she does say. She doesn’t challenge Edward on his secret engagement to Lucy Steele, even though we know that she thinks a great deal about it. She carries around this huge piece of knowledge, something that really has a great impact on her own life and happiness, and she still doesn’t tell anyone about the engagement. She doesn’t even share her true feelings for Edward with her sister. She hardly says anything to Marianne about what she really feels about the Willoughby situation (even though Marianne unfairly acts as if she had been lecturing her all along). She doesn’t ask Marianne if she and Willoughby are engaged, to avoid a row. She doesn’t ask Colonel Brandon if Willoughby is in town, to protect the Colonel’s feelings, even though she wants very much to know if he is (115). Later on, she “wants very much to know, though she [doesn’t] chuse to ask” whether Edward is in town (163). Propriety keeps Elinor from saying a lot of things that someone like Marianne most likely would have said – but so do compassion, manners and self-preservation.

There is much going on inside Elinor’s heart and her head but she can’t let on, for fear of upsetting others, or giving herself away. Elinor may appear on the surface to be unfeeling and lacking in deep emotions, but because as readers we have access to her thoughts and true feelings, we know that this is far from the truth. Marianne may be the more extreme in her display of emotions, but Elinor goes through just as much heartache as Marianne does, both on her own behalf and on behalf of others. The difference is that while Marianne doesn’t believe in concealing anything, most of all feelings, Elinor chooses not to put her sensibilities on display.