Sense & Sensibility, chapter 14: Why, I Do Declare

We have officially arrived at the most frustrating part of the novel that doesn’t involve Lucy Steele, which is about all this secret engagement business and the questions no one can ask about it. So excuse my pig-headedness and please don’t think I’m trying to be glib, but no matter how well it’s explained to me, I end up huffing and puffing with confusion.

The fact is not that Marianne and Willoughby are engaged, but that Elinor is (almost) convinced that Marianne and Willoughby are engaged. It’s just … Marianne hasn’t got around to telling people about it, which is “strange and more incompatible with” her normal practice of wearing her heart on her sleeve. “Why they should not openly acknowledge to her mother and herself, what their constant behavior to each other declared to have taken place, Elinor could not imagine.” Neither can I, El.

Unless … they’re not engaged. Elinor is wary: “a doubt sometimes enter[s] her mind of their being really engaged.” 

So just ask!

—“and this doubt was enough to prevent her making any inquiry of Marianne.”

… Okay. All right, Sense & Sensibility. Shapard, can you help me out here?

Quote: “She does not inquire to avoid embarrassing or discomforting her sister if no engagement actually exists.”

Do you see why I’m tearing my hair out? This is the Schrödinger’s cat of romantic entanglements. It seems to me that if one must ask, then the engagement doesn’t exist. But what complicates this is not quantum mechanics, but a “secrecy” that’s “so wholly contradictory to [Marianne and Willoughby’s] general opinions and practice.” They haven’t bothered to play by the rules before—sitting out dances where they couldn’t be partners, riding in a curricle together, going to a house without an invitation from the owner—so why would they hide their engagement?

Elinor can think of one reason: money. Willoughby “live[s] at an expense to which [his] income could hardly be equal, and he had himself often complained of his poverty.” Shapard clarifies that “poverty” here means “an income insufficient for the genteel ranks of society, not a lack of basic necessities.” His residence, Combe Magna, brings him about 600-700 pounds a year, which is not much to live on. (In a later chapter, Elinor mentions 2,000 1,000 [ed. I got this wrong; thanks to Gretchen H. for the correction] pounds as an ideal annual income for a married couple.) But this would only explain why he and Marianne can’t get married right away, not why they’d bother to keep it a secret.*

It’s not just how Willoughby treats Marianne (calling her by her first name and treasuring a lock of her hair are trademarks of serious courting); it’s also how he treats the Dashwood girls. He gives them “the affectionate attention of a son and a brother,” calling on them every day just to hang out. He loves their cottage so much that he “consider[s] it as the only form of building in which happiness is attainable,” begging Mama Dashwood to resist improving or altering it (to which she agrees, because, as Shapard points out, Willoughby provides her with “sentimental reasons” for not doing so). His love for the cottage reflects his love for Marianne and her family and also demonstrates a value for simplicity that he hasn’t showed up until now. Maybe he’s envious of the low maintenance of the cottage due to his money troubles?

In praising Barton Cottage, he even reveals his romanticism: he often “wished” that the cottage was occupied, claiming that he “never passed within view of it without admiring its situation, and grieving that no one should live in it.” This is Willoughby at his best, at his most pure. This is the Willoughby who can and ought to be happy with Marianne and become the male in-law that the Dashwoods can rely on. “There certainly are circumstances,” he adds, “which might greatly endear it to me”—alluding to a possible marriage with Marianne. He’s saying all the right things. This is the Willoughby we can all root for.

So are you sure you can’t just ask, Elinor???

Join me next time, when a distressing event moves Elinor to start asking some questions.

*Most of the engagements portrayed in Jane Austen novels that turn into marriages are relatively short. None of them are kept secret—with the exception being Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill from Emma.