Sense & Sensibility, chapter 15: The Departed
Setting the scene:
Elinor and Mama Dashwood arrive home to find Marianne sobbing and Willoughby looking distraught. “I am now suffering under a very heavy disappointment!” he cries as Marianne runs away. Can we get an explanation? “Mrs. Smith has this morning exercised the privilege of riches upon a poor dependent cousin, by sending me on business to London.” Okay … so Mama Dashwood invites him to visit them when he’s done with this “business,” but he declines. Then, amidst this new shock, Willoughby exits rather rudely (referring to visiting them as “folly” and claiming he cannot be happy in their company).
Elinor tries to decode Willoughby’s behavior: “[H]is embarrassment, and affectation of cheerfulness, and, above all, his unwillingness to accept her mother’s invitation, a backwardness … so unlike himself, greatly disturbed her.” You’re not the only one, Elinor—I agree. There’s something here that doesn’t add up.* No one checks in with Marianne to get her side of the story (she spends the rest of the day crying, so it’s understandable). But all Elinor can think of is the possibility of a “quarrel” having taken place between them, which doesn’t sound likely.
Mama Dashwood, firmly on Team Willoughby, believes that Mrs. Smith is primarily to blame: “[Willoughby] dares not therefore at present confess to her his engagement with Marianne, and he feels himself obliged, from his dependent situation,” to exit stage left. She believes the engagement exists because, essentially, there was truth in all his looks. His behavior as Marianne’s boyfriend has been consistent, as has his show of sincerity toward the whole family. And she caps off her argument with the technically accurate claim that nobody they know “has ever spoken to his disadvantage.” Which, again, sounds like another young man with an assumed good reputation.
I can’t let it pass unmentioned just how defensive Mama Dashwood acts here. She lashes out at Elinor whenever her daughter brings up her “doubt,” calling her “ungracious” (toward Willoughby, I assume) and accusing her of wanting—I guess?—to think the worst of Willoughby? No, Mrs. Dashwood, you’re mixing Elinor up with me. Elinor is just asking for a definitive sign of their engagement—a correspondence would answer her doubts. Mama claims not to need even that much: “no secrecy has been attempted; all has been uniformly open and unreserved.”
But they are being secretive? No one is saying anything about their relationship status?? No one even knows exactly what Willoughby told Marianne?? We don’t even know if Marianne believes they are engaged???
“Has not his behavior to Marianne and to all of us, for at least the last fortnight, declared that he loved and considered her as his future wife, and that he felt for us the attachment of the nearest relation? Have we not perfectly understood each other?”
I don’t know—have you???? One measly lock of hair does not an engagement ring make!
Okay. Taking a breath. Lowering my heart rate. Checking in with David M. Shapard.
Engaged couples were expected to “proclaim the fact clearly to others.” That is Elinor’s current expectation/hope, as she (like Mama) believes that Willoughby loves Marianne. “Mrs. Dashwood,” on the other hand, “happy to disperse with the formalities, is willing to consider Willoughby’s prior behavior as a sufficient request.” So this is a fight over ideologies as much as it is a debate over how much to trust Marianne and Willoughby. And of course Mama Dashwood is going to side with her favorite. Even Elinor refuses to “raise objections against[his] conduct on so illiberal a foundation, as a difference in judgment” and acknowledges that “secrecy, as far as it can be observed, may now be very advisable.”
That’s what the characters think. But the author, in highlighting Willoughby’s faults long before this point and dwelling on the uncertainty of every character, is placing narrative importance on this scene. Instead of seeing him as “Marianne’s preserver,” now we see how he handles uncomfortable, even damaging situations (alongside people he claims to love, no less). Are you like Mama Dashwood, willing to let his previous behavior make up for his abrupt departure? Or do you decide, like Elinor, that this inconsistency is something to sit up and take notice of?
Next time, Marianne mourns Willoughby’s absence, but a new arrival rearranges the Dashwoods’ priorities.
*Now, class, which other character have we seen so far has displayed reluctance in accepting an invitation and an awkward behavioral pattern? Certainly he has nothing to hide, either …
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