Sense & Sensibility, chapter 46: I Almost Do

Are you in the mood to dwell on guilt and misery? Because Marianne sure is.

Her health is back in this chapter, so she has more energy to spend thinking about the future, a topic that we’ve never seen her thinking about before (except when it came to Combe Magna). And to think about repentance and selfishness and all that good stuff that previously immature Austen characters are apt to consider. Reader Mary Houlden made the brilliant connection to Tom Bertram’s similar character arc (complete with a life-threatening illness and a caring, somber sibling). 

This change in MA appears almost right away. First, she offers “the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation” to Col. Brandon, who earned this by fetching Mama Dashwood. (It’s implied that poor Brandon has flashbacks of when he first saw Eliza the Elder in her last days.) Then MA offers a prolonged goodbye—“one so earnestly grateful, so full of respect and kind wishes as seemed due to her own heart from a secret acknowledgment of past inattention”—to Mrs. J. This is the beginning of the denouement of MA’s character arc, and while she explains the reason for this change in behavior later on, Austen structures this chapter so that we see the effort MA puts into it before we see her thinking process. This gives the character a much-needed dose of integrity, so her plan of self-improvement doesn’t come off as naïve or wish-fulfillment-y.

On the ride home, Elinor watches MA demonstrate “bodily ease” and a “calmness of spirits,” musing that these new qualities result from “serious reflection.” MA does cry on reaching Barton Cottage, but she doesn’t turn it into a performance like she used to do. And she has another moment in the cottage on seeing “her own name in [Willoughby’s] hand writing” on a sheet of music. Instead of succumbing to angst, she just puts its aside and leaves pianoforte-playing for another day. But she has plans to continue to play, as well as to read, go on long walks, and wake up early to grab the most out of her days. Though these activities sound a lot like, you know, what MA has always done, this time they serve a purpose. Elinor describes it as “a scheme of [...] rational employment and virtuous self-control.” Perhaps a more telling change is that MA uses the “we” pronoun a lot more: she plans to share these walks with Elinor and take advantage of Col. Brandon’s extensive library. She doesn’t want to be alone anymore. (Cue “awww” from live studio audience.)

At last, during a walk with Elinor, MA reveals her feelings about the Willoughby situation and her previous behavior. She has been thinking a lot about his abandonment of Eliza the Younger (“that unfortunate girl”) and its implications for her: “[N]ot only is it horrible to suspect a person, who has been what he has been to me, of such [wicked] designs, but what must it make me appear to myself?” Elinor hesitates here, thinking the wiser course would be to wait until MA is in “stronger health” to relay Willoughby’s confession—and that allows MA to further confess that she regrets not the loss of Willoughby, but rather her own “conduct.” “I compare it with yours,” she tells Elinor.

Bombshell!

'“I [...] knew your heart and its sorrows; yet, to what did it influence me?” MA points out. She describes how her recovery gave her the time and the perspective to consider her self-destructive tendencies, that “[her want of fortitude under them had almost led [her] to the grave.” She refers to her potential death as suicide (“self-destruction”), not out of melodrama, but because she “felt even at the time” that the “negligence of [her] own health” was “wrong.” She wanted to die, and after being on the brink of death, realized what an awful wish it really was. The horror of this realization also caused her to reflect on the grief her death would cause for her family. There is a nuance to these reflections, as she grieves the lasting memory she would leave as a sister in the heart of Elinor, “who had seen all the fretful selfishness of [Marianne’s] latter days,” and the terrible responsibility Elinor would have born trying to console Mama Dashwood. In one fell swoop, MA acknowledges the burden Elinor already shoulders and her enormous capacity to love and grieve.

Furthermore, MA recognizes how her selfishness stopped her from being a good friend, as well as a good sister. She failed to “imitate [Elinor’s] forbearance … by taking any part in those offices of general complaisance or particular gratitude which [Elinor] had hitherto been left to discharge alone.” She acknowledges that her rudeness toward their acquaintances, especially to in-laws John and Fanny [pause for boos], has had the double effect of putting additional strain on Elinor and reinforcing MA’s “insolent” behavior. And she admits that her behavior has made her look like a hypocrite: she “[left Elinor], for whom [she] professed an unbounded affection, to be miserable for [her] sake.” This is why she affirms that her family, going forward, “must henceforth be all the world to me,” and that she will socialize only for the purpose of “practic[ing] the civilities, the lesser duties of life, with gentleness, and forbearance.”

Soooo … a lot of confessing going on here, which kind of gives me flashbacks to Willoughby’s tale of woe. On the surface, there are a lot of similarities: an acknowledgement of past wrongdoing, descriptions of selfish behaviors, recognition of leaving a negative lasting impression. But MA doesn’t make herself out to be the victim, unlike Willoughby. Neither does she speak of others as if they are beneath her notice or secretly out to get her. Willoughby focused on himself; MA focused on how she was her worst self. Considering their difference in age and experience, I think we can agree that MA shows more sensitivity and more self-awareness than a man in his mid-twenties.

At last, prompted by MA’s wish of knowing more of Willoughby’s intention toward her, Elinor decides to break the news. And it’s kind of brutal in that it’s clearly more than MA counted on hearing, as illustrated by “her lips [becoming] whiter than even sickness had left them,” but she listens without outburst. Elinor mitigates some of the details, but we’re left to conjecture the specifics. And then she leaves MA to grieve again, judging her wish for “solitude” to be “reasonable”—proving again that there’s a time and place for relieving one’s emotions.

Next time, we’ll hear more and then less about Willoughby as we finally hear some long-awaited news about … the Ferrarses.