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Brontë are Austen’s reserve, her refusal to explore emotions
thoroughly, and her insistence on giving feelings at best a
“distant recognition.” Reserve, for Brontë, is a sign of
emotional inadequacy, signifying one’s inability to feel strongly
and her indifference to the calling of the heart. Brontë implies
that a great novel cannot be born out of reserve.
Sense and
Sensibility
proves her wrong, not least by showing how closely
connected reserve and feelings are.
Brontë defines a great novel as one that displays “deep
feeling.”
She dislikes reserve because it apparently shuts down
all avenues toward the human heart, the voice of which she
values highly. In sharp contrast, in
Sense and Sensibility
it is
reserve that allows us a glimpse of the deepest feeling of its
characters, not least because Austen consistently shows it to be
a result of harboring a secret. Critics have noticed that secrecy
is a crucial theme in this novel and have discussed it in terms of
concealment.
But if we pay attention to reserve and its social
ramifications, we can see that Austen explores the revelatory
power of secrecy as well. A case in point lies in Colonel
Brandon’s sudden termination of his visit at Barton Park. This
incident demonstrates the extent to which reserve has
permeated the world of
Sense and Sensibility
. It not only
affects social interactions but also provides important glimpses
of the characters’ moral and psychological universe. Brandon
has promised to take his friends to visit Whitwell, a fine
country estate. The unexpected arrival of a letter scuppers this
plan. Brandon feels obliged to leave for London immediately
yet says nothing about the cause. Creating an air of secrecy, his
8
In another of her letter about Austen, Brontë associates “poetry” and
“sentiment” with “deep feeling.” She contends that Austen “cannot be great”
because she writes without sentiment and poetry (as cited in Southam, 1995:
127).
9
For important arguments along this line, see Morgan (1980: 115), Tanner
(2007: 80) and Wiltshire (2014: 29).
