Indifference in
Sense and Sensibility
331
courteously even when Elinor’s enemy is commended and
Edward’s youthful indiscretion celebrated:
These were great concessions;
—
but where Marianne
felt that she had injured, no reparation could be too
much for her to make.
She performed her promise . . . to admiration.
—
She attended to all that Mrs. Jennings had to say upon
the subject, with an unchanging complexion, dissented
from her in nothing, and was heard three times to say,
“Yes, ma’am.”
—
She listened to her praise of Lucy
with only moving from one chair to another, and
when Mrs. Jennings talked of Edward’s affection [for
Lucy], it cost her only a spasm in her throat. (Austen,
2006: 300)
Indifference and emotions jostle for attention in this passage.
Marianne’s quiet attention, her “unchanging complexion” and
her mechanical repetition of “Yes, ma’am” all suggest that she
tries to appear unconcerned in a discussion of Edward’s early
engagement. At the same time, her “moving from one chair to
another” and “a spasm in her throat” betray powerful feelings
beneath the calm surface. Moreover, Austen takes care to show
that Marianne’s newly-acquired skill of reserve should be
attributed to her love for Elinor, upon whom she has inflicted
emotional pain unwittingly: “where Marianne felt that she had
injured, no reparation could be too much for her to make.”
Marianne certainly learns a lesson. That lesson is not to
smother strong emotions or to replace them with prudence but
to appreciate the presence of affection in alleged indifference.
Readers are also invited to learn this lesson.
Sense and
Sensibility
concludes with the apparent unconcern of
Marianne’s friends for her marital happiness. Marianne speaks
not a word when all her family wish her to be the wife of
Brandon: “They each felt his sorrows, and their own
obligations, and Marianne, by general consent, was to be the
reward of all. With such a confederacy against her . . . what
