Blog Post 2: Knowing Other People for Real

A central issue that is explored in Sense and Sensibility is the extent to which one person can genuinely know or understand another. Branching from this inquiry is the question of how, if such genuine communication or display of true inner being is possible, this communication is best achieved.

Elinor is a character who tends towards measured rationality in her interactions and affairs and is in this way loosely representative of the ideal of 'sense'. Her sister Marianne is more strongly affected and guided by her emotions, and therefore exists more within the realm of sensibility. However neither of these characters can be faithfully described in terms of the sense//sensibility dichotomy when all of their actions and feelings are taken into account.

Elinor is reserved in her assumptions as to what other's may be genuinely thinking or feeling. Though she does indeed make speculations and judgements about the mind and character of others, she simultaneously holds an awareness of her fallibility in these discernments, remembering them to be assumption rather than fact. At one point Colonel Brandon begins to tell Elinor of how he “once knew a lady”, but then stops “suddenly” (44). Elinor shows here that she is not entirely immune to romantic speculation. “It required but a slight effort of fancy to connect his emotion with the tender recollection of past regard” (44). His body language, his unwillingness to go on, must naturally suggest to Elinor some sub-textual significance of his words. Crucially, however, Elinor exercises self restraint in her conjecture. After allowing herself to entertain this general “fancy”, “Elinor attempted no more” (44). She does not imagine herself to be able to read minds, and stops herself from delving into imaginary specifics as to the thoughts of the Colonel.

The author uses this scenario to illustrate a difference between Elinor and Marianne, by noting that “Marianne, in her place, would not have done so little. The whole story would have been speedily formed under her active imagination, and every thing established in the most melancholy order of disastrous love” (44). The author's use of the word “established” shows how Marianne's over-indulgence of her imagination allows her conjectures to take on the character of fact within her own mind. Marianne fails to appreciate the potentially great gulf in understanding that may exist between two people. “She expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own, and she judged of their motives by the immediate effect of their actions on herself” (143). Marianne grants herself a false sagacity in imagining herself to be a perceptive judge of character, when in fact she fails to achieve the more profound leap of imagination required to allow that the full depth of another's mind might be without her own grasp.

 The question of truly knowing another arises again when Marianne is to receive a horse as a gift from Willoughby, her recently met admirer. Elinor is apprehensive as to whether accepting such a gift would be wise. She “doubts the propriety of [Marianne] receiving a present from a man so little, or at least so lately known to her. This was too much” (44). Elinor is wary because she does not believe that Willoughby's true character can be known to Marianne though their short relationship of only a matter of days. Marianne disagrees. “You are mistaken, Elinor,” said she warmly, “in supposing I know very little of Willoughby. I have not known him long indeed, but I am much better acquainted with him, than I am with any other creature in the world, except yourself and mamma. It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; - it is disposition alone” (44-45). Marianne projects a romantic ideal onto Willoughby that she believes to be indicative of his true nature. However it is revealed through the action of the novel that Willoughby is far from embodying a chivalrous ideal. At this time he is in fact, by his own confession later in the novel, “trying to engage [Marianne's] regard, without a thought of returning it”, acting out of “meanness, selfishness, cruelty” in “a horrid state of selfish vanity” (227). Marianne's belief that an initial impression of a person is all that is needed to shed light on their soul is, in this instance, shown to be folly.

  
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