Polite Lies: The Veiled Heroine of Sense and Sensibility

Abstract

S ENSE AND SENSIBILITY is an austere book. In it Jane Austen depicts triumph of politeness over sincerity. Elinor Dashwood, heroine of this early novel, is dutiful elder sister, teller of polite lies. We can hardly imagine her childhood spent, like Emma's, in drawing up lists of books she never read or, like Catherine Morland's, in rolling down slope at back of her house. Elinor, suffering from an apparently hopeless love, must not only give support to her sister, but commonly finds herself the comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs.'' Even Marianne Dashwood, as Elinor points out to Edward Ferrars, can hardly be called a lively girl-she is very earnest, very eager in all she does-sometimes talks great deal and always with animation -but she is not often really merry (93). Once her season of happiness (54) with Willoughby is over, Marianne is miserable for most of rest of novel, to point of being finally dangerously ill. The appeal of Sense and Sensibility is not to be found in its being light, and bright, and sparkling. Flawed by structure too visibly formal, it has traditionally been characterized as conservative book, defense of control and regulation against threat of romantic individualism.2 Disagreement has most often