False Readings

As I come closer to the end of SS I’m becoming more aware of the importance of candidness and openness which seems to in contrast with NA and Catherine’s own development into maturity.  In NA Catherine always reads people incorrectly and this sets her apart from other characters and highlights her naiveté and innocence which Henry and readers alike come to love about her.  And though false readings are much more singular to our heroine in NA, in SS just about every character seems to read a person’s feelings or motivations incorrectly and these misunderstandings make for the most of the plot: Mr John Dashwood thinks Colonel Brandon likes Elinor, Mrs Dashwood and Marianne assume Elinor and Edward to be very much in love, just about everyone believes Marianne and Willoughby are together, Lucy doesn’t think there’s anything wrong in telling Elinor about her engagement, etc.  Throughout the novel characters hide their thoughts and feelings either to protect themselves or others so that by the third volume the characters take their assumptions to be true and largely operate from rumour alone because that’s all that they have to work with.  In an absence of any clear professions of love or affection, other involved characters try to read what they can from the relationships (or lack thereof) and take their own interpretations to be the truth.  In fact, everyone seems to ‘know’ about Marianne’s and Willoughby’s relationships from suspicions alone so that Mrs Jennings can confidently say she knows about the engagement ‘for it has been known all over the town this ever so long’ (173).  Though characters’ suspicions sometimes prove correct [Elinor had ‘suspicions of Willoughby’s character’ (163)], they are often misguided.

Marianne is perhaps most like Catherine in her candidness and yet unlike Catherine, she begets no shame upon herself but instead Elinor cringes in embarrassment as her sister openly writes to Willoughby in her letters or later forthrightly questions him at the party.  In NA Catherine’s later ability to read people ‘correctly’ is a sign of her maturity and growth but in SS it seems as though characters must grow to be more expressive and open so that only in the end does Elinor tell her sister and mother of Edward’s engagement and later of her disappointment in his (though actually Robert’s) marriage and her openness—her sensibility arguably—eventually brings the family together because it is in these very scenes that Mrs Dashwood and Margaret join the sisters.  Where once Elinor asked Marianne to ‘pray, pray be composed…and do not betray what you feel to every body present’ (167) she later ‘tenderly invited her [Marianne] to be open’ (321) and no longer mask her feelings about Willoughby and his engagement.  Instead of shame, candidness evokes pity in SS so that Marianne becomes ‘poor Marianne’ (288) in her ‘wretched’ state, Colonel Brandon ‘poor Colonel Brandon’ once he relates his misfortunes, and Willoughby ‘poor Willoughby’ (312) as his truth redeems him and effectively ‘softens’ the heart of those who once vilified him and soon even Mrs Dashwood ‘was sorry for him’ (325).  Perhaps aware that his truth will absolve him at least a little, Willoughby even asks for Elinor’s pity and begs, ‘if you can pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was then…And now do you pity me, Miss Dashwood?’ (305-7).

I’m getting lost between Austen’s own opinions of candidness which—to me—seem to shift from NA to SS.  In NA openness seems to be a sign of youth, naiveté, and perhaps immaturity, though certainly a mark of moral virtue and integrity.  In SS concealment creates conflict and openness soon saves the day and redeems the characters so that readers and other characters sympathize with those who were previously one-dimensional villains.  Here too, candidness is a sign of integrity and Mrs Dashwood even praises Colonel Brandon for this goodness: ‘such openness, such sincerity!—no one can be deceived in him’ (314).  Austen still holds candidness in high esteem in SS but characters must move towards it so that we only get truths in the third volume whereas in NA Catherine begins with this inherent quality and grows to recognize its absence in others.  Is Austen consistent in her treatments of concealment and candidness in both novels or not?  Is the difference in her opinions of the importance of concealment moreso than candidness (as I have written here)?  Why does candidness bring forth shame in NA but pathos in SS?  Why did we once laugh at Catherine for her candidness (think her exchange with Eleanor when she asks about Henry’s dance partner) when we now welcome it as the truth ties up all the loose ends of the novel?