Balancing Emotion and Reason
Each Defense Has a Cost
Thomas's news seems to marry Edward to Lucy. Then Edward himself arrives, shreds a pair of scissors in the parlor, and names Mrs. Robert Ferrars. Elinor leaves the room in tears she cannot manage. The woman who has held everyone else's weather finally fails her own rule, and the failure is the first honest rest she has had.
Key Insight
Sense without a place to break becomes another kind of cliff. Elinor's joy is not a conversion to Marianne's method. It is proof that government was always covering a heart large enough to need release when the room is finally safe.
“Elinor now found the difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it, and certainty itself.”Full analysis
