Sense & Sensibility, analysis, part 3 of 3

Don't apologise, don't explain. Except Willoughby does!

All good things must come to an end and so must Sense & Sensibility, although there is a lot explaining to get through. It’s this part of the novel that becomes a uneven for me, as Austen wobbles between advocating good judgement and prudence in all human affairs versus sensitivity to feelings and their expression. Does one of these have to triumph? Or should all humans aim to acknowledge an alternating cocktail of both? And in this novel which of the two sisters wins their prize?

We pick up the story again, with the Dashwood sisters returning to Devon via a stopover at Cleveland, a mansion house belonging to the husband of Mrs Jennings’ daughter Mrs Palmer. This is:

‘…a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping lawn. It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably extensive; and like every other place of the same degree of importance, it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, a road of smooth gravel winding round a plantation, led to the front, the lawn was do…