Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen

full of affection, and although her feelings were strong, she knew how to control them. This was something which her mother had not yet learnt to do, and which Marianne, one of her sisters, had decided never to learn.

      Marianne was, like Elinor, generous, clever, and sensitive, but, unlike Elinor, she was eager in everything; her feelings were always strongly felt and expressed. In this, she was very similar to her mother. Elinor saw with concern how little her sister could control her feelings, but her mother loved Marianne for her sensibility. Now, after Mr Henry Dashwood’s death, Mrs Dashwood and Marianne encouraged each other in the violence of their unhappiness, becoming more and more miserable as they remembered the past and thought bitterly of the future. Elinor, too, suffered deeply, but she could still make an effort to discuss business with her brother, be polite to her sister-in-law, and try to persuade her mother to be calmer.