I have always sympathized with Elinor--I wonder if she hasn't reined in her "sensibility" because Marianne and her mother have given theirs freer rein. Perhaps this is relying too much on birth-order theory, or some other idea that would be anachronistic for this novel, but I am struck by the way Elinor uses such constrained language, compared to Marianne, who relies much more on metaphor and description than does Elinor. I often wish we could see an Elinor whose mother and sister were a little more sense and a little less sensibility: would Elinor then be a little less sense and a little more sensibility?