This is a great post and reminiscent of something I read this summer which I thought I'd share (Gill and Gregory):

"When Annamaria is slightly grazed by a pin, the narrator tartly notes that Lady Middleton and the Steele sisters do ‘every thing...which affection could suggest as likely to assuage the agonies of the little sufferer’. This sets the tone for what borders on being an allegoric or emblematic passage.
Kisses, lavender water and plums are bestowed upon the child, who responds with guile: ‘with such a reward for her tears, the child was too wise to cease crying.’ Ironically, it is Marianne who sees through the egocentric demands of a spoilt child and the affected concern of Lucy Steele: ‘But this is the usual way of heightening alarm, where there is nothing to be alarmed at in reality’.
Marianne fails to see the similarity between Romantic expressiveness (bogusly present in Lucy who fakes sensibility) and the selfish demands of a wailing child.
Children, so often a Romantic emblem of innocence and spontaneity, are viewed here with the steady, unflinching vision of Christian orthodoxy. We are all fallen creatures, and not even the babe in arms, let alone the child who has learnt cunning, is exempt from the blight of original sin.
The passage is not just about children.

If children can be selfish and demanding, how much more the adult who has acquired the polish of charm.

Sensibility takes little stock of our capacity to corrupt ourselves and others. The suggestion that emerges from the passage is that this failure stems from the essentially childish nature of Romanticism. It is egocentric, manipulative and clamorous."

I found this paragraph interesting but I must confess that I never saw as much as all this in this scene. I certainly never saw any religious implications.