Another part of Ch.37 which I find immensely satisfying is when Elinor tells Marianne that Edward has long been engaged to Lucy.

At first Marianne's reactions are typical - she cries excessively and has to be comforted by Elinor. When Elinor explains how she has borne it, kept command of her feelings and arrived at a sort of acceptance, Marianne replies:

"If such is your way of thinking, ....if the loss of what is most valued is so easily to be made up by something else, your resolution, your self-command, are perhaps, a little less to be wondered at. -- They are brought more within my comprehension."

Exasperation doesn't begin to describe my feelings about Marianne here - I want to shake her or slap her. Of course Elinor does no such thing. Instead, in one long densely written paragraph - ("I understand you. ......... I was very unhappy.") Elinor tells it like it is, and with feeling - look at all the underlining. You go Girl!!

"Marianne was quite subdued.
"Oh! Elinor," she cried, "you have made me hate myself for ever. How barbarous have I been to you! -- you, who have been my only comfort, who have borne with me in all my misery, who have seemed to be only suffering for me! -- Is this my gratitude! Is this the only return I can make you? Because your merit cries out upon myself, I have been trying to do it away."

At last! Marianne begins to see how selfish she has been, and in the following pages we see several instances of her making a real effort to curb her emotional impulses. And about time too!

Up to this point in the novel I have found very little to like about Marianne, though I have been trying to forgive her because of her immaturity, and I did feel very sorry for her when Willoughby dumped her so horribly. I think that Mrs Dashwood's consistent encouragement of Marianne's "Sensibility" was turning her into an over-indulged, self-centred young woman.