Sorry for the delay in responding, I was trying to think this all over and get a better understanding. I know you said down below Tom that Elinor was your favorite heroine, so I must defer to your greater understanding of her. :-)

I confess that I'm not so good, I would like to pass out SUTHs all around. That's probably because I'm not a wit like Elinor either. Ah well.

Sometimes I wonder though if Elinor is deluding herself a bit about her own feelings. When in 37 she's explaining all of her own suffering and she talks about the insolence of the mother, she only got to experience the Mrs. Ferrars' insolence on that one occasion. That is the ch 37 paragraph that ends with Then , if I had not been bound to silence, perhaps nothing could have kept me entirely -- not even what I owed to my dearest friends -- from openly shewing that I was very unhappy."

More of the insolence from ch.34 and Elinor's feelings at the time
and of the few syllables that did escape her, not one fell to the share of Miss Dashwood, whom she eyed with the spirited determination of disliking her at all events.

Elinor could not now be made unhappy by this behaviour. A few months ago it would have hurt her exceedingly; but it was not in Mrs. Ferrars's power to distress her by it now; and the difference of her manners to the Miss Steeles -- a difference which seemed purposely made to humble her more -- only amused her.
...
while she herself, who had comparatively no power to wound them, sat pointedly slighted by both. But while she smiled at a graciousness so misapplied, she could not reflect on the mean-spirited folly from which it sprung, nor observe the studied attentions with which the Miss Steeles courted its continuance, without thoroughly despising them all four.

There is much to laugh at in the folly of the behavior of Mrs. Ferrars and Fanny. I wonder though at her "not being distresed by it now". If it was not distressing to her, why even mention it as a reason she could suffer when she is rebuking Marianne for thinking she is cold?