Elinor's got some Regina George in her

In response to Elise's question of why Austen used straightforward character descriptions when scenes later confirm the characterizations:

I think the early descriptions are pretty cookie-cutter when compared to what we end up knowing about them. Especially for Elinor, authorial voice only sets up the facade. I was struck by how little the narrator says about Elinor in the first chapter compared to the nuanced portrait of her later on. Our first impressions of her aren't the entire story. She seems like this little paragon of nice ("an excellent heart") and rationality ("a coolness of judgment")... at first.

But oh my goodness, Elinor can occasionally be such a bitch sneak! For example, when Lucy Steele takes Elinor into her confidence about Edward, Lucy hastens to make sure that she hasn't offended her friend. "Pfsh, no!" Elinor basically says, "with the truest sincerity, 'nothing could be farther from my intention, than to give you such an idea.'" And Elinor's not above pontificating about the dangers of misbehavior either. She's definitely not as simple as the dichotomy of "Sense" and "Sensibility" implies.

Of course, blatant characterization could all just be a novelistic convention that you have to formally introduce characters, just like you're supposed to end with a "happily ever after," and we now value "show not tell" instead.

But it seems that the descriptions given straight up by the narrator accentuate in comparison the fully-realized characters that flirt, disappoint, pursue, and wallow throughout the book. Just as the epistolary form masked people's true intentions, the narrator uses the authorial voice to mask the multifaceted personas of the characters.

Instead, it's through the plot itself that Elinor and others become fully realized. "Actions are character," after all, and Austen has fun making that point clear.

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More thoughts/rambles that I won't remember later unless I write it out:

-separating the characters from the authorial voice (even though point-of-view is Elinor mostly) creates distance: makes reader question what's being told, delineation between character and author

-distance/separation between what we know (through narrative characterization) and what characters do reflective of how everyone's self-interested when you get down to it: everyone is out for themselves (whether for money, marriage, status, amusement, etc.) and linkages between people aren't nearly as strong as the internal dialogue between what you're willing to do to get what you want and what you're not

-if we get to know characters through "action", does that favor "sense" or "sensibility": action seems to be a "sensibility" characteristic? or is sensibility more about being paralyzed from feeling overwhelmed at external sources of awe? or is this me being too Elinoristic?