The appeal of Edward

Sense and Sensibility
 One of the things about Austen's society that is alien to our more romantic one is the necessity of understanding one another without speaking. This is necessary because people may not speak. Given his secret engagement to Lucy there is much that Edward Ferrars may not say to Elinor. He not only may not tell her that he loves her he may not even let it show.

And yet he wants her to know and she wants to know. In a more romantic culture, someone telling a story of this kind would contrive to bring about a situation in which Edward would accidentally blurt out the truth to Elinor. Ann Radcliffe does exactly that in The Italian by having Vivaldi hang around outside Ellena's window when she conveniently decides to confess to her mirror that she loves him (even though they have not yet spoken to one another at this point).

Elinor, to the contrary, must judge Edward by externals alone. It is precisely that he does not casually blurt out things to her that assures her he does not blurt out to others. Well, that he doesn't do easily anyway. Because it is important that he does blurt out at as it were. (And yes, we should think of sex here.) She does not want a cold fish.

And here the weird paradox of Edward's love for Lucy. Elinor has comforted herself with the belief that Edward cannot be in love with Lucy because she has seen the way he responded to her own presence and knows that, whatever his reasons for restraint, Edward does love her. She can see he is he is holding back.

[And we might pause to remember the conflict between Marianne and Elinor in Book 1 about whether Edward had strong feelings of any sort. Elinor is sure he does. It is the reserve, the classical sense of a smooth outward appearance being achieved because everything underneath is under perfectly balanced tension. A perfectly balanced tension that is intense enough that there is always some fear of tearing.]

Think of someone who is doing their very best to conceal that they are in pain but you can see it. We might respond to such a person by telling them we know they are in pain in order that they know we care and sympathize. But suppose they had very good reason to keep this a secret from others. In that circumstance, we might want to pretend we didn't notice the pain to help. If we were really confident of our abilities, we might want to occasionally let it show that we understood in a way that only the person concealing their pain would know we knew, intending by this to show we support them.

But it would be a delicate manœuvering to achieve this. And that is where Elinor is. She wants Edward to know she sympathizes but she is aware that it will only make his life more difficult if he thinks she knows he loves her.

Why?

Because they both believe constancy is important. They both see this virtue is the foundation that the whole house of virtues is built on. No matter how much Elinor wants Edward (and she craves him) she can only want him if he has constancy. She can only want him of he will keep his promise to marry Lucy.

There is a double standard. A woman can end an engagement even though a man cannot. The only way out is if Lucy releases Edward.

Elinor is not without self interest. She means to get Edward is she can and it is not hard to see her taking a certain pleasure in the difficulties standing in the way of any marriage between Edward and Lucy. For example, consider her musings about what she has learned of the predicament from the elder Miss Steele.

Elinor was left in possession of knowledge which might feed her powers of reflection some time, though she had learnt very little more than what had been already foreseen and foreplanned in her own mind. Edward's marriage with Lucy was as firmly determined on, and the time of its taking place remained as absolutely uncertain, as she had concluded it would be; -- everything depended, exactly after her expectation, on his getting that preferment, of which, at present, there seemed not the smallest chance. 

It's hard not to see a certain self-satisfaction in that. 

But how will she act? We'll see.

In our world, the sort of intimacy that feeds Elinor's desire for reserve in feelings is largely gone.