Free Just Jane by Nancy Moser Page B

after learning that the man she loves is bound to another is just as great as her sister’s, yet her response is far different. She binds her grief inside, wrapping it tightly around her heart like yarn around a ball. But in her self-constraint and strength, does she risk having the grief pull too tight, strangling her heart and all other possibilities of love?
    Which is the better way? Total release or total constraint? Sense or sensibility?
    I think of my own sister. When her Tom died she didn’t express her grief. She was not Marianne. In many ways I’ve often wished she was—at least to some degree. Cassandra is so controlled and inwards. When I wanted to help I found no way inside her pain, no crack in her regulation to either see her thoughts and feelings nor let my own reach inside. I imagined her pain, but I didn’t share it. And now, with pain of my own . . . Is there a correct way to grieve? A better way?
    Suddenly, Marianne begins to speak in my mind, Marianne from the pages of my story. Marianne who has been so intensely spurned by Willoughby and grieves publicly, with great flourish. She does not realize how her sister Elinor has been suffering in silence, holding on to the secret that Lucy Steele is clandestinely engaged to Elinor’s love, Edward—and has sworn Elinor to confidence. To feel such pain without being able to share it . . . as I must hold on to my own pain  . . .
    I know what I must do. I rush to the manuscript and pull out the right page, ready to make additions. The sisters begin to talk and I hurry to scribe their words to the paper. Elinor speaks first, a bit peeved at Marianne’s assumption that she does not also feel deeply.
    “You do not suppose that I have ever felt much. For four months, Marianne, I have had all this hanging on my mind, without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature; knowing that it would make you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained to you, yet unable to prepare you for it in the least . . . .”
    Elinor’s words continue, an outpouring of pent-up frustration and anxiety, finally letting her emotional, indulgent sister realize there are others who suffer too, that indeed, there is another way to suffer.
    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 own 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.”
    The sisters embrace, their sense and sensibility finding common ground. The scene continues in my mind and I let it take hold. The words run across the page of their own volition. I am their servant and keep them supplied with fresh ink and page.
    A few paragraphs later the words run faster as the existing plot tightens. What if Elinor’s love, Edward, is offered a means to escape his dreadful engagement to Lucy—in fact, is ordered to call it off—yet he declines, for honour’s sake, thus losing his inheritance? At a point he could have been freed to wed Elinor, he chuses to marry fickle, feckless Lucy because it’s the right thing to do.
    Ah yes. ’Tis a wonderful twist that will make the story better.
    I write faster.
    And find my own release.
    *****
    I know it’s extravagant to think about serving an ox cheek for dinner, but the thought of it, and some little dumplings, will make me fancy myself at Godmersham. In happier days . . .
    Although the day is brisk, a day when I would normally take solace inside by the fire, my new penchant for walking in the outdoors has made my desire for ox cheek attainable.
    All buttoned and tied with coat and bonnet, I head up the lane from the parsonage to the butcher’s. A dusting of snow remains beside the road, and the ground is hard and frozen. Yet the sun shines, teasing me into