Elinor's Secret Finally Comes Out, Explained：break one's word

What's really going on

The chapter finally lets Elinor break, and the way it happens is the point. Until now she has carried Edward's secret alone, unable to explain herself even as Marianne's suffering took up all the room. Marianne's accusation — 'Elinor, where is your heart?' — is unfair and understandable at once, since Marianne has never once doubted that feeling should be shown. What she cannot see is that Elinor has been feeling the whole time, in silence, and that silence was a kind of promise. Elinor's answer is the strongest speech she is given: she has endured Lucy's exaltation again and again while knowing herself divided from Edward forever, and says she could have produced proof of a broken heart even for Marianne. The sisters are both right, which is what makes the quarrel hurt: one believes in showing, the other in bearing.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• Silence can be a promise, not coldness.
• Marianne reads restraint as a lack of feeling.
• A family fortune is used here as a weapon.
• The calm sister is the one who finally breaks.

発音のポイント

• have you — Have you is often reduced to something like ha-ya in fast speech.
• do you — Do you can blur into d'ya when spoken quickly.
• could have — Could have contracts to could've, and in rapid speech almost to coulda.