Hand in Hand: The Erotics of Touch in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

The significance of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood's bond in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility has been well acknowledged by critics. In the midst of lackluster suitors, malicious relations, and brazen gossips, Elinor and Marianne's relationship seems the only one that really matters in the end. Yet despite the centrality of Elinor and Marianne's intimacy, the novel concludes with their respective marriages to Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon. Turning our attention toward the phenomenology of hands and touch in Sense and Sensibility, however, changes the way we approach narrative by undermining the teleology of the marriage plot. In contrast to the hollow acts and mediating objects of affection offered by potential suitors, Willoughby and Edward Ferrars, Elinor and Marianne's handholding constitutes deeply affective and unmediated moments of physical contact that attest to the primacy of touch underlying the most passionate attachments. In this light, the concluding marriages do not recant the rest of the novel but rather serve a strategic choice motivated by what these marriages make possible. Far from enforcing heterosexual closure, Elinor and Marianne's marriages fulfill a different agenda: preserving the sisters' lasting haptic contact with one another.