11/27/2024
People: Elinor, Robert Ferrars
Text: By some strange twist of circumstances, Elinor and Marianne, along with a good many others that they knew, were invited to a private musical party in someone’s home in London. With the Steele sisters also invited, Lucy had the opportunity to scrutinize Marianne’s outfit for the night, wanting to know the particulars about how much each aspect of her wardrobe had cost her. Of course, her inquiries were ignored.
The opportunity to be acquainted with Fanny and Edward’s younger brother, Robert Ferrars, was also a part of the evening’s outing.
The evening was not very remarkable. The musical party comprehended a great many people who had real taste for the performance, and a great many more who had none at all.
As Elinor was neither musical, nor affecting to be so, she made no scruple of turning away her eyes from the grand pianoforte, whenever it suited her. In one of her excursive glances around the room, she perceived the very man that she had seen at Gray’s buying a toothpick case. During an intermission, Elinor’s brother John Dashwood introduced him to her as Mr. Robert Ferrars.
He addressed her with easy civility and twisted his head into a bow which assured her as plainly as words could have done, that he was exactly the coxcomb (a vain and conceited man) she had heard him described to be by Lucy. Elinor wondered at the difference of the two young men. She did not find that the emptiness and conceit of the one, put her at all out of charity with the modesty and worth of the other. Why they were different, Robert explained to her himself in the course of a quarter of an hour’s conversation. Edward had had the misfortune of a private education; while he himself, without any material superiority by nature, merely from the advantage of a public school, was as well fitted to mix in the world as any other man.
“Upon my soul,” Robert added, “I believe it is nothing more; and so, I often tell my mother when she is grieving about it. This is the way in which I always consider the matter, and my mother is perfectly convinced of her error.”
Elinor would not oppose his opinion. She could not think of Edward’s abode in his teacher Mr. Pratt’s family with any satisfaction.
Emotion: self-importance
Insight: 1 Samuel 16:7 speaks to different ways to view the same person, “For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
From the outside and from the inside, Edward Ferrars was completely different from his younger brother, Robert. Edward was quiet, reflective, and modest, hardly owning to any of his valued qualities. Robert was outgoing and social and according to Elinor a “coxcomb,” both vain and conceited. Robert and his mother believed it had to do with the education difference of the two brothers. Edward had studied under the private tutelage of Mr. Pratt. Robert had received a public education.
The verse refers to a man who was outwardly valued for his external appearance: tall, handsome, confident. But the writer also reminds us that God sees the heart. Outward charm is meaningless if the heart is corrupt and conceited. Robert Ferrars assumed he was the better man, more charming, more confident in social situations. But Robert lacked the quiet, unassuming, and gentle heart of his older brother, Edward. May we strive to make our hearts as beautiful as our faces and not rest confident in those aspects of our nature that God finds repulsive. Let our countenance always reflect the honor and worth in our spirits.
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