Between Cohesion and Reform in Sense and Sensibility

Abstract

Jane Austen drafted the epistolary version of Sense and Sensibility at a critical historical moment that affected the novel's treatment of sociability. In 1795, the “Two Gagging Acts” were issued against the seditious activities sparked by the French Revolution. Such forms of governmental censorship attempted to contain the reformatory, if not revolutionary, potential of social exchange. Sociability, long praised as the glue of civil society in the periodicals of Addison and Steele, and recognized by the Scottish philosophers as the ultimate sign of humanity, had turned sour and suspicious at the close of the century. This essay traces the intertwinements of the theme of secrecy with the controversial status held by sensibility in Austen's first published novel. It argues that Sense and Sensibility takes a Janus-faced position that looks back to a model of sociability inherited from Addison's extremely popular Mr Spectator, but also recognizes the need for new forms of sociability. While Austen bleakly points out the limitations of this early eighteenth-century sociability in her own post-revolutionary society, she also gestures towards plausible and reformative kinds of sociability that anticipate twentieth-century discussions of human interactions in the public sphere of civil society.