Jane Austen and the Social Sciences

Abstract

In this essay, Wendy Jones offers a survey of literary scholarship that addresses Austen from a social science perspective, and more specifically psychology, primarily in its incarnation within literary studies as cognitive literary criticism. In order to provide an idea of the shape and scope of the field, she covers such topics as how ideas of evolution inform Austen’s writing, esp. Persuasion; how theory of mind and cognitive science inform literary criticism that studies Austen’s representation of the ‘mind-brain’ in her characters; Austen’s experimentation with subjectivity; literary criticism that approaches Austen via the social science methodologies; and work grounded in attachment theory. In a concluding section on ‘Jane Austen, Social Scientist,’ she contends that Austen approached the world from a scientific perspective, and she wrote like a scientist in the sense of insisting on accuracy and precision in her fictional worlds.