Sense and Sensibility: Uncertain Knowledge and the Ethics of Everyday Life

Abstract

DEBORAH WEISS Sense and Sensibility: Uncertain Knowledge and the Ethics of Everyday Life I T USED TO BE COMMONPLACE FOR AUSTEN SCHOLARS TO DESCRIBE HER AS A miniaturist devoted to the tiny canvas upon which she practiced her craft.1 The implication was that Austen’s mastery of language made it un­ necessary for her to create more important plots, pay more attention to politics, or interact more profoundly with historical events.2 These days, of course, Austen scholars no longer view her as an author primarily dedicated to the careful crafting of stylistic detail and the precise illustration of social minutia. Austen studies were dramatically reoriented in the years following i. The actual analogy, for which Austen herself is responsible, is that of an artist painting on ivory. This self-characterization emerges in a letter to her young nephew in which she makes a joke about having taken some missing chapters of his writing. But then she adds: “What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of Variety & Glow?— How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivon7 on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little eflect after much labour?” (Letter number 146, written December 16—17, 1816, Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 3 23). We can appreciate the irony ofher statement, perhaps, by con­ sidering that Austen, already a successful writer, might have been gently teasing her eighteenyear -old nephew. That same nephew, James Edward Austen (later Austen-Leigh) would go on to write the very influential Memoir ofJane Austen, which Tony Tanner believes contrib­ uted greatly to the image of Austen as a miniaturist. Tanner himself mentions the ivory with some degree of ambivalence in his collection of essays on Austen. He accepts the ivory, but insists on its potentially infinite capacity to receive inscription (Jane Austen [1988; rpt. NY: Palgrave, 2007], 1). Gilbert Ryle also begins his essay, “Jane Austen and the Moralists” with a reference to Austen as a “miniature-painter,” adding, “whether we like it or not,” she was “also a moralist.” Both Tanner and Ryle comment on the preponderance of references to “ivory” in Austen scholarship at the time. Ryle’s essay, originally published in the Oxford Re­ view in 1966, can be found inJane Austen, Critical Assessments, vol. 2, ed. Ian Littlewood (Sus­ sex: Helm Information Ltd., 1988), 90-103. 2. The tendency of mid-twentieth-century scholars to view Austen as a miniaturist can be seen as an extension of the way nineteenth-century critics characterized women writers, al­ beit with the addition of a formalist focus. Marilyn Butler has noted that this nineteenthSiR , 52 (Summer 2013) 253 254 DEBORAH WEISS Marilyn Butler’s publication ofJane Austen and the War of Ideas, which placed Austen firmly within the context of the politically and ideologically turbulent 1790s.3 For Butler at that time, Austen’s sympathies seemed most closely aligned with the Anti-Jacobin reaction. Since then, Austen has been portrayed as both a liberal and a moderate, in addition to an Anti-Jacobin; she has been cast also as a feminist, an anti-feminist, and a Tory feminist.4 Another branch of Austen scholarship has grown up in the past two de­ cades or so that has, like the political approach, sought to demonstrate that her intellectual and philosophical interests went far beyond the boundaries implied by the metaphor of the tiny canvas. Indeed, although Austen is on record as having denied a familiarity with philosophy, quite a few scholars have found sufficient evidence within her novels to connect them not just to general philosophical issues, but also to some ofthe central philosophical concerns of the late Enlightenment.5 century trend impacted the reputations of both Austen and Maria Edgeworth. In her Intro­ duction to Castle Rackrent and Fnnni (London: Penguin Classics, 1992), she quotes Walter Scott's double-edged compliment of these two respected women novelists for their ability to finish off scenes and put in delicate touches. This is in contrast to his self-assessment as a writer who could do the “ ‘big bow-wow strain better than...