The Geology of 'Sense and Sensibility'

Abstract

'Her novels are geological structures, the earliest layer going back to her earliest writings'.1 The metaphor is a graphic expression of the central perception of Mrs Leavis's 'Critical Theory', a stimulating and controversial account of Jane Austen as a working novelist. Mrs Leavis chose to work out her theory in detail through two chief instances, the expansion of Lady Susan into Mansfield Park and the writing up of The Watsons as Emma, both of which have proved vulnerable to challenge.2 In the light of the general scepticism that the 'Critical Theory' as a whole has provoked, it is curious to observe that one of Mrs Leavis's subsidiary suggestions has not only passed unchallenged but has even attracted critical support from writers hostile to the 'Critical Theory' as a general proposition. This is her observation that 'one of the special features' of Sense and Sensibility 'is that we can by inspection see how it was evolved, for its successive layers are still perceptible'.3 Mr Southam, who rejects Mrs Leavis's theory as a whole, joins her in the search for fossils of the early version of Sense and Sensibility. There is no necessary inconsistency in this, for there is reliable evidence preserved in the Austen family that Sense and Sensibility was based on an early novel (now lost) called 'Elinor and Marianne'. Nevertheless, I believe that the search for such fossils is unwarranted and has proved an unwelcome distraction in studies of Sense and Sensibility. The earliest reference to 'Elinor and Marianne' is in Cassandra Austen's