Sense and Sensibility as Social-Epistemic System

Abstract:This article examines systems of inductive and deductive reasoning in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811), placing Austen’s first novel in a longer historical context of how novels functioned as systems of social epistemology, or of scaling-up social knowledge. In so doing, this article demonstrates how Marianne, typically read as the unsystematic counterpart to her rational older sister, Elinor, actually proceeds from a rational system for making social judgments. The pitfalls both of these characters encounter due to flawed judgments are part of how Sense and Sensibility builds critique and error correction into its illustrations of social conundrums based on imperfect information, offering a model system for readers who would encounter comparable circumstances.