Picturing (In)Sensibility in Austen’s Novels and Print Culture

This chapter compares Austen’s depictions of sensibility (and insensibility) against contemporary visual images—generally etchings and prints that were widely circulated during Jane Austen’s lifetime, often through monthly magazines. Some of these images were meant to appeal to the fans of popular culture surrounding sensibility at its peak, roughly 1750-1810, yet others parody the excesses of this fashion for suffering. In comparing the visual depictions and parodies of sensibility of artists like Roehn, Gillray and Woodward against Austen’s literary approach, we will detect many similarities. Austen’s own work contains mixed messages about sensibility: she parodies its excesses yet remains attached to its central philanthropic and idealistic ambitions. In her fiction, women generally exercise the excess sensibility rather than the “man of feeling” on whom so many satirists direct their critiques. In exploring this difference, we will see that the satirists are oblivious to a pernicious aspect of sensibility that Austen actively critiques—namely, an eroticized and male-centered enjoyment of female suffering.