Community

Introduction:

Community is an ambiguous concept and a hotly debated issue within both the literature of sensibility and the body of critical work which responds to it, both of which ask that we, as readers and as individuals, interrogate the possibility (or even desirability) of true community. Sensibility is frequently figured as a retreat from the world, a movement away from the often corrupt masculine spheres of politics and commerce (and sexuality?), a withdrawal into the private and idiosyncratic space of the emotions. But a retreat of this kind does not necessitate a rejection of community per se; community is not, after all, synonymous with society: it is a fellowship, an identity, a commonness between people, a sociality. This kind of solidarity may be natural (e.g., a humanistic feeling based on beliefs about natures and essences), or it may have to be cultivated (e.g., a fellow-feeling wrought out of shared experiences, responses, sensations, and fears).

Issues of community are tied up with those of communication and knowledge: is it possible to know the other? how is this knowledge achieved? must we rely on the words the other communicates to us or is it possible to gain knowledge of the other via the body, the senses? The constitution of selves (subjectivity), the relations between selves (intersubjectivity and mutual recognition), and the relations between selves and society (the politics of inclusion and exclusion) are all at play when we think about the meaning of community.

Solidarity and sympathy are expressed via a communication of feelings, by awareness of or participation in what Yorick, in A Sentimental Journey, describes as the "great, great SENSORIUM of the world" (141), the most optimistic figuration of the communal possibility of sensibility. Heightened faculties of fellow-feeling are posed, in the literature of sensibility, as "a capacity for sociability" (Mullan 17), but are often manifested through illness, distemper, melancholy, or hysteria (e.g., in Richardson, Goethe, Sterne, and Mackenzie). The fact that sensibility is so often written on a physiologically delicate body is a problem for the possibility of community: in many cases there is no productive social space in which this sensibility can act. Spontaneous emotion, regarded as a mark of virtue and wisdom, and once cultivated as a means to an end, risks becoming an end in itself, an indulgence, an illness, if it is not properly harnessed. By the end of the eighteenth century, critics of indulgent sensibility were arguing about the effects this kind of ethic could have on society: conservative critics, such as Burke, worried that an ethic based on sentiment could undermine established social institutions, whereas radical critics, like Wollstonecraft, were more concerned that it would reinforce the status quo by giving the appearance of emancipation (for women, in particular) without effecting any real social or political change. Some twentieth-century critics see sensibility as politically charged-- in particular, as an attempt by the bourgeoisie to carve a space for themselves, whether by retreating from politics all together or by endeavoring to "wrest a degree of ideological hegemony from the aristocracy" (Eagleton, 4).

In any case, the debate is ongoing. Should sensibility contribute to social and political reform, or is it enough for individuals to focus on small acts of benevolence? Is the quest for community or solidarity a lost cause, the only cause, or both? Should individuals desire integration into a social whole? Can reading literature help us answer any of these questions? Can it (or, can sensibility) help us with our own project of community-building if such a thing does or should exist?

• William Collins, "Ode to Fear"
  Collins as gothic precursor.
• William Cowper, "The Snail"
  The pleasures of withdrawal.
• Denis Diderot, Eloge de Richardson
  The right way to read Richardson, and the effects of doing so.
• Oliver Goldsmith, "An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog"
  A dog is done in, to the great pleasure of the community.
• Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
  The nature of elegy is thrown into question.
• Sir William Harvey, Concerning the Motion of the Heart and Blood
  Harvey's dedication to the heart, the King.
• Elizabeth Inchbald, A Simple Story
  Miss Milner's introduction.
• Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism
  "The Emotions Caused by Fiction."
• Matthew Lewis, The Monk
  Theodore plays the beggar.
• Ann Radcliffe, The Italian
  The scenes of the bay at Naples.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Preface to La Nouvelle Heloise
  Sensibility and seclusion in the country.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Preface to La Nouvelle Heloise
  Contrast between town and country readers.
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
  Walton writes to his sister Margaret.
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
  The monster confesses to Walton.
• Tobias Smollett, Humphry Clinker
  The constitution of Matt Bramble's character.
• Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey
  Yorick imaginatively creates a prisoner.
• Williams Wordsworth, "On Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress"
  Williams and Wordsworth weep.

a dictionary of sensibility

term list

source bibliography

critical bibliography