ABSTRACT
Jane Austen's swift summary of the damage caused by the scene painter proves her command of litotes; her brevity and Sir Thomas's dispatch contrast amusingly with the more lengthy and grim prognostications of other commentators on fashion. It is clear that, for Austen, the commerce attached to the pursuit of taste threatens the social order by promoting travel, an accompanying lack of social stability or cohesion, and inflated ambitions among the lower classes. While Edgeworth fears luxury, she also believes that the market can operate along socially beneficial lines. The key is that the purchasers understand the mechanisms of self-control and sympathy outlined in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. The fascination with pain and persecution so typical of the Gothic was in part legitimised, no longer the interest of callous voyeur but of the self-controlled, sympathetic observer of human nature. The prestige of connoisseurship and the ethical and cultural knowledge of the 'clerisy' have little value in this account.
