SOURCE: "The Language of Supposing: Modal Auxiliaries in Sense and Sensibility," in Jane Austen: New Perspectives, Vol. 3, edited by Janet Todd, Holmes & Meier, 1983, pp. 142–54.

In the following essay, Boyd presents evidence of a new pairing in Sense and Sensibility—that of the actual and the hypothetical.

Given Jane Austen's fondness for balanced verbal pairs—sense and sensibility, pride and prejudice—it is perhaps not inappropriate for me to propose another such set for discussion, namely, the actual and the hypothetical. The actual has to do with existing states of affairs, with the way the world in fact is as distinct from our wishes, desires, and suppositions. However much philosophers may argue about the external world, the actual is very real for Austen. Estates are unfairly entailed. Young men are engaged elsewhere. Uncles arrive unannounced to abort theatricals. Worse yet, uncles die (as in Sense and Sensibility) and leave...