Happy Birthday, Miss Austen

Today marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen. To some, she is a fluffy authoress of “chick lit”; to others, she is a crypto-feminist and subtle provocateur of conventional (read “traditional”) stereotypes. To me, she is neither. She is simply a brilliant, witty, and extremely insightful writer whose novels expose human foibles and celebrate human goodness. What more can one ask?

A good story instructs and entertains. It probably instructs best the more we are entertained by it. And her novels do entertain; there can be no doubt about that. They are well-crafted and have memorable characters with moments of high humor and deep pathos. But they are never “over the top.” No character is entirely good or bad. There is a learning curve for all (whether they choose to accept it or not).

Elisabeth Stopp, a scholar on the works of Francis de Sales, said that the great saint had “inspired common sense.” I think that of Miss Austen. I’m not saying she was a saint, but she was definitely a Christian, a fact many want to ignore or explain away. She was raised in a devout household (her father was a clergyman) and she practiced her faith (a high Anglican one) her whole life. 

Yet she was no prude, in the modern sense. Her novels have affairs, illegitimacy, and even references to unusual practices in the British Navy. She had little patience with stupidity, for which reason I believe she would raise an eyebrow at some modern takes on her novels (e.g., the movie Clueless as a revamping of Emma). 

The three evening prayers she wrote are beautiful meditations. Her Christianity is both the hook and the hurdle of her work. She wasn’t trying to instruct or proselytize, at least not overtly. She just saw the world in a certain light and wrote about it in that way. 

We all want happiness, but how do we get that? Miss Austen held the view, I think it safe to say, that what determines one’s happiness is one’s character. As Elizabeth Bennett puts it to her sister Jane upon Jane’s engagement: “Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I can never have your happiness.” The fact that one’s happiness depends upon one’s character is surely countercultural today.

Her novels are about the ordinary: small-town life, gossip, family friction, heartaches and heart-breaks, worrying about the children and trying to provide for the family, and, of course, marriage. She once described her novels as “the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces so little effect after so much labor.” This, though, is part of her genius. Where else are we to learn virtue except in the ordinary course of our typically humdrum lives amid gossip, family friction, and all the rest?

And, yes, the plots of her novels center around marriage. And why not? There are few things more common and at the same time more momentous than marriage. For most of us, it is the decision of our lives. Those that say love and marriage are not serious topics speak more about themselves (and to their detriment) than they do about Miss Austen. 

Marriage, in her novels, is not a romantic feeling, much less a sensual attraction; it is about respect and admiration. I believe one reason for her popularity is her celebration of marriage in this regard. As Miss Austen said in Emma, it is marriage that is the “origin of change.” Only something stable can produce growth, and it is part of our nature as human beings to want to grow. A culture that tears apart the possibilities of growth becomes stagnate and stale. Witness our own. 

The crucial questions in her novels are of virtue and vice: learning to recognize what is good and bad in oneself, in others, and in any given situation, then deciding what to do about it. As in “real life,” this can be difficult. A central theme in her novels is our own self-delusion, and any “happy ending” often comes about only through the unravelling of that delusion.

Those who try to “deconstruct” her novels for their own modern ideologies are, to me, in the position of perhaps her most famous self-delusional character, the Reverend Mr. Collins who continues his proposal to Elizabeth Bennet despite her repeated refusals. In exasperation she exclaims, “Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to plague you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart.” 

What might be some other lessons that she gives that are so rationally attractive to some and so repugnant to others? 

On the one hand: that lying and insincerity get you in trouble (Wickham in Pride and Prejudice, William Elliot in Persuasion); too much money and too much free time get you in trouble, especially for men (Frank Churchill in Emma, Willoughby and Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility, Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park); vanity is a serious and silly fault (Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion, Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice); if you don’t keep an eye on your children, you’ll regret it (Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Sir Thomas Bertram in Mansfield Park); untamed imagination can be a dangerous thing (Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility); beware of being too sure of yourself (Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Emma in Emma); there is not much you can do with stupid (Mr. Collins and Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Rushworth in Mansfield Park, John Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility); no one likes a complainer (Mary Musgrove in Persuasion); scoffing at religion is the worst evil (Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park). 

On the other hand, we may learn: that a good friend tells you the truth, even when you don’t want to hear it (Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Knightley in Emma, Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey); responsibility is a true test of character (Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, Knightley in Emma, Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility); marry someone you respect, not who turns your head (Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility); the meek shall inherit the earth (Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility, Fanny Price in Mansfield Park). Self-knowledge, virtue, and, therefore, happiness, come through suffering (all her novels). 

That is why I have been so taken by the novels of Miss Austen; the more I read them, the more I am entertained by them and the more I am instructed by them. I have never finished one of her novels without many a good chuckle as well as a deeper understanding of myself, of others, of what it means to be human, and, perhaps, wanting to be a better person. 

Lord David Cecil, a biographer of Miss Austen, put it this way: 

If I were in doubt as to the wisdom of one of my actions, I should not consult Flaubert or Dostoyevsky. The opinion of Balzac or Dickens would carry little weight with me: were Stendhal to rebuke me, it would only convince me I had done right: even in the judgment of Tolstoy I should not put complete confidence. But I should be seriously upset, I should worry for weeks and weeks, if I incurred the disapproval of Jane Austen. 

And I say, Amen.