Long Live Queen Jane and Her Lifelong Lessons
Was Jane Austen a moral philosopher? Absolutely.
Review by Ali Kjergaard
You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you,” muses Darcy to Elizabeth, and me to any book on Jane Austen. I am a lifelong lover of Jane Austen, and I will not apologize for it. The Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice was the background noise of my childhood. I always wanted to watch the dancing scenes, Elizabeth’s walk to Netherfield in the mud, and any scene with Mr. Collins.
By eighth grade I was reading Emma and enjoying her every bit as much as I enjoyed the adaptations, but it wasn’t until after college that I grew more analytical about why I loved Jane Austen. Yes, I loved the romance, her heroes and heroines, looking at the costumes in the film adaptations, but surely any period drama would suffice and please me? But I’ve always been a bit picky in this area. I won’t watch or read something just because it happens to be set in another century. Jane Austen did something other authors did not. William Deresiewicz’s A Jane Austen Education helped me realize what that something was. Her books are so beloved because they actively teach about our world.
I consume anything that offers insight into Austen’s work with as much tenacity and vigor as I consume the novels themselves. Peter Leithart’s little book on Jane Austen sits on my shelf. I was delighted that Karen Swallow Prior’s On Reading Well had a chapter on Persuasion. The last chapter of After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre offers a great in-depth analysis on Jane Austen as a moral philosopher in the same manner as Aristotle. Now the latest addition, Jane Austen’s Genius Guide to Life, has received its welcome among all the others.
In Haley Stewart I found another kindred spirit who also feels the urge to fling Persuasion at someone who claims Jane Austen books are just “fancy dances and high society rules and stuff.” Or as some have asked me, “Isn’t it just a bunch of people visiting each other’s houses until a wedding?” Well, yes, you could sum it up like that; you could also say Javert and Jean Valjean are just playing a cat-mouse game for twenty-plus years, but that wouldn’t be doing Les Miserables (or Victor Hugo) justice. So let’s not do it to Jane Austen, for she has more to offer than dresses and weddings.
Haley Stewart gives a defense of Austen herself, something many other analysts fail to do. I’m thankful for these details. Too often Austen’s life is skimmed over and we instead jump straight into her novels. Many assume that Austen’s spinsterhood led her to write such fairy tale endings, but the fact is actually that she made the bold decision to reject a proposal. Others will say she was merely the sheltered daughter of a clergyman who had little taste of tragedy, but that is far from the whole story. She witnessed her beloved sister Cassandra lose her fiancé at sea. Her father passed away suddenly without warning. She was forced to move when she had no desire to. One of her brothers had epilepsy.
Jane Austen was no stranger to tragedy, and this makes her wit and humor more remarkable. Her saved letters to friends and family offer tongue-in-cheek observations about the world around her and even charming, self deprecating humor about herself. The picture Stewart paints of Jane is a flattering one. “She had a lively, playful disposition that delighted in anything ridiculous” could describe Elizabeth Bennet as well as it describes Jane Austen. We all look to her great works, but the creator ought to be acknowledged as well. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call Jane Austen a distinctly Christian writer, but a moral philosopher? Absolutely.
After reading Jane Austen I find that I take steps toward a more virtuous life and become more drawn to the “good” without even realizing I am doing so. Reading her is not the same as indulging in works of theology or apologetics—faith does not jump off the pages the way it does with C. S. Lewis or G. K. Chesterton, but if Christ is really Goodness and Truth, then our beginning pursuits of these will put us on the road to him.
It would be easy if everything was either good or bad, but Austen’s characters are much more like “the real thing”—complicated creatures of humor and folly, ever learning and changing.
Stewart outlines the virtues and vices in each of Austen’s works. The vices our heroes and heroines face, and the virtues they learn in order to conquer their vices. Both Elizabeth and Darcy must conquer their pride, Emma must conquer her selfishness with tenderness, Fanny Price displays constancy which Edmund must learn, Marianne learns from Elinor temperance, Catherine Morland must discern prudence, and Captain Wentworth must learn fortitude and patience from Anne Elliot. Stewart rightly points out that even the “villains” of the novels are more complicated than we realize. It would be easy if everything was either good or bad, but Austen’s characters are much more like “the real thing”—complicated creatures of humor and folly, ever learning and changing.
Her assessment of Knightley is one of my favorites I have ever encountered. I personally consider Knightley to be the best hero of all the novels. He is tender to the needy, emotionally intelligent to the needs of those around him, but still a sly wit that calls things as he sees them. My heart soars when he dances with poor Harriet after she is brutally snubbed. And because of his constant goodness, his critique of Emma stings all the more. But Stewart reminds me to put myself into the shoes of Knightley. Emma is the woman he loves most deeply, but that doesn’t stop him from pulling her aside and telling her “badly done.” He speaks truth in love, at the risk of a relationship dear to him. And for Emma it is the catalyst for change. It was the truth she needed to hear.
My opinion differs with Stewart’s on a few characters, but particularly Captain Wentworth. She states that it is Captain Wentworth who must learn from Anne’s patience and quiet hope in Persuasion. It is true that Anne is someone we all ought to admire—her courage and ability to suffer well are things that we as a society don’t always commend. We want heroines with snappy and blistering wit, while Anne is steady in crisis. When the man she rejected years ago happens to reappear, she holds on to a quiet hope that perhaps she will have a second chance.
Captain Wentworth meanwhile carries anger and bitterness from her rejection and is frustrated that Anne allowed herself to be so easily persuaded out of their engagement. I find that because of his past hurts, his letter to Anne is all the more tender. My pastor has defined meekness as “power being under the control of love,” and that, in the end, is what Wentworth demonstrates. Anne rises to meet Captain Wentworth in his meek confession of loving her. She does not allow herself to be persuaded into a different imprudent match. The two of them in the end prove to be even more worthy of one another than they were at their first engagement. Anne grows in strength just as Wentworth grows in meekness.
Jane Austen once described her work as painting a miniature: “the little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush.” The cameo necklace was a popular accessory during the Regency time period, an engraved gem with a raised image on it, often a profile of a picture. Austen’s works are indeed cameos, timeless and lovely, but also amazing in their details. In a cameo we don’t get a specific image, but can often see glimpses of others and ourselves in the profile. Jane Austen’s novels give us an image of a society in a different time but that could very easily be our own, and her novels are backlit with the precious jewels of the virtues which are applicable to us at all times in our pursuit of the good life.
Ali Kjergaard currently lives in Washington, D.C. where she works as a staffer on Capitol Hill. You can follow her miscellaneous musings on Twitter @AlisonKjergaard.
Jane Austen’s Genius Guide to Life was published by Ave Maria Press on March 25, 2022. Fare Forward appreciates their provision of a review copy. You can purchase your own copy on their website here.
