Jane Austen
1775–1817
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
The Argument
Jane Austen is the most widely read and most frequently underestimated novelist in English. The surface of her novels — drawing rooms, marriage plots, social comedy — has led generations of readers to miss the moral seriousness that drives every one of them. Austen is writing about the formation of character, which is to say she is writing about virtue ethics, which is to say she is doing moral theology in the form of fiction.
Her heroines fail in characteristic ways before they learn to see clearly. Elizabeth Bennet's wit becomes a defense against genuine feeling. Emma Woodhouse's intelligence becomes manipulation. Anne Elliot's persuadability becomes a near-fatal deference to the wrong authorities. The arc of each novel is the arc of moral education — the painful process by which a person learns to see herself and others accurately.
Austen is an Anglican Christian, and her moral framework is not secular virtue ethics but something specifically formed by Christian anthropology: the conviction that human beings are capable of self-deception, that pride is the cardinal sin, and that the good life requires both the intelligence to see clearly and the humility to act on what you see. This is not preached in her novels. It is enacted in them.
The Literary Apologetic
New essays from the long tradition. No noise. Just letters worth reading.