Holidays always promise an escape from the world of daily reality into the world of the imagination. After Christmas I was privileged to spend some time by the beach with Jane Austen’s collected novels. I looked forward to leave behind the shrillness of Australian public conversation for the elegance and precision of Austen’s writing about intimate and domestic relationships.
In the event the novels kept reminding me of our public life. First, by the invisibility in them of evident social issues: the disparity of wealth, for example, the dependence of family and social life on unnamed servants, the unquestioned investment in West Indian slavery, and the advantage taken of the Enclosures Act for remodeling estates were simply taken for granted. The social and political building blocks of privilege were unquestioned.
More significantly, however, Jane Austen’s exploration of a narrow social world illuminated issues central to public life in our own world. In particular, the importance of character in building harmony in her domestic world raised questions about its place, presence, and importance in political life today.
By character I mean a habitual way of behaving that shows respect in all one’s relationships to people and to things. In the novels, character, or its lack is displayed in the way in which people respond to situations. It is also built or eroded through their response. In contemporary public life it is similarly honoured, scorned, or violated in the way public figures and institutions act. Trust in those involved in public life grows or decreases correspondingly.
The raw material of character is the disposition that inclines us to judge, act and to relate in certain ways. Today we often describe it as personality. It is a gift, but a gift with bias. In Jane Austen’s world it needs to be tempered by reflection on whether our inclinations lead us to act respectfully all salient relationships. Ideally people learn from their experience. By disposition Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice is generous but proud, Elizabeth Bennet has a lively intelligence but is quick to judge. Over the course of their relationships and reflection on them, they transcend their respective pride and prejudice.
Other novels also explore the disposition of their protagonists and their struggle to move beyond its partiality. Emma Woodhouse is self-confident, Marianne Dashwood feels deeply, Catherine Moreland is self-doubting. In each novel, too, the path to good character of the protagonists and the steadiness of their eventual husbands are contrasted with the selfishness and manipulativeness of others.
'As was the case for Jane Austen’s young heroines, the path to a full and responsible contribution to society begins in discernment.'
The novels encourage the modern reader to reflect on the importance of the disposition of political leaders, and particularly on the value of charismatic leadership. In the novel glittering qualities are seen as a gift, but one that encourages the wise to ask how such leaders have acted in their relationships. In the novels character is shown and grows through such reflective engagement. Persons of character will seek to shape their domestic society rather than to destroy or dissociate themselves from it.
Relating to one’s necessities, and particularly to financial necessities, is particularly important. Austen introduces many novels with a brisk review of the family’s financial resources, and so of what the protagonists must bring to and will need from marriage. The fate of a young woman without resources and left single in Austen’s world was that feared by Jane Fairfax in Emma – a lifetime spent as governess for the ungovernable children of ungoverned wealthy parents. To dismiss the importance of these economic relationships, as Marianne Dashwood, Lydia Bennet and Mrs Bennet do, reveals a frivolity of character that can lead to disaster.
If financial security was important, however, it was as a means to an end and not as a goal in itself. It was one of the essential strands in the tissue of relationships that constituted the world of the protagonists. To place wealth or class over all other values, and to allow them to determine personal relationships, as did the comic figures of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mr Collins, and the Crawford siblings in Mansfield Park, was emblematic of a shrivelled character covered in cloth of gold. But it had the capacity to fragment relationships. Its most spectacular embodiment was in Lady Susan Vernon, whose self-interest led to her lie and manipulate in ways that poisoned everything she touched.
The subordinate importance of economic relationships in the novels suggests that in any society attention to them is only one of the conditions necessary for shaping a healthy family and society. Economic prosperity must attend to the welfare of all their members. To a society in which the role of politics is often reduced to managing an economy run by competing individuals, Austen’s novels are a challenge and a rebuke. To a government negligent in failing to address inequality and global warming and their human costs, of gross, her rebuke would be equally severe.
In Austen’s world the flourishing of individuals and families depends on the building of character through a network of expectations. These are expressed in the rituals of meals, introductions, formal conversation, parties, and dedication to reading, music and art. They curb the natural instincts generated by individual disposition by setting them within a broader commitment to what we might call the common good. Although attention to ritual behaviour can be hypocritical, as when charming manners mask selfishness and hostility, its intention and often effect is to commend attention to the world beyond individual interests.
This formal social network has an educative effect both in inclining people towards virtuous and unselfish behaviour and in revealing the corrosive effects of unformed character. Elizabeth Bennet comes to recognise the cynicism of Mr Bennet and Mrs Bennet’s lack of a moral centre.
This emphasis on education raises questions for our own society. Clearly the formality of the narrow world depicted in Jane Austen’s novels is not our world. Nor would the formality of the processes of building character in her world be viable today. We might still wonder, however, where people will find encouragement in our society to transcend the narrowness of their disposition and to seek a larger good. There are many places where it is found. The generous acceptance of the limitations imposed by Covid, people’s care for others, their building of small communities out of limited resources and the rejection of predatory and selfish behaviour, all display and build character.
Other trends in public culture, however, speak of a culture that devalues character. The pressure to see all relationships as transactional, for example, the emphasis on individual satisfaction and freedom as life’s goal, the applause for boorish behaviour in sport and politics, the descent of conversation about difference into shouting, and the weary tolerance of corruption and of the violation of human rights. All these things undermine character.
As was the case for Jane Austen’s young heroines, the path to a full and responsible contribution to society begins in discernment.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
Main image: Mia Goth and Anya Taylor-Joy as Harriet Smith and Emma Woodhouse. (Universal Pictures International)