Reflective Wanderer

The more I read, and reread, Jane Austen’s novels, the more I am struck by the fact that underneath all of their wit, sparkle, and charm, they are about virtue. In Sense and Sensibility there can be traced the value of acting with good sense, justice, and self control, over the more romantic, but far less helpful and realistic characteristic of letting your emotions rule your reason. Elenor, while having much deep seeded feeling, masters herself and is able to give to the needs of her family and her duties, while Marianne wallows in self-pity, thinking that course more reasonable, but in the end sees her selfishness and resolves to model herself after her sister. In the novel Emma, one can see the consequence of thinking of one’s own judgment more highly than experience and practice would warrant. In Pride and Prejudice we read of the disastrous consequences of falling in love based on the emotions of the moment, without an eye to the future or morals, as the scandal with Lydia and Wickham illustrate, while one the other hand, how the pride of one and the prejudice of another almost prevent a wonderful match. Northanger Abbey is a satire against the then common literature of gothic fiction and how life ought to be seen through the eyes of reality and not in the phantasmagoric style of those writers. I could go on; her works are full of the value for right judgment and the ruinous results of poor judgment.  

I was recently relistening to a lesser known Austen novel, this time with my wife, Mansfield park. In it a young girl, Fanny Price, is taken from her poverty stricken home to live with her rich relations, the Bertrams, at a young age. She was related to the Bertrams on her mothers side, who was born of a good family, but ran away to be married to a petty officer in the navy. Fanny’s upbringing was amid upper lower class poverty with an abundance of younger siblings. She was sent to live with her uncle, aunt, and four cousins in the country many miles away. There Fanny received a thorough education in manners, culture, and academics along with her cousins, while being personally guided in her principles and morals by her kind and high minded cousin Edmund, who was the only one of the house to take special notice of her and her needs. It’s kind of a Cinderella story, for, though treated respectfully enough when thought of, she was made to serve everybody’s whims and miss many of the pleasures given to her cousins. Fanny acts with meekness and humility toward all, is of a very retiring disposition, and is deeply sensible of all things good, noble, and religious. Fanny is a model character with the one shortcoming of being a little too timid. 

There is much that can be dwelt on in the novel, but two things struck me in particular. Two pitfalls that the story avoids in regards to education. 

The first pitfall Austen avoids can be seen when Fanny, towards the end of the story, returns to her family on her first visit. Now a young woman she eagerly looks forward to being reunited with her family. She had a brother with whom she was always very close, and he visited her on a few occasions. He was an admirable fellow and advancing, thanks to his uncle, quickly in his career as a naval officer, but her parents and seven other siblings Fanny had not seen in many years. When she returned she was shocked. The lack of education, not merely academic education, but an education in manners, civility, and right conduct were grossly lacking to the eyes of the disappointed Fanny. It’s common for writers to give a romantic portrait of the uneducated poor, in a Dickens like way, and a disgusted picture at the pretentiousness of the rich. It’s more satisfying to see the underdogs in the right and the better off as mere hypocrites. I’m not arguing that Dickens is wrong. Pretentiousness in those who ought to know better ought to be made ridiculous, and there are many who have nothing in the way of wealth and little in the way of education who are deeply moral, upstanding men and women. Fanny even discovers in one of her younger sisters, Susan, a true desire to set things right in her fathers chaotic house. They ought to be praised in literature and in life, but there is an imbalance. Austen gets the balance right. In order to act with good conduct, giving each his or her just due, and acting in moderation and basic dignity, one must be educated in manners, in esthetics, and in morals. 

The second pitfall Austen avoids is thinking that a good education alone will make good people. It must also be a matter of the heart. Fanny and her older cousin Edmund truly love what is just and good. Her other cousins and their close friends the Crawfords, had all the same benefits of an education and training that is respectful, right, and proper. They act with outward decorum to the eyes of the world, until temptation arises and they disgrace themselves and their family. Yet they cared more about that fact they were disgraced before men than they did about how it reflected on the characters of those involved, while Edmund and Fanny grieved foremost for degradation of honorable principles and the consequences to those they loved. There is a world of difference between seeming and being, and the aim of each Christain must not merely to seem righteous, but to seek, with God’s help, to be righteous. Good education can help you seem, but only a heart renewed can make you be.