Drawing room banter, rustling skirts, stately bows, laughter over cards, scintillating conversation, dashing gentlemen mooning over witty girls—this is the scene many of us conjure when we think of Jane Austen. Perhaps a bit of those restrictive Regency waists and stiff, high collars, but overall, surely, “light, bright, sparkling”—the words Austen herself used to describe Pride and Prejudice.
In contrast, Julia Yost casts light upon the shadows in Austenland. In Jane Austen’s Darkness, a worthy salvo in the resistance against the chick-lit-ification of Jane Austen’s legacy, Yost elucidates the umbral features of each main novel—financial precariousness, cruel treatment of the meritorious by the foolish, and, perhaps most strikingly, the evil of the unequal marriage.
Indeed, despite the conclusion of each heroine’s travails in a happy marriage—a classic symbol of healing and restoration—Austen’s books feature more unhappy, foolish marriages than admirable ones. Even the heroine’s ultimate nuptials are not in every case cause for unalloyed consolation—in particular the Ferrars family. Yost makes the case that even for some of Austen’s protagonists, we expect something more modest than the best: a tolerably happy union, or perhaps just tolerable.
D.W. Harding’s essay “Regulated Hatred” provides a key interpretative lens for Yost’s analysis of the darker side of Austen’s works. Austen’s omniscient narrator is famously unsparing when it comes to satirizing human vices, showing how the dull and the cruel cause misery for the virtuous characters. “It is possible,” writes Yost, “to view Austen’s novels as animated by disgust with the selfish, obtuse, middling, or vicious people who dominate in families and society at the expense of the meritorious, and as haunted by the realities of precarity and poverty, sickness and death, that such people scant or exploit.” The sisters in Sense and Sensibility are in a similarly precarious financial and social position as were Jane and Cassandra Austen themselves, and are treated with outrageous cruelty by their own family.
Remarking upon the weight of the influence of the vicious and selfish in the world brings “temptations of cynicism and misanthropy, which assail the morally intelligent person and turn pride from a virtue to a vice.” It becomes necessary, then, both to hate hateful behavior, but also to regulate that abhorrence so that one does not become hateful oneself.
This is where Harding’s idea of “regulated hatred” comes in. How do we deal with a proper abhorrence of evil—especially when abhorrent behavior is so quotidian as to be almost conventional? In Northanger Abbey, for example, young Catherine Morland uncovers no titillating, hushed-up murder at the Tilney house, but is treated with capricious callousness—with an everyday viciousness.
Social convention helps—the expectation to say “thank you,” to return a call, to rise when a woman enters the room. Social convention, argues Harding, keeps “evil and stupid” people “on reasonably good terms” with one another (what would the neighbors think, after all, if we said what we really thought?) partly because it can mask wickedness and stupidity (not mutually exclusive qualities). How many violent brawls have been avoided because, well, violence can be rather messy and embarrassing? How often has someone—how often have you and I, dear reader—said, “Thank you,” and not meant it? Thank goodness for that! Otherwise we may have said something nasty and regrettable. It is better not to be authentic—better, in many cases, to be forced to mask our impatience, bitterness, and resentment because it would be rather mortifying to display our vices openly. Without such everyday hypocrisies, says Harding, life would scarcely be bearable.
Of course, the hope is that the boundaries of etiquette provide paths for us to walk in such that we are given proper consideration to each other. Our heart will not necessarily follow our hands, but the rule of “what’s done and what’s not done” often stays our hands from worser evils.
So devastating a wit as Austen, a master of mocking wicked and featherbrained behavior both, can be in danger of falling into misanthropy. But as Laura Mooneyham White argues in Jane Austen’s Anglicanism, Austen’s mature work places the proper use of wit in the service of virtue: goading us both to laugh at ourselves and to be better selves. White points to the older definition of candor—according to Dr. Johnson, a sweetness of temper that desires to be generous rather than to find fault—as Austen’s standard for her satire. Indeed, her greatest heroes, such as Mr. Knightley, are exemplars of who we ought to imitate.
Alas, however, though Emma can ride off with her Mr. Knightley, and the Darcys ensconce themselves at Pemberley, in ordinary life there is no clear victory for the meritorious over the meretricious. But even in Austen’s novels, fewer characters than we might think end the story good or happy, let alone in a good or happy marriage.
Perhaps the foolish, unequal marriage is darkest, or at least the most striking, thread Yost traces in Austen. To be married, contra Mrs. Bennet, is not the same as to be married happily. The unequal marriage, Mr. Bennet avers, is a great evil. As he tells his favorite daughter: “I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband, unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery.” Then he adds, with perhaps some painful reflection on his own situation: “My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life.” Here we sense that he feels not only is he not “looked up to” as a superior in his own marriage, but also that he does not respect his wife; indeed, neither respects the other as a spouse ought.
If, as an old saying goes, a man is the head while the woman is the heart of a family, Mrs. Bennet has too little wisdom in her heart, and Mr. Bennet’s head lacks a chest (as C.S. Lewis would say), letting his daughters grow too untended. He has been a poor spiritual steward, a neglectful husbandman, of his household, so perhaps it is appropriate that it is Mr. Gardiner who takes care of Lydia after her own father expends a tokenish energy and then returns home. (Indeed, the Gardiners have one of the few happy and admirable marriages in Austen’s entire oeuvre.)
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One of the most intriguing points Yost makes regards another suitor who seems to lack a chest: Sense and Sensibility’s Edward Ferrars.
Popular interpretations of Elinor’s sense and Marianne’s sensibility, such as Ang Lee’s film adaptation, tend to laud Marianne’s rejection of convention for rejection-of-convention’s sake, rather than for her nobility of soul and laudable, albeit undisciplined, desire for beauty and chivalry. She blinds herself to the seedy side of Willoughby’s charm, but her sadder and wiser self is able to see the true nobility of the quieter Colonel Brandon. However, asks Yost, is Elinor not also blinded by her beloved? Is she more like Jane Bennet, so fixed on thinking of the good in others that she refuses to see real moral culpability in Edward’s sloth—and hence has set herself up for a marriage in which she will need to be always the active party, the one pardoning and pitying her enervated spouse until—heaven forbid—pity finally gives way to contempt?
Where Yost really helped take Edward Ferrars down a peg for me is this question: Why did he not break his engagement with Lucy Steele if no love or attachment was left between them? Yost notes that “morally intelligent” characters in other Austen novels are quite all right with breaking engagements for good reasons—though she notes, there is more chivalric weight on the man to uphold his part (she cites Wentworth’s sense of duty toward Louisa Musgrove in feeling he might need to wed her). A sense of duty and chivalry is all very well, but is this what happens with Edward? Or is he indecisive and even gutless, such that he waits for the women to make the decisions for him?
Elinor, to be sure, is admirably, even heroically forbearing, but doesn’t Marianne have a point in seeing scarcely anything worthy in Edward? Is it his dullness, his not-being-an-obvious-cad (except for that bit where he dallies with Elinor’s feelings), that makes him acceptable to Elinor, in the absence of someone of real worth?
Yost notes that it is notable that Elinor believes Edward to be deserving of her, all in “a novel that stresses the necessity of sorting the meritorious from the mediocre.” The “dark” thought here is that, rather than Elinor “deserving better,” perhaps—if she truly believes Edward is meritorious when he is merely milquetoast, and therefore deceives herself—she doesn’t.
If Elinor does indeed “deserve better” than Edward, but views herself as the lucky one, does this reveal rather a lack of judgment on her part or youthful gratitude? And if she misjudges Edward, does this make her more equal—that is, more deserving—of the insipid Edward?
But what is a girl to do, when one does not find a man to look up to as a superior—if a girl is not so fortunate as Emma or Elizabeth Bennet? What if one must, in the modern parlance, “settle” in marriage—that is, settle for inequality?
Dark thoughts indeed, especially for this writer, who has always admired Elinor, but had to admit, on Yost’s reading, that Edward does seem to be a lackluster groom. In any case, we do not leave Elinor amongst friends who could be both delightful and honorable company, except for the Brandons. If Edward is even half as good as she believes him to be, she remains beset with mediocrity—unless her own merits can one day stir the coals of some virtue in Edward we haven’t yet seen. Yost does not show any such hope, but I hold out for such a turn for them. (After all, we’re told even Willoughby lived to “exert…himself,” and improved his character.)
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If Edward Ferrars is less than we hope he could be, is Henry Crawford of Mansfield Park less terrible than we think? Yost asks the provocative question: “what if the Crawfords aren’t so bad?” Perhaps they bring charm without virtue, but then they also seem to pity Fanny’s ill-usage. Yost notes that no Bertram, not even Edmund, equals the “fellow-feeling” shown by Mary Crawford when she spends an evening with Fanny in a direct response to Mrs. Norris’s heartless public reprimand for Fanny to remember her place. Indeed, though Henry Crawford is “unused to make any sacrifice to right,” and hence is vulnerable to Maria Bertram’s attentions even as he seriously pursues Fanny, his very attraction to Fanny’s virtues as well as Mary’s and his clarity of sight with regard to her unjust treatment is what opens the possibility of true happiness—that is, a life of virtue and love—for him.
To find the good appealing, even beautiful, as Henry increasingly finds Fanny to be, puts one more in the way of holiness than an abstract desire for moral rectitude. (We may look to how Jean Valjean, at age fifty-five, only becomes truly alive when he receives a “new heart” upon finding at last someone to love: “The Bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon; Cosette caused the dawn of love to rise.” Love perfects virtue; or we might also say that Valjean’s earthly virtues are transfigured into the theological.) Indeed, the tragedy of Henry Crawford is that such an awakened desire is squandered before he is strong enough to pursue it to the end. Like another Henry, one Dr. Jekyll, Crawford “chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.” It is striking that, as Austen’s narrator describes his renewed flirtation with Maria as based in wounded pride rather than any affection, he is also described (albeit in a negative form) as having Fanny’s own signature virtue of constancy: “He was entangled by his own vanity, with as little excuse of love as possible, and without the smallest inconstancy of mind towards her cousin [that is, Fanny].”
Admittedly, Edmund is, like Edward Ferrars, unimpressive, especially when set beside those deserving heart-throbs Mr. Knightley and Mr. Darcy. But Edmund Bertram is less passive than Edward Ferrars, and Fanny’s estimation of him is not entirely colored by her naive high regard. Edmund does grow to value Fanny, if not as much as she deserves, then surely more than Edward values the longsuffering Elinor.
However, Yost points out a greater growth in character in a different corner: that of Sir Thomas Bertram, whose eyes are opened to his parental folly by the end, and who too can name his follies while also learning rightly to esteem Fanny’s virtues.
Emma Woodhouse is almost the mirror opposite to Mansfield Park’s heroine: Unlike the foundling Fanny, Emma is “clever” and “rich” and charming, and she needs to grow not in confidence but in humility. Where Fanny is “put in her place,” Emma is spoiled. But they are similar in perhaps a surprising way: Both are trapped, Emma by her daughterly duties to her hypochondriac father (marriage is almost out of the question), and Fanny by her near-servant’s treatment in her aunt and uncle’s home. Also like Fanny, Emma’s eventual husband is first a mentor to her, but in Mr. Knightley’s case, he has always been significantly older than she, and has never been in a brotherly position. It’s not clear that Emma is “too good” for him as Elinor and Fanny are for Edward and Edmund.
Not so with Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax. Yost describes Frank as “an Edward Ferrars who enjoys the game.” Instead of silently suffering in a secret engagement in order (supposedly) to preserve honor, the ironically named Frank relishes putting down his beloved Jane in public and openly flirting with Emma.
Jane Fairfax and Frank do seem to be ready for an unhappy life together, judging by his treatment of her and of her acceptance of him despite his caddishness. Indeed, one feels the tight corner in which both Jane and Charlotte Lucas find themselves: Charlotte worries about being a burden to her parents as an old maid, and Jane herself does not have a promising life outside of marriage.
It is doubtful Fanny and Elinor will truly respect their husbands as Elizabeth and Emma are able to do, though they are blessed at least not to be in Charlotte Lucas’s state. Hers is a calculated marriage, rather than the carousal that leads to Lydia’s (a similar carousing presumably led to Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s own marriage). Even so, Fanny and Elinor’s marriage, though happy enough, in Yost’s reading perhaps make Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility her “‘problem plays,” similar to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice: For comparison, in the latter wholeness and harmony are indeed restored, but they are not without complications, and there are some things—Shylock’s treatment, the dangerous ring game of the married couples—that nag us at the end.
The examples of two fathers, Sir Thomas and Mr. Bennet, point to perhaps the greatest consequences of the unequal marriage: When one marries foolishly or wisely, one is preparing in either case a home for the natural consequence of marriage: children. The possibility, even imminence, of children in marriage makes very clear the considerations of virtue, affection, and prudence with regard to the decisions one must make in choosing a spouse. The economic is certainly a factor, for one must be able to take care of living human beings, but it is not all. Charlotte Lucas’s acceptance of Mr. Collins is a fine decision viewed mercenarily, but has Charlotte considered what kind of father her husband will be?
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All marriages are a mistake, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his son Michael.
Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgement concerning whom, amongst the total possible chances, he ought most profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the ‘real soul-mate’ is the one you are actually married to.
Felix culpa! None of us can see the whole of our life, as we can look at the whole of a piece of art, such as a painting, or a novel of Jane Austen. We are characters in God’s drama.
Vladimir Nabokov said that “Mansfield Park is a fairy tale, but then all novels are, in a sense, fairy tales.” And as Christians, we believe that our own dramas are, ultimately, the shape of a fairy tale—the true sort, not the trite or modern imitations. Rather, we are in a fairy tale that Tolkien would recognize, wherein we traverse in the perilous realm, the sublunar world, and there is the great good catastrophe at its finish. There is darkness aplenty in the meantime, however, and we need the most piercing discernment to see through deceit and disguise, and to see truly and to love purely.
In these pages I’ve written of old fairy tales compared to modern ones: “The old fairy tales work their magic in a different way. In the midst of a dark and grim world, they showed the power of a pure-hearted act—offering an old woman a drink of water, serving selfish sisters without complaint—to dispel the darkness.” Julia Yost helps us see more clearly the darkness that her heroines wrestle against, and we hence appreciate more clearly the good-heartedness of a Fanny Price or the discerning charity of an Elizabeth Bennet in the midst of a world so often petty and perverse.
But what about marriage? In a review of Rachel Cohen’s The Austen Years, I noted Cohen’s suspicion of the happy ending, that she “substitutes a jaded eye.” Cohen writes: “The ends of her books are not in weddings, about which Austen generally strikes a note of uncertainty, if not outright mockery; instead, the real endings point toward adjustments that make way.”
Rather than this muddled, obfuscatory view of Austen’s endings, I proposed rather that, as Alasdair MacIntyre wrote, that Austen “wrote comedy rather than tragedy for the same reason that Dante did: she is a Christian and she sees the telos of human life implicit in her everyday form.” Austen’s endings are neither mocking, as Cohen wants it, but neither are they trite. Instead, they strike the right balance:
In truth, Austen’s endings strike a sensible, rather than sentimental, note of virtue rewarded, entirely in keeping with her worldview, her sense of natural law, and the Great Chain of Being. [In] Austen’s own fiction…virtue and sacrifice are rewarded with happiness, and vice with destruction and misery. …
For Austen, happiness is not opposed to order; marriage is not opposed to true love. Rather, marriage is the harmonizing of different keys, a generative union, an icon of eschatological hope.
Yost, in highlighting the darkness and some of Austen’s “problem endings,” helps us see that more clearly as well. No happy ending on this earth is ultimate (there was still scouring to do in the Shire at the end of Tolkien’s great fairy tale) but is an icon through which we can see rays from the last and greatest ending, that is also a new beginning.
Tessa Carman writes from Mount Rainier, Maryland.
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