Jane Austen and the Good

In two recent Living Church articles, David Goodhew has reflected on the significance of Jane Austen for Anglican theology and spirituality.  In the first article, he proposed the "informal beatification" of Austen:

Anglicans lionize the faith of George Herbert, male priest and poet. So why do we, mostly, ignore the faith of Austen, lay-woman and novelist? Jane Austen deserves just as much recognition as Herbert for the way she, like him, lived out her vocation as a writer within her vocation as a follower of Jesus. Herbert’s wonderful poems fuel faith; Austen’s novels, were they better understood, could do the same. Anglicanism currently hides Jane Austen under a bushel. It is time we put that right.

The second article offered a reading of the Ordinal through the lense of Mansfield Park:

Learning to be a priest is the center of Mansfield Park. This novel is Austen’s ordinal.

The narrative shows us how to approach ordained ministry. Like all of Austen, it treats this theme with wit and irony (not least in the way it is the laywoman, Fanny, who rescues the vocation of the male ordinand, Edmund). But the theme of ordination is at Mansfield Park’s heart. To ignore ordination in Mansfield Park is like ignoring class struggle in Das Kapital.

In Mansfield Park she argues that clergy should be centered on prayer, live in (and sink deep roots into) the place in which they minister, love their families, live lives of practical compassion, and spurn the lure of wealth. Thus, Austen’s understanding of vocation, though rooted in the Georgian church, has much to say to all Anglicans and all Christians today - whether we be lay or ordained, male or female.

Goodhew is here building on significant philosophical and theological recognition of Austen's importance as an Anglican Christian thinker.  We might particularly point to Alison Milbank's superb 2018 lecture 'Jane Austen’s Afterlife: Art, Culture and Religion'.  Milbank draws attention to three aspects that are features "of her theology".  Firstly, "there is a sense in which in Austen life is as vivid and good as in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas", "the goodness of being".  Secondly, in "wishing the good for her characters". And thirdly, "a communal sense of the human being".  Summarising this, Milbank says:

Austen offers a robust ethics of virtue, a narrative theology in which the flow of words offers a place to learn good habits of virtue, self-examination and self-knowledge as well as the nature of true happiness, within a shared community in which true happiness can be sought through marriage as a kind of friendship in the good.

Taken together, this vision of the good life both flows from and returns to "the transcendent opening of Austen's texts".  

Milbank refers to "the specifically Anglican spirit" of Austen, referring particularly to this vision of the good life:

I have spoken mainly about Austen’s ethics and would argue that even this emphasis has an Anglican edge, since the Elizabethan Thirty Nine Articles even at their most Protestant seem to hold open the possibility of co-operating with God’s grace, and the Prayer Book uses the language of the virtues everywhere. 

In this sense, Austen particularly gives expression to that domestic and homely focus that has been a particular concern for Anglican understandings of the moral life: from the Reformers' dissolving the monasteries and, in the words of Latimer, declaring of the Christian home "that same is a religious house", to Taylor et al promoting holy living in and through the ordinary routines and duties of life, to the 18th century Anglican hostility to enthusiasm as detracting from the ordinary motions and workings of the Spirit.  Austen's works captures this with their attention to family, money, romantic live, marriage, neighbours, parish: it is here that the good life is to be lived out, "in love and charity with your neighbours".

Milbank also draws attention to Alasdair MacIntyre's praise for Austen in After Virtue:

Self-knowledge is for Jane Austen both an intellectual and a moral virtue [she is] the last great representative of the classical tradition of virtues.

Alongside this, we can also point to Gertrude Himmelfarb's reading of Austen's Emma as an expression of 'the moral imagination': "a drama of manners, with manners in the service of morals".  Himmelfarb quotes C.S. Lewis: 

Jane Austen's 'principles' ... might be described as the grammar of conduct.  Now grammar is something that anyone can learn; it is also something that everyone must learn.

There is, then, an important body of work which confirms Austen's significance in expressing the good life. That Austen does so in a distinctly Anglican register is a reminder of how Anglicanism can give rise to an attractive account of that good life.  It might also be the case that it is rather appropriate for an Anglican vision of the moral life to be set forth in the form of novels authored by a laywoman, rather than via ecclesial law or dogmatic theology, novels which explore and celebrate the stuff of ordinary lives, with no fractures between sacred and secular, nature and grace.

In this sense, Goodhew is drawing attention to how we might consider Austen as a moral theologian. Where, however, I would dissent from his approach is in its rather curmudgeonly critique of contemporary reception and presentation of Austen:

And she deserves at least informal beatification, also, because this would annoy all the right people. Hollywood depictions of her novels ignore the religious framework within which the books were written (ironically, were Hollywood to draw on that faith framework, its films would gain much greater depth). To recognize Austen’s deep faith will appall literary big-wigs who have air-brushed out Austen’s beliefs. And, if they were so appalled, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

We might contrast this approach with that of Milbank and, in a different context, of Benedict XVI.  Milbank does note that there "is something really quite strange in the way that Austen is now an internationally acclaimed writer and guide to life in an age which shares none of her values".  This, however, does not prevent her from offering a generous invitation to reflect on the good life with Austen:

I encourage us all to be inspired by the words of Jane Austen and by their interpretations in the artistic works inspired by her words, and to begin to see ourselves as characters in a Divine Comedy in which the irony is educative, so that we may learn who we truly are and find the aim of human life revealed in the most minor of life’s daily challenges. 

Such a generous and warm invitation is surely likely to have greater resonance in contemporary culture than a 'culture war' approach to Austen.  And this brings us to Benedict XVI.  Writing for the 2021 Bach Festival in Leipzig, Benedict writes:

The faith that produced this music and which Bach, as a musician, loyally served, is now extinguished and continues to have an effect only as a cultural force.

As a devout Christian, one may regret this reduction, but it also has a positive element. For the fact remains that something is accepted as culture, that is the fruit of a devout encounter with Jesus and that bears this origin in it forever.

Let us remember that according to Bach, the ‘end and final reason’ of all music should be ‘none other than God’s glory and the recreation of the mind.’ And indeed, Bach’s glorious music itself moves us deeply and glorifies God, even where he is not formally present through faith.

In this sense, precisely those people who share Bach’s faith can rejoice and be thankful that through his music, the atmosphere of faith, the figure of Jesus Christ, lights up even where faith itself is not present.

We can say likewise about Austen.  The orthodox Christian Faith which shaped her writing and its reflection on the moral life is not recognised by our contemporaries and yet, still, that vision of the moral life - the fruit of Austen's faith as an Anglican Christian - continues to attract and move hearts in a secular age.  Rather than bemoan this, or fire disapproving statements at a secular culture for entirely misunderstanding Austen, we might instead build on this attraction to Austen's portrayal's of the good life, knowing that it draws others to the Source, the One who is Good.

There is perhaps no more fitting conclusion to this post than one of Austen's prayers quoted by Milbank in her lecture (a prayer shot through with Anglican resonances):

To thy goodness we commend ourselves this night beseeching thy protection of us through its darkness and dangers. We are helpless and dependent; graciously preserve us. For all whom we love and value, for every friend and connection, we equally pray; however divided and far asunder, we know that we are alike before thee, and under thine eye. May we be equally united in thy faith and fear, in fervent devotion towards thee, and in thy merciful protection this night. 

(The first picture is of the memorial to Jane Austen in Winchester Cathedral.  The second is of St Nicholas, Steventon, where Austen worshipped when her father was Rector.)