Jane Austen For Dummies (51 page)
Read Jane Austen For Dummies Online
Authors: Joan Elizabeth Klingel Ray
For Austen, morality, like charity, began at home. Parents must pay attention to their children and set an example for both manners and morals. (For etiquette in Austen's day, see Chapter 12.) Austen clearly believed that an immoral or a lax home adversely affected children into adulthood:
In
Pride and Prejudice,
Austen says that Mr. Collins's “self-conceit” and “weak head” are the result of being raised by “an illiterate and miserly father,” who raised his son under “subjection” (PP 1:15).
When
Mansfield Park
's Edmund Bertram seeks Fanny's advice about Mary Crawford, who says she will never marry a clergyman, he blames “âthe influence of her former companions'” for “âthe tinge of wrong'” and “âevil'” that frequently occur in her speech. Fanny replies simply, “âThe effect of education,'” and Edmund agrees, blaming Mary's immoral uncle (“a man of vicious conduct,” who brought his mistress into his home as soon as his wife died) and ill-used aunt for injuring and tainting Mary's mind (MP 1:4, 2:9).
For more information on failed parents, see “Lust: Failing parents of fallen daughters” later in this chapter.
Although dissenting religious sects grew in England during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Anglican Church remained the national religion and had the highest membership. With the Anglican parish system determining the structure of local government, even non-Anglicans were influenced by the Church of England. In Jane Austen's lifetime (1775â1817), just about the entire gentry and aristocracy were Anglicans. Even the wealthier people in trade, manufacturing, commerce, and the elite professions were Anglican. After all, with the Test Act in effect, what other way was there to get ahead? (For information on the Test Act, see “Forming the Church of England” earlier in this chapter.)
As the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, Jane Austen absorbed her father's moderate Anglicanism. The Rev. Mr. George Austen's Anglicanism balanced salvation through faith, good works, and God's grace, along with attention to and belief in the
Book of Common Prayer
and the Bible and the exercise of practical common sense, reason, and prudence. Jane believed in the importance of attending church and taking Communion. She lived at a time when the national church promoted patriotism. And with two brothers in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, she was certainly patriotic. Her beliefs are supported in her brother Henry's “Biographical Notice” of his late sister: “She was thoroughly religious and devout. . . . On serious subjects she was well-instructed, both by reading and meditation, and her opinions accorded strictly with those of our Established Church” (RWC, 5:8).
Part of the public's casual attitude about church (see the section “Sleeping in on Sunday,” earlier in this chapter) may well be the result of the informal way clergymen were selected. Young men of the gentry, especially younger sons who wouldn't inherit the family estate, needed genteel professions, and the role of clergyman provided that. Whether or not young men felt “called” to serve, becoming a clergyman was a social and career move. For more information about the clergy, check out Chapter 10.
A priest didn't have to live in the parish that he served, meaning he could delegate duties to his curate assistant, who made much less of a living than the priest. Therefore, with the priest having others do his work, he wasn't a regular presence in the lives of his parishioners.
In the period in which Austen wrote, novels didn't really delve into a character's spiritual awakening or epiphany. Overt moralizing and preaching in novels belonged to later writers in the Victorian period (1837â1901): Charles Kingsley's
Alton Locke,
George Eliot's
Adam Bede,
and
Silas Marner,
Anthony Trollope, and even Charles Dickens. Why not in Georgian England, Austen's period? Go back to the first paragraph of this chapter! (Okay, you don't have to turn pages: I wrote at the beginning of the chapter that in Austen's day, religion was a private affair.)
None of Austen's fictional clergymen expressed any spiritual beliefs or appeared among parishioners in the pages of the novels. When
Sense and Sensibility
's Edward Ferrars tells Elinor of the various professions open to him, he mentions a preference for the church, but lists it along with the law and the army without stating any reason for preferring the church (SS 1:19). And he only goes to Oxford to be ordained after his mother disinherits him so that he'll be in position to try to secure a church living so he can marry Lucy and have a parsonage in which to live (SS 2:2). For more on church livings, flip back to Chapter 10.
While many sincere, exemplary clergymen existed â including Jane Austen's father â Austen's novels show young men entering and practicing the clerical professional with about as much spirit as they would show entering law school or practicing the law. But of course, she includes some exceptions. Jane Austen implies that the following young men will do fine as clergymen:
Edmund Bertram:
Mansfield Park
's Edmund Bertram receives a church living from his father, who has two of them to bestow. He's the only one of Austen's clergyman characters to speak
about the role of a clergyman:
⢠In large cities like London (the old city versus the country debate arises here!), he says, “âThe clergy are lost in the crowds of their parishioners'” (MP 1:9). So a clergyman's private life is not witnessed by his flock. Edmund doesn't like that as explained in the next quotation.
⢠Clerics, he says, have the “âduty to teach and recommend'” good principles and Christian doctrine: “â[I]t will . . . be every where found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.'” So Edmund sees the ideal clergy as models of moral behavior.
Edmund's father, though not a clergyman himself, also speaks of the role of the priest and his parishioners:
⢠“âA parish has wants and claims, which can be known only by a clergyman constantly resident'” (MP 2:7).
⢠Determined to live in his country parsonage, Edmund fully understands his father's saying that if a parish priest “âdoes not live among his parishioners and prove himself by constant attention their well-wisher and friend, he does very little either for their good or his own.'”
Henry Tilney:
Northanger Abbey
's clergyman, Henry Tilney, holds a church living that is a gift from his father. Henry doesn't always live in his parsonage, which was common. He's probably paying his assistant to carry out his everyday work:
⢠Visiting the sick, elderly, and poor
⢠Providing spiritual counsel to his parishioners
⢠Offering religious instruction to the children of his parish
⢠Finding help for the poor and hungry
Henry appears more frequently at home or on the ballroom floor than he does in the church â though his intelligence and integrity suggest that he's a good priest to his flock when he's in residence.
Aside from the younger sons who receive church livings from their fathers or friends, men who didn't have such connections could buy livings from patrons who wanted to sell them, especially if the patrons needed the money. Another way of securing a living was for the clergyman to beg, plead, charm, flatter, or in any other way finesse a living from a patron. Austen gives no indication that any of the three clergymen who bought or flattered to secure their livings â Grant, Collins, or Elton â are from genteel families. And none is particularly promising as a clergyman the way the genteel Edmund Bertram or Henry Tilney are:
Grant is gluttonous.
As soon as he is introduced in
Mansfield Park,
we learn that “Dr. Grant was very fond of eating” (1:3). At the end of the novel, he dies of “an apoplexy” caused by stuffing himself at “three great institutionary dinners in one week” (MP 3:17). Sir Thomas Bertram sells the better of two livings at Mansfield Park to Dr. Grant (a Doctor of Divinity) to help defray the expenses of his wastrel elder son. Grant leaves only when he gets a clerical position at London's famed Westminster Abbey. During his residency at Mansfield Park, his eating is discussed, while we learn nothing of his preaching or other clerical duties. But gluttony is one of the Seven Deadly Sins!
Collins is stupid and self-important.
Shortly after meeting
Pride and Prejudice
's Mr. Collins, we read that “Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education” (PP 1:15). When he speaks, he utters “pompous nothings.” Collins undoubtedly flattered Lady Catherine when “A fortunate chance had recommended him to Lady Catherine de Bourgh when the living of Hunsford was vacant” (PP 1:15).
Elton is egotistical and cruel.
Angry that
Emma had supposed him in love with Harriet Smith, the illegitimate daughter of “somebody,”
Emma
's Mr. Elton later refuses to dance with Harriet, who is the only young woman without a partner (E 1:3, 3:2). As he strides away, “smiles of high glee passed between him and his wife.” Both he and Mrs. Elton enjoy seeing Harriet humiliated. Granted, early in the novel he heads to visit a poor and ailing family, but he turns around to accompany Emma, who has already been there (E 1:10). Some priest! Austen gives us no idea how
Emma
's Mr. Elton secured the living of Highbury â though flattering someone is in character for Elton, too.