At first, I was reluctant to write about Jane Austen. There is always the danger, when writing about this beloved author, that you will be scolded by a Jane-ite, one of those defenders of the faith, someone with a passionate knowledge of the author. But I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a scholar. All I have is a rudimentary knowledge of the author’s life and a love of her books. If I tread on any great scholarly theories or rehash long acknowledged truths about her work, please forgive me!
Why I read Jane Austen’s novels during stressful or difficult times
What can an eighteenth-century “spinster,” consigned to the drawing room, raised in an English country parish, who died young, teach us about life, love, and character? Is it in fact possible, in a time when the world is infinitely complex and stressful, to glean any wisdom or relief from such a humble figure born over two hundred years ago? Well, the answer, for me at least, is a lot and yes. It turns out that the human heart and psyche can be plumbed from a parsonage window.
Jane Austen might not have traveled the world, or married and had children, or had the kind of education and independence women do now, but she had an ear exquisitely tuned to the people around her. She also had a finely calibrated intelligence and a magnanimous heart. What more could one ask for in an author?
So, when I am stressed out, or feeling sad or contemplative, or, just looking for a lift—not unlike my character Billy in this book—I thumb through the pages of one of my Jane Austen novels. And I have found over the years that even a random sampling can be a delight. Why? I’d boil it down to three overriding factors: Her novels, filled with wit and humor, always end happily; she is a true master of dialogue; and, finally, the world of a Jane Austen novel is firmly fixed in a moral universe.
Yes, one of the things I love about this author is her sunniness. They say Jane Austen is the first woman to write great comic novels. And by comic I mean they end happily: the misguided Emma finds her Mr. Knightly; the kind Colonel Brandon gets the lovely Marianne; the aging and heartbroken Anne is reunited with the now rich Captain Wentworth; the headstrong Lizzie Bennet finds love with the chastened Mr. Darcy, and on and on. But long before these happy endings there are enough mistaken entanglements, near misses, foolish decisions, lapses in judgment, and mismatches to make Shakespeare smile. And throughout, these machinations are all depicted with a deft brush. Wit, humor, and a healthy dose of irony prevail. For me, it is this infusion of humor and wit that makes these books and their characters interesting two hundred years after they were written.
All of this is not to say there isn’t heartbreak in her novels. Surely Marianne has lost much of her innocence and youthfulness by the end of Sense and Sensibility. And Anne Elliot is a sadly resigned woman for most of Persuasion. But almost always, especially for those characters who have the integrity to finally follow their heart, the ending is a happy one. And with so much unhappiness, seemingly, around every corner (one need just turn on the nightly news), why shouldn’t we seek out a “feel good” ending and some laughter in our fiction? After all, humor—which is always trying to nudge us toward happiness—is our last, and best, defense against despair. Fortunately, despair is never to have the upper hand in Jane Austen’s world.
The other thing I admire about Austen’s novels is her mastery of dialogue; she can reveal with two or three lines of conversation what might take another author many paragraphs of description or internal thinking. I would even suggest that if something is truly important, in one of these novels, it will be spoken. Maybe this is because in Austen’s world people are largely social creatures, integral parts of a social fabric, both bound together and, occasionally, torn apart, by talk. And as far as action goes, the main action is people either walking and talking, riding and talking, or dancing and talking. Conversation is the common denominator. It actually pushes the plot forward in her novels. It is how people connect, suffer, slight each other, articulate envy or disdain, and communicate love. It is also how Austen illustrates a person’s strengths, foibles, insecurities, and character. Sometimes it seems that some of Jane Austen’s characters don’t properly feel something until they actually say it. And, of course her dialogue is witty, ironic, and amusing. Nearly any line from the foolish Mrs. Bennet, the silly Mrs. Palmer, or the incessant chatter of Mrs. Bates should make you chuckle. Mrs. Bates, in Emma, once famously said that something left her so “speechless” that she hadn’t been able to stop talking about it. Or, recently, I reread the exchange between Mrs. and Mr. Bennet at the beginning of Pride and Prejudice and found it to be a perfect rendering of an incompatible couple whose differences actually bring them into relief.
How does she pack so much witty dialogue into her rather compact books (several of them are under 300 pages)? Well, maybe she makes space by stinting on physical descriptions. Detailed descriptions of characters, places, rooms, clothes, and landscapes are scant, if not rare in her novels. Emma is simply “handsome, clever and rich,” and Mr. Knightly is “sensible.” There are hardly any descriptions of eye color, hair color, complexion, tallness or shortness, shape of the face, etc., in her novels. Unlike most contemporary novels, where rooms and clothes and surrounding landscapes are often described in detail in an effort to convey “realism,” Austen, it appears, will have none of it. For example, there is some expository setup in the beginning of Emma, but then she dives right into the dialogue between Emma and her father, never describing either the room they are sitting in, the town they live in, or the clothes they are wearing. Emma’s estate, Hartfield, is described as having “separate lawns, and shrubberies.” What? What kind of a description is that? And this lack of physical description continues throughout the book.
The truth is I don’t think Austen was particularly interested in “looks,” beauty, or the particulars of the physical world. The description of the sun setting beyond the distant fields, or embroidered roses on a pale pink ball gown, or a butterfly bending the stalk of a flower it lands on, simply did not interest her. Surely, she had the authorial genius to describe anything in the physical world. But she chose not to.
What did interest her, you might ask? Based on a lifetime of reading her books, I think she was predominantly concerned with a person’s character and interior mettle, and how these two factors enabled them to negotiate their social world. Was a person true to themselves? Were they capable of making sensible decisions? Were they honest, forthright, and good to others? Were they brave? Finally, and most importantly, did they have a moral compass?
This last part is key. For Jane Austen was a deeply moral writer. I would clarify that morality, in Austen’s world, is not a rigid body of principles based solely on religious or cultural standards but is first and foremost grounded in the inner workings of the human heart. In her novels, it is the characters who are the purest of heart who embody decency. But despite being a writer interested in right and wrong, Austen is not judgmental, preachy or punitive. How does she accomplish this? Well, if an author is a kind of deity over his or her books, then Austen is a truly compassionate god. She can both love Emma and shake her head at Emma’s snobbishness. She can feel compassion for Willoughby—not because he chose money over love, but because he would suffer for that choice for the rest of his life. She can respect Captain Wentworth’s pain and pride even if she would prod him to declare his love for Anne. At the heart of this compassion is the knowledge that we are all hopelessly flawed. Morality tempered by compassion. It’s as though Austen is saying: we are destined to err, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive to be kind, thoughtful, honest, and good. For me, they are novels—and words—to live by!
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