juxtaposition

Yesterday I began my Great Texts of the 18th and 19th Centuries class by asking my students to turn to the last chapter of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Our discussion was mostly complete, but there was one more thing I wanted to cover. I pointed out that Austen seems less interested here at her novel’s conclusion in resolving her love story than in pressing us to reflect on what is, after all, the book’s great theme, and one common in Austen’s fiction: the education of young women.

We see “poor Sir Thomas” reflecting at length, and with great chagrin, on the failures of “his plan of education” for his daughters Maria and Julia. His “mismanagement” had two aspects. On the one hand, he had never effectively countered the constant “flattery” and “indulgence” of the girls by their aunt Mrs. Norris. But more important:

Something must have been wanting within, or time would have worn away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting; that they had never been properly taught to govern their inclinations and tempers by that sense of duty which can alone suffice. They had been instructed theoretically in their religion, but never required to bring it into daily practice. To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments, the authorised object of their youth, could have had no useful influence that way, no moral effect on the mind. He had meant them to be good, but his cares had been directed to the understanding and manners, not the disposition; and of the necessity of self-denial and humility, he feared they had never heard from any lips that could profit them.

The key word here is “disposition,” because Austen, in her Christian-Aristotelian way, thinks of virtue as a settled disposition to moral excellence. And while Maria and Julia might have been taught to refrain from certain grossly sinful deeds, they were never taught to love and desire the good — especially what is good in and for others — or to seek the excellent even when the impulses of the moment might lead one in a different direction.

In Austen’s work, this failure of disposition is not just a problem for young women: here in Mansfield Park, for instance, Henry Crawford loses his chance to marry Fanny Price because when he re-encounters Maria Bertram, with whom he had once flirted, “Curiosity and vanity were both engaged, and the temptation of immediate pleasure was too strong for a mind unused to make any sacrifice to right.” But young women in this society are more vulnerable than young men in many ways, and their shortcomings less readily (or never) forgiven, so it is their situation that Austen particularly attends to. She wants to show that if girls are merely taught to be charming and decorative and to avoid obvious sin, their minds and hearts alike will remain unformed, and they will never become all that they ought to be. They will become indolent and thoughtless like Lady Bertram, or sniping and manipulative like Mrs. Norris; they may well marry unwisely, like Fanny’s mother.

There are, Austen suggests, so many ways that the education of young women can go wrong, and so few that it can go right. But any genuine Christian morality, she indicates here and elsewhere, will consist in training in virtue. And this is not simply the avoidance of vice, but the cultivation of a steady inclination for the good, the true, and the beautiful. (It’s noteworthy that Fanny is profoundly formed by her knowledge and love of poetry, especially the poetry of William Cowper.) One must learn to steer wisely between extremes, finding the path of virtue that lies between two opposing ways of vice. On this account, the Christian life is a life of moral virtue. We are occasionally reminded that Fanny is a young woman of faith who brings her religion “into daily practice,” and that her beloved, her cousin Edmund, is about to become a country vicar who hopes to teach his people virtue by both precept and example.

“It’s all very beautiful,” I said, setting the book down and picking up the next one we were to discuss: Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. “But what happens when the God you serve and follow orders you to kill your own son?”