A Note on "A Note on Jane Austen"
C.S. Lewis had thoughts on Jane Austen?! I'm all ears.
A mentor of mine once compared writing to tailoring: both involve cutting things out, and what ends up on the floor is part of what makes the finished product more wonderful.
Sometimes, though, the scraps on the floor are too interesting for the trash bin, and I want to share one of them with you today: one in which one of my favorite philosophers comments on one of my favorite novelists. It’s magic.
Before he was a famed author of children’s literature or beloved Christian philosopher and apologist, C.S. Lewis was a literary critic. Academically appointed in medieval literature at Oxford, he critiqued literature of all kinds, including Jane Austen's corpus, in an essay titled simply: A Note on Jane Austen.
Lewis loved Austen's work for how her heroines demonstrated the sort of innate values common to all people that he wrote about in Abolition of Man and other works. Austen’s heroines (except for two which constitute special cases, he claims), did not so much vanquish external foes as they “came to their senses.” Protagonists come to reconsider their actions as compared to an external standard of "character" or "morals."
While Austen's work feels “modern” today because of its challenge to contemporary cultural norms, criticism of institutions, and examination of the place of women in society, it stands out starkly from 21st century sensibilities in the way it treats morality as something solid, objective, and outside of the individual. Rather than individuality or consistency, her novels elevate characters’ ability to learn from mistakes, grow closer to that moral standard, even to change their minds - to “undeceive” themselves.
In A Note on Jane Austen, Lewis calls his reader’s attention to Austen’s moral vocabulary:
It is perhaps worth emphasizing what may be called the hardness - at least the firmness - of Jane Austen's thought exhibited in all these undeceptions. The great abstract nouns of the classical English moralists are unblushingly and uncompromisingly used: good sense, courage, contentment, fortitude, 'some duty neglected, some failing indulged', impropriety, indelicacy, generous candour, blameable distrust, just humiliation, vanity, folly, ignorance, reason. These are the concepts by which Jane Austen grasps the world.1
Since Austen's time, western culture has largely come to grasp the world without external, objective morality - indeed, without God. The individual has taken God's place as moral referent. Therefore, what is true or right is every person's individual moral judgement. Questioning oneself is now among the greatest moral evils.
Lewis contrasts this with examples from four of Austen’s novels, including this one from Pride and Prejudice: Lizzie Bennet realizes she may have been wrong about Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickam after reading Darcy's letter of self-explanation:
She grew absolutely ashamed of herself.. . 'How despicably have I acted!' she cried. - 'I, who have prided myself on my discernment! ... who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust. - How humiliating is this discovery! - Yet, how just a humiliation! - Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly ... I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away... Till this moment I never knew myself.'2
How foreign is such a "coming to one's senses" to 21st century ears! Lewis goes so far as to characterize it as a hallmark of "the Old Western World," already vanishing from view when he penned A Note…” in 1954.
And the change is not only personal; it’s political.
The New Western World is characterized by the desire, not to act with virtue and to see virtue practiced individually and collectively, but to assert one’s individuality, interests, and identity privately and in public - we elevate not growth toward virtue but growth toward power. Campain slogans claim their candidate will be the one to "win", "never give in", defend your interests", "be on your side."
I long to hear slogans about how a candidates policies will seek justice, promote honesty, apply wisdome and self-control, or offer charity. In an individualistic society where we have become our own moral referent, winning - rather than doing well - has become the ultimate good.
These days, I’m discouraged by the level of individualism and power preached and worshipped in my country. Nevertheless, I’m encouraged and challenged to follow the admonition of Lewis and Austen to set my own gaze not on power but on virtue. Not on myself, my “side,” nor even on the church, but on Christ - the one true and constant external moral referent.
I realize that centering virtue, may not lead to winning. Following Christ may not lead me to Austen-esque happy endings. In fact, it may lead to uncomfortable moments of self-reproach and difficult apologies. But I must believe it will preserve my own humanity. And maybe it will lay a brick in the foundation for future generations to build a more humane, virtuous future on as well.
https://undeceptions.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/A-Note-on-Jane-Austen-Lewis.pdf
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. As quoted in A Note on Jane Austen.
This piece is exactly what I've been trying to write, haha! I'm currently reading both Austen's Emma and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, and I've been struck again and again by how Wharton's protagonists are solely motivated by individual desire and the upper class constructs of society, whereas Austen's are motivated by virtue, good sense, and neighborly concern (not always of course, but that's the tendency). And in my own life, I've spent much time over the last couple of years thinking about virtue as spiritual formation, in contrast to today's values. You've said all my same thoughts and more succinctly than I could. :)