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CONSIDERING SPIRITUAL QUEST
IN FOUR NOVELS BY JANE AUSTEN

presented by

Paula Ashley Harris

has been accepted towards fulfillment
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CONSIDERING SPIRITUAL QUEST
IN

FOUR NOVELS BY JANE AUSTEN
By

Paula Ashley Harris

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

2000

 

ABSTRACT
CONSIDERING SPIRITUAL QUEST m
FOUR NOVELS BY JANE AUSTEN
By

Paula Ashley Harris

This study investigates the place of spirituality and spiritual questing in the work
of Jane Austen. The definition for Spiritual quest employed in this study was found in
Carol P. Christ's Diving Deepjnd Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (Third
Edition, 1995). Christ outlines a paradigm for describing and discussing women's
spiritual quest, particularly as this quest is apparent in works of literature. She asserts
that social and spiritual quests are inseparable in a woman's life and identifies stages
through which women on this dual-natured quest seem to move. They are: nothingness,
awakening, insight and naming.

Using Christ's model as a guide, this work examines four Jane Austen novels:

Sense and Sensibility (1811), Emma (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Persuasion

 

(1818). These works were chosen because they span Austen's writing career but also
because they represent the variety of heroines in her novels. Elinor and Marianne in
Senseind Sensibility are poverty-stricken, genteel women. Emma Woodhouse is
abundantly wealthy and of a higher social class. F army Price in Mansfield Park is of low
birth and has no income or family support. Finally, Anne Elliot's family represents a high
social class which has fallen on hard economic times due to poor management. Through
textual analysis and historical research, this study explores the nature of each of these
characters' quest in social and spiritual terms.

The foundation of this work lies in the historical context of eighteenth-century

Christianity and in Austen's pursuit of new ways for women to experience their own

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The foundation of this work lies in the historical context of eighteenth-century
Christianity and in Austen's pursuit of new ways for women to experience their own
spirituality. This writer finds that Austen offers new ways of being and new ways of
experiencing spiritual success through the examples of her heroines. These new ways are
measured against the prevalent conduct book literature of the eighteenth-century, which
espouses a near-silent and unadventurous spirituality for women.

This work also explores the nature of the connection between a heroine’s moral
code, her own virtues and vices, and her ability to participate in a spiritual quest and
concludes that the virtues of true amiability, constancy, and attention to duty are required.
Only characters who possess these virtues are Shown to experience a successful quest,
achieving a stronger sense of self and personal Spirituality than the conduct books allow.
This successful quest contains elements of both social and spiritual exploration and
growth, as Christ points out.

In addition to historical material and the novels themselves, this research relies on
research supporting the feminist nature of Austen's writing. Austen's eighteenth-century
brand of feminism, while moderate by today's standards, points out the nature of women's
condition, criticizes the culture which upholds these conditions, and undermines through
the use of irony and example the kinds of behaviors which do not afford women spiritual
and social development.

Several conclusions are reached through examination of the novels. First, Austen
creates a new spiritual potential for her readers. Second, Austen’s brand of Christianity,
infused with her personal moral code, is the basis for her feminist approach and her desire
to offer her readers positive examples of how to live rightly and successfully. Austen’s
own character suffuses each novel and directs the readers on their own quests. As
Austen’s heroines find their lives enhanced through their spiritual and social questing, so

might her readers.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I offer sincere thanks to my dissertation director at Michigan State University, Dr.
Kathleen Geissler. Her expertise, professionalism, support and good faith were
immeasurable in my task of completing this degree.

Other members of my committee were equally supportive: Dr. Laura Julier,
Michigan State University, Dr. Victor Paananen, Michigan State University, Dr.
Marcellette Williams, Office of the Chancellor, University of Massachusetts, and Dr. .
Marilyn Wilson, Michigan State University.

At the University of South Carolina, I wish to thank Dr. Ina Hark, Dr. Carolyn
Matalene, Dr. Patrick Scott, and Dr. Donald Greiner for their guidance and example.

I appreciate the administration at Jackson Community College for extending a
sabbatical to me, allowing time for initial research.

Also, I extend a special note of thanks to Janet Kauffrnan for her friendship,
continuous encouragement and confidence, and to Sue Stindt and Keith Kroll for being
there when it mattered most.

Finally, I thank my husband, Mark, my children, Brian and Jordan, and my family

for their love and faith and for making their own sacrifices to help me.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One ......................................................................................................................... 1
Historical Foundations and Directions:
Jane Austen, Criticism, Spirituality and the

 

Telling of Stories

Notes .................................................................................................................................. 40
Chapter Two ....................................................................................................................... 41
The Stories in the Conduct Books

Notes .................................................................................................................................. 98
Chapter Three ..................................................................................................................... 99
Sense and Sensibility: The Prototype of a Quest

Notes ................................................................................................................................ 129
Chapter Four .................................................................................................................... 130
Mansfield Park: Fanny Price’s Real Quest

Chapter Five ..................................................................................................................... 153
Emma: Acquainted with the Heart '

Notes ............................... g ................................................................................................. 179
Chapter Six ...................................................................................................................... 180
Persuasion: The Story and the Quest

Notes ................................................................................................................................ 205
Epilogue ........................................................................................................................... 206
Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 212

vii

Chapter One
Historical Foundations and Directions:
Jane Austen, Criticism, Spirituality
and the Telling of Stories

One of the great paradoxes of late twentieth-century life concerns our view of
spiritual and religious issues. While social theorists and critics assert that we are morally
and religiously bankrupt and are, consequently, watching the decline of Western culture,
segments of the population continue to call for a return to “true” religion or seek new
avenues for establishing spiritual wellness and oneness with mystic, Christian or Eastern
greater powers.

The specific area of exploration for this dissertation is an analysis of spiritual
and/or Christian elements in the writing of Jane Austen. I argue that Austen's
Christianity is informed by her feminist impulses and that she creates in her novels
patterns of living for young women which defy and rewrite the spiritual advice given to
Christian young women of the eighteenth century. She offers in her narratives alternative
means of achieving and methods for enacting a positive and forceful spirituality for
women which was not otherwise visible in the traditional teachings or attitudes of the
period, especially as presented in the conduct books. Austen rewrites the narratives of
women's lives and through these alternate narratives shows young women participating in
both spiritual and social quests.

Few critics, literary or otherwise, tackle this topic. Two particular critics offer
theories for the lack of scholarly writing in this area. Margaret Olafson Thickstun, in
writing about Margaret Fell and Mary Astell, two seventeenth-century radical, feminist,

churchwomen, writers and rhetoricians, says in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture

that “Astell's secular arguments appeal to contemporary scholars because she values what
they value, education and the exercise of reason, while both her Scriptural criticism and
Fell's impassioned claims of inspiration disconcert readers trained to equate religious
enthusiasm with either irrationality or fundamentalism.” Also in this passage, Thickstun
says, “In their discussions of both writers [Astell and Fell], scholars reveal their
assumption that religious faith and feminist convictions are necessarily antithetical . . .”
(150). Similarly, Alistair Duckworth while writing about Jane Austen asks, “In pursuit of
an autonomous and progressive author do we fail to see those aspects of a deeply pious
woman for whom manners, ideally, were the living embodiment of religious principle?

In our desire to restore a Nietzschean sense of the body to Austen's fiction do we fail to
credit her belief—whatever our own might be—in the existence of a soul?” (“Review”
89).

These two comments foreground the concerns which contemporary literary critics
generally eschew. Might writers, through fiction, address spiritual issues along with
economic, political or philosophical ones? Specifically, I wish to examine the spiritual
qualities apparent in Jane Austen’s fiction, the ways in which her approach is feminist,
and the messages to be drawn from the narratives themselves concerning a woman's
spiritual questing.

A Brief History of Austen Criticism

In Writing; Woman’s Life, Carolyn Heilbrun explains the importance of
women’s telling their own stories. Heilbrun identifies four methods which have served as
vehicle for feminine story-telling: a woman may write biography, autobiography or

fiction or a woman may write the story of her life by predetennining the direction in

which her life will move. She says, “A woman may write her own life in advance of
living it, unconsciously, and without recognizing or naming the process” (1 1). While her
book focuses on the development of biography as a primary method for narrating the
events of a woman’s life, she discusses fiction and the role of recent criticism. Recent
criticism “has been so penetrating and persuasive that learning to read fictional
representations of gender arrangements in our culture, whether of difference, oppression,
or possibility, is an opportunity now available to anyone who will take the time to explore
this vast and compelling body of criticism” (11). From this body of criticism, Heilbrun
points out, one learns that “women have been deprived of the narratives, or the texts,
plots, or examples, by which they might assume power over — take control of — their own
lives” (17). Heilbrun defines power as “the ability to take one’s place in whatever
discourse is essential to action and the right to have one’s part matter” (18). Heilbrun’s
argument establishes that fiction can “write” a life and serve as an example of a life for
readers, that recent criticism creates new methods of reading, that without stories told,
women have been powerless to enter some discourse arenas.

Particularly, through the advent of feminist scholarship, women’s voices have
taken preeminent positions of power in Austen criticism. Historically, and beginning so
early in the nineteenth-century that Austen could have read it, criticism of Jane Austen's
work was primarily male and focused on the domestic nature of her writing, lamenting
that the sphere of her work was so narrow. Austen herself contributes to this notion when
she describes her own writing as this “little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory” (pm, 16
December 1816). Ironic or not, Austen's comment is meant to explain that she focused

her attentions on a narrow piece of life but attempted to make that portrayal perfect. The

life which she explores most often is the one with which she was most familiar, the lives
of young women born into rural gentility. While her characters and settings are diverse,
they all include young gentlewomen born in small towns or rural settings throughout the
countryside who struggle to find their places in their own worlds. Politics or the greater
issues of state seldom find their way explicitly into Austen's writing. While twentieth-
century critics beginning with R. W. Chapman and Mary Lascelles have understood that
Austen’s world is much larger than the world of her fiction, the early critics mistook this
omission on Austen’s part as a statement that she was uninformed about the workings of
the world outside of her domestic life. During the last third of the twentieth-century,
feminist critics like Heilbrun have uncovered layer after layer of complexity in Austen’s
fiction, revealing the struggles for power and autonomy of the women in her narratives.
As I will demonstrate, one of these struggles is a struggle for spiritual adventure or the
simple ability to determine the nature of one’s own spiritual quest and to have a feminine
voice heard in the discourse of spirituality.

Like all writers, Austen has had detractors and supporters in the two hundred
years of criticism since her earliest publications, but the discourse arena to which
Heilbrun alludes, particularly the discourse of spirituality, has been undeveloped.
Nineteenth and early twentieth-century Austen criticism tended to categorize Austen as a
writer of women's stories and to see her world view as limited to that ivoried domestic
arena, while also acknowledging her contribution to the development of the novel as a
genre. In the spectrum of Austen scholarship from its beginning, critics have investigated
Austen as, for example, a novelist of manners, a woman's novelist, and a stern moralist.

While this latter criticism moves closer to a discussion of spiritual qualities, there seems

to be no discussion of the discourse of women’s spirituality or of women’s ability to
participate in such a discourse.

The earliest reviews of her work, written by critics of such stature as Richard

Whateley, the Archbishop of Dublin; Sir Walter Scott; and Thomas B. Macaulaylappear
in major journals: Quarterly Review, Edinburgh Review, Edinburgh Magazine and the
British Critic. Each of these three early critics admires Austen's work but tends to bring
to his criticism the concerns of his own writing. For example, Richard Whateley in an

1821 Quarterly Review sees a strong Christian foundation in her writing while Scott in an

 

1816 Qu_arterlv Review response to Emma is especially impressed with her realistic
portrayal of life. Some critics, however, continued to diminish her work. Even critics as
recent as Henry James allude to Austen as somehow quaintly shallow, not measuring up
to their ambitions for art. Ian Watt quotes from James’ “The Lesson of Balzac” in his
introduction to Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays: “[Austen] with all her light
felicity, leaves us hardly more curious of her process, or the experience in her that fed it,
than the brown thrush who tells his story from the garden bough” (8).

One of the first twentieth-century critics to look at Austen with a clearer lens,
however, is D. W. Harding. In his 1940 essay, “Regulated Hatred: An Aspect of the
Work of Jane Austen,” Harding attacks the stereotypes prevalent in Austen criticism and
points out the ironic nature of Austen's work and opens her novels to new and more
serious criticism. When Harding comments that “the heroine of these early novels is
herself the criterion of sound judgment and good feeling” (Harding 174), he stands on the
edge of the criticism to come, especially the feminist criticism. He discusses Austen's

use of irony, for instance in an inversion of the Cinderella story, arguing that Austen “. . .

so deliberately inverts it that we ought to regard E__mma as a bold variant of the theme and
a further exploration of its underlying significance” (177). He reads Austen’s novels as
subtle and ironic social criticism. Harding does not go so far as to call Austen a radical,
but he does not ignore the undercurrents of protest in her work. Harding's essay added
new perspectives in Austen criticism to the dichotomy of traditional Austen research
which tended to define Austen in simplistic terms. It does not, however, take the greater
step into a criticism showing the dynamics of women asserting their voices into a
discourse from which they had been barred.

Some mid-twentieth-century critics continue to echo those earliest criticisms and
to read Austen’s novels through a narrow scope. Eugene Current-Garcia and Walton R.
Patrick say as much in Realism and Romanticism in Fiction: An Approach to the Novel
(1962). These critics argue that while Austen consistently combined realistic and
romantic elements in her novels and devised “subtler ways to handle action, develop
character, present their ideas, and control the focus of narration,” her output was still
narrow and small. “Her attitude toward the art of fiction was fastidious and her
craftsmanship honest, incisive, and thorough. . . . Poise and self-control dominate nearly
every page of narrative and dialogue as the novels unfold. . . in a style that marks a
triumph of understatement” (12). These double-edged criticisms of Austen's novels
which praise some aspects while demeaning others were common from the middle of the
nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth centuries; her work is artful, but her subjects
are small. Current-Garcia and Patrick read Austen as a moral writer, albeit morality on a
small scale: “Morality, in short, could not be superimposed on the novel as an extraneous

element; it had to be infused throughout the whole work as a reflection of the artist’s

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fundamental being” (32). Like many critics, Current-Garcia and Patrick identify the
morality apparent in Austen’s work but do not recognize the spiritual nature of this
morality or the subversive quality of the feminist discourse which supports it.

With the advent of Marxist and Freudian criticisms, articles begin to deal with
- contemporary issues in contemporary terms. For example, David Daiches in “Jane
Austen, Karl Marx, and the Aristocratic Dance” (1948) and Mark Schorer in “Fiction and
the 'Matrix of Analogy'“ (1949) are two of the earliest writers to tackle serious issues of
class and economics in Austen's novels, exploring Austen's awareness of and positions on
existing social and economic structures. Austen's acute awareness of the cultural failings
of her own time, particularly those which focus on the status of women, begins to come
to the surface in the work of these critics.

John Bayley, in “The 'Irresponsibility' of Jane Austen,” a 1967 talk given to the
Jane Austen Society, considers New Criticism and its mark on Austen scholarship. He
says that the problem with all new critics and new criticisms is that we find what we seek.
“Our reaction to her seems intimately, even alarmingly, dependent on our own history.
In meeting her again we reflect to ourselves in something of the way that Leopold Bloom
does in Ulysses. 'Me. And me now'” (1). Bayley’s statement points from historical
criticism into historicism and brings to the forefront the fact that critics write as much out
of their own times and concerns as they do about the periods in which works are created.
“The big difference between self—characterization as we have it in Jane Austen. . . is that
‘constraint for Jane Austen is the condition of life—accepted, uncomplained of. Her
self-projections have thus a true grace of irresponsibility—they are at once a humorous

indulgence and a spiritual exercise” (13). Such assertions undermine the accepted

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objective stance of traditional criticism and make way not only for new readings of older
works, made possible first by New Criticism, but for new insights into the important
issues which have been, to date, unexplored, i.e. feminist and spiritual issues.

Mirroring the changes in direction in scholarship generally, more recent Austen
criticism explores the multiple feminist impulses in the novels and opens further arenas in
Austen research. Feminist criticism since 1965 points out the much broader scope of
Austen's work and emphasizes her attack, sometimes subtle, sometimes blunt and direct,
on the boundaries imposed on women by the established institutions of the eighteenth
century. The first wave of feminist criticism launches the beginning of a new era in
Austen criticism, and today few would argue against reading Austen as a feminist writer.

Hundreds of articles and books published over the past twenty years establish her as

such.2 Some writers, like Marilyn Butler in J_ane Austen and the War of Ideas, have been
criticized by later writers for underestimating Austen's political acumen and relying too
heavily on the received scholarship asserting Austen's fundamental political
conservatism. Butler writes:

The historical Jane Austen is serious-minded and didactic, but we

should not, perhaps, be over-hasty to call her moral—or not, at least,

without more careful and accurate consideration of her real moral

position. That viewpoint is a strong-minded and intellectually

consistent one, a strenuous, critical code which preaches self-

understanding, self-mastery, and, ultimately, subordination. What

therefore it does not do is to give special value to the individual.

(Butler's emphasis, War, 296)
The careful and accurate consideration that Butler calls for has occurred and has given
rise to criticism that Butler's work itself is too conservative. Regardless of this criticism,

Butler’s assertion that Austen’s critical code preaches subordination adds to the critical

heritage establishing Austen as a feminist and vocal social critic, while calling for more

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scholarly consideration of moral, political and philosophical elements in Austen’s novels.
A consideration of the spiritual nature of Austen’s heroines such as I undertake here will
reveal a similar subversion of the prescribed feminine spirituality of her time.

By the mid-19805, feminist criticism of Austen is prolific. Critics offer their
views while assessing the place of these views within Austen criticism, analyzing the
many critical approaches and presenting coherent theories drawing these together. For
example, Alison G. Sulloway argues in Jane Austen and The Province of Wom_anhood
(1989) that

Austen's satirical purposes may have been so oblique that they have not

been recognized for close to two centuries, but when she satirized male

privileges and female disenfranchisements, her purposes were as

insurrectionary as those of Mary Wollstonecraft and Wollstonecraft's

feminist colleagues of the 17905 and later. . . . [Austen is] a provincial

Christian gentlewoman whose contempt for the overt and hidden ethical

disjunctions at the heart of all satire politely but obsessively pierces

destructive myths and assumptions about her own sex. (xvi, xvii)

This recognition of Austen’s hidden contempt and satire is also the heart of Harding's
1940 essay. Sulloway develops the argument in direct, feminist terms. Sulloway sees the
radical nature of Austen’s fiction and links her philosophically with the radical
eighteenth-century feminists, Mary Wollstonecraft, for example. As she argues this
position, Sulloway includes in her second chapter a helpful consideration of feminist

scholarship on Austen and eighteenth-century England to that date and defines Austen's

feminism as, ultimately, moderate in nature.

Margaret Kirkham's work, Jane Austen Feminism and Fiction (1983)3 also links

 

Austen's work specifically with feminist work as early as the mid-seventeenth century
and gives a feminist reading of each of Austen's novels. She introduces her argument by

noting, “How important or valid the ideas of eighteenth-century English feminists were

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must remain a separate issue, but at least we can be rid of the assumption that Jane
Austen's moral interest is of a purely personal nature, unconnected with any general
changes in the awareness of her time” (xi). Kirkham examines the eighteenth-century
feminists, placing Austen within the scheme. She says that “Austen's tendency to argue
like 'the conservative moralists' about sexual conduct . . . suggests that she is in
agreement with the rational feminist point of view, which was shared to some extent by
women of widely different backgrounds, who disagreed on other matters” (xiii).
Austen’s link to both conservative moralists and radical feminists becomes important in
the next chapter’s discussion of eighteenth-century conduct books. Kirkham carries her
argument beyond the issues of morality and gives a decidedly political slant toher
analyses of Austen's novels by placing Austen in the context of eighteenth-century
political debates.

While not specifically focused on feminist issues, Alasdair Maclntyre's 1981
work, Afier Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. addresses three important points in Austen
criticism: the link between morality and spirituality in Austen’s fiction, contemporary
critics’ hesitation to consider spiritual matters, and the general lack of understanding of
the nature of virtue among twentieth-century readers. Maclntyre asserts that “we have—
very largely, if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of
morality. . . . What we possess. . . are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which
now lack those contexts from which their significance derived” (2). While Austen has
been viewed as a moral writer from the beginning, Maclntyre argues that her morality is
specifically Christian but that her value system unites “Christian and Aristotelian themes

in a determinate social context that makes Jane Austen the last great effective imaginative

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voice of the tradition of thought about, and practice of, the virtues which I have tried to
identify” (240). Chapter Two explores the ways in which Austen’s exploration of these
expressed virtues, which Maclntyre identifies as amiability, constancy, and self-
knowledge, differs from the prevailing religious voices of her day, whose tradition, also
according to Maclntyre, she “does not ever merely reproduce . . . [but] continuously
extends. . .” (241).

Mary Poovey's explicitly feminist work, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer
(1984), explores Austen’s extending of the tradition of virtues in an economic arena.
Poovey, like Sulloway, connects Austen with the work and philosophy of two of her near
contemporaries: Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Through both cultural and
literary analysis, Poovey explores numerous feminist issues but focuses specifically on
virtue, which came to be defined, for women, as sexual virginity. Poovey connects
Austen to Wollstonecraft and Shelley in ways which show her as much more militant
than many critics have suggested and argues that Austen deplores the economy of virtue
in which she lives and which shrinks female virtue to the value of virginity. As she
compares the three writers, Poovey concludes that Mary Wollstonecraft directly
confronts the inequalities perpetuated in the name of propriety, Mary Shelley struggles to
adapt to propriety, and Austen attempts to reform the ideas of propriety promulgated
throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Poovey is another of the feminist
critics who view Austen's narrative choice of marriage for her heroines as a caving in to
bourgeois pressure and propriety.

Considering other narrative strategies which feminist writers might employ,

Patricia Yaeger, in Honey-Mad Women: Emancipatorv Strategies in Women's Writing,

11

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develops another aspect of an argument begun by Rachel Blau DuPlessis in W_ritipg
Beyond the Enjdi_ng. Both critics assert that women writers use particular strategies for
coping with the restraints of their times. Yaeger discusses the fact that “women writers
have incorporated men's texts in their own and entered into dialogues with these texts that
these male writers have refused to initiate” and says that

the novel is a form women choose because its multivoicedness allows the

interruption and interrogation of the dominant culture. The novel's

polyvocality gives the writer an opportunity to interrupt the speech

practices, the ordinary patriarchal assumptions of everyday life. It is, first

and foremost, a genre that asks from its writers a commitment to

exploration and change. (30, 31)

The strategy which Yaeger describes, of talking to male texts through fiction, is apparent
in Austen’s work as she engages with eighteenth-century texts and asserts new territory
for the exercise of women's spirituality. The textual strategies identified by DuPlessis in
writing alternative endings and by Yaeger in the polyvocal discussion with other texts
serve as examples of subtle and overt subversive narrative acts of women writers and are
apparent in Austen’s fiction.

Since 1990, numerous summaries explain the development of contemporary
Austen feminist criticism. Feminist critics assert that Austen's concern for the welfare of
women is apparent, as are her attacks on marriage as an economic arrangement rather

than a loving, sacred commitment. They outline and attempt to categorize the variety of
feminist approaches in Austen scholarship.

One of many articles summarizing feminist criticism is an unusual article by Julia
Brown. In “Review Essay: The Feminist Depreciation of Austen,” Brown attacks

several major feminist literary critics, including Gilbert, Gubar, and Poovey, while

reviewing Claudia L. Johnson's 1988, J_ane Austen: Women, Politicngnd the Novel.

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Brown gives a quick critical history of twentieth-century (male) response to Austen,
including that of Trilling, Watt, and Maclntyre, who set Austen's work beside that of
Shakespeare and Flaubert. She then considers what feminist critics have done to Austen's
reputation by diminishing her art and focusing on her politics. “Seen through their
lenses, Austen is a traditional thinker who compares unfavorably to other, seemingly
more ambitious, women authors—not unlike the Jane Austen of the old school in fact:
that 'gentle chronicler of Regency order' who could not hold a candle to Walter Scott or
Dickens” (303). She argues that Poovey and others use too narrow a gauge to assess
Austen: “The feminist depreciation of Jane Austen hinges on the question of marriage”
(305). Brown attacks the feminist critics who view marriage, in and of itself, as merely
traditional and supportive of the political status quo. She applauds Claudia Johnson's
argument that “shows how in every novel Austen was deeply engaged in the same
political questions concerning the institution of marriage, family, primogeniture,
patriarchy, female conduct—all subjects, Johnson shows, which in the period following
the French Revolution were hotly debated and 'politicized'“ (308). Brown argues,
supporting Johnson, that Austen's work is not so shallow as some critics assume and that
criticism must rise above such narrow focus. She concludes:

A feminist literary criticism that is worthy of the name will not turn

women into a field or subspecialty but will offer the deepest challenge to

existing approaches. . . . It will see in Wollstonecraft, Austen, and George

Eliot a feminist tradition that looks at society as an integral, rather than

aggregate, whole, in which the interest of women does not compete

against other groups or other men but is seen as part of a contiguous

whole. (313)

Julie Shaffer takes up this argument in her 1992 essay, “Not Subordinate:

Empowering Women in the Marriage-Plot—The Novels of Frances Burney, Maria

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Edgeworth, and Jane Austen.” She acknowledges the genre of marriage-plot novels from
this period but argues:

Each novel incorporates the lover-mentor convention and challenges it

dialogically in ways that demonstrate the limitations of males' access to

truth and morality; each novel thereby questions males' right to power and

domination over women and begins both to argue that women should be

granted power in some realms and to suggest what those realms might be.

And by suggesting that any realm might rightfully be women's, these

novels force an interrogation of the naturalness of that ideology which

leaves men in positions of any kind of power over women. (53)

Shaffer includes Pride and Prejudice in this discussion and says that Austen shows that
men are no more capable of understanding reality than are women and that women's
power should likewise go beyond the domestic sphere and include social and political
venues as well. I would like to add the spiritual venue to this discourse arena.

In a brief but important essay, Christine Marshall summarizes the major feminist
critiques of Austen. Her 1992 “'Dull Elves' and Feminists: A Summary of Feminist
Criticism of Jane Austen” argues that Claudia Johnson “finds that central to Austen's
point is that women are capable of reason and thereby responsible for their choices.
While unapologetic heroines such as Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennet defy every
'dicturn about female propriety and deference' (xxiii), their rationality and responsibility
for their mistakes is the truly radical concept” (43). Whether readers agree with
Johnson's position or not, or believe that Austen is “truly radical” or not, Marshall argues
that feminist criticism has been the richest and most significant strand of Austen
scholarship to date, opening new discourse arenas for the discussion of Austen’s fiction.

Devoney Looser takes these debates in hand in “Jane Austen, Feminist Literary

Criticism, and a Fourth “R”: Reassessment.” She acknowledges the first waves of

feminist research on Austen but asserts that, from the 19903 on, critics must grapple with

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the appropriateness of feminist theory which has been brought to bear on Austen's novels.
Looser believes that critics must examine all of these areas of uneasiness with Austen as
a feminist writer and continue to explore and reassess their work and Austen's. She says,

Furthermore, whether or not Austen's feminism seems “proper”—seems
worth celebrating or worth taking to task—depends very much on where
one is standing when viewing Austen's world. As Said puts it,
“interpreting Jane Austen depends on who does the interpreting, when it is
done, and no less important, from where it is done” (161). From where I
stand, it appears that there remains important work to be done on Austen
and gay studies, on Austen and masculinities, on Austen and the
performance of everyday life, and on Austen and colonialisms or
Orientalisms. Finally, I think retrospective work on Austen's fluctuating
authorial reputation during the last two centuries would be of value as we
travel with her and her texts into the twenty-first century. I would
consider each of the above endeavors to be potentially feminist ones.
(133)

What Looser calls for in this article and in her next book on Austen is a reconsideration
of feminist work on Austen with an eye toward the incongruities and discomforts which
feminists find in Austen's novels or in our readings of them. By exploring the nature of
Austen’s spirituality, this dissertation takes up Looser’s call.
Anne Crippen Ruderrnan addresses a bit of this new work in her 1995 Ih_e
Pleasures of Virtue: Political Thought in the Novels of Jane Austen. She begins,
The titles of Jane Austen's novels are one obvious sign of the moral
context of her writing. Although some of the problems they raise (say, the
relation between “sense” and “sensibility”) have been much-analyzed, not
enough attention has been paid to the way in which the novels generally
display her thought (such a word seems justified) about the most
fundamental moral issues, especially the connection between virtue and
happiness. (1)
After this lead, Ruderrnan explores Austen's moral philosophy concerning human

happiness and how virtue might be related to that. While recognizing the connections to

Kantian philosophy, she generally rejects Kant's theory that virtue's rewards may not

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include earthly happiness as a guiding principle in Austen's novels. Rather, like
Maclntyre, Ruderrnan connects Austen to Aristotle. What Looser calls for and what
Ruderrnan accomplishes is an attempt in Austen criticism to remove the dichotomy of
self against society, liberal against conservative, to accommodate the complexity of
Austen's novels in an argument for moderation.

Looser continues her work with an article which introduces a collection of essays,
Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism (1995), and follows her own advice. She does
not ignore the points in Austen's life and work which are less than comfortable for some
feminist critics. She identifies and outlines the variety of Austen feminist criticism as it
exists and as it might develop in future scholarship (beginning work on that history she
called for) and includes an excellent, current bibliography of feminist criticism on
Austen.

Looser, in attempting to draw the strands of scholarship together, identifies
different approaches in feminist criticism, their chief proponents, and their flaws. Of five
particular theoretical approaches, she generally refutes the first two, developed in the
early 1970S. The first establishes Austen as a feminist simply because she is a woman
and a writer. Few critics, especially not Looser, continue to argue that simple biology
makes a writer a feminist. The second theory operates on a broader semantic level and
asserts that referring to any writer before the mid-nineteenth century as “feminist” is
anachronistic. The word as currently used and defined, of course, did not enter into
standard usage in any modern sense until the late nineteenth century; proponents of this
theory, then, believe that none of the writers working before the late nineteenth century

can correctly be referred to as feminist. These two theories, according to Looser, are

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valuable in so far as they go, but both are extremely limited and limiting. Little support
is given to these two positions today.

The remaining theories which assert Austen's feminism, according to Looser, are
more complex. The third stems from the work of Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar and Mary
Poovey. Looser says, “In this version of Austen's gender politics, she is seen as enacting
a 'sneaky feminism,’ using traditional romance plots to soften her ironic and perhaps more
radical feminist messages” (5). Looser argues that while these theories are compelling,
they tend to ignore or limit the historical context from which Austen emerges. The
fourth, slightly more radical theory, less fully developed by mainstream contemporary
feminist critics, calls Austen “an unrealized feminist” because of her partiality to
heterosexual marriage and her generally conservative, Tory nature. The fifth and most
recent of the theories categorized by Looser includes the work of Kirkham, Sulloway and
Johnson. These critics, according to Looser, seem more sensitive to Austen's historical
base, and their studies focus on Austen's primary characters. They assert that any author
who can create such exemplary women “must be promoting a feminist cause” (6).
Looser concludes:

Rather than continuing to struggle over whether Austen 'was' or 'was not'

a feminist, our time might be better spent describing more intricately the

workings of gender politics in her novels— without a primary troubling

over what to label her. . . .

From where I stand, it appears that future discussions of Austen's

relation to feminist politics (or of the discourses of feminism emergent in

her culture more generally) will allow us to consider her texts in tandem

with discourses of other identities and practices at issue in her own time

—as well as in our own. (9)

Looser's request and direction give impetus to my research. While Looser does not

elaborate here on other possible approaches to Austen's work, she determines that Austen

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feminist scholarship must branch into new areas, and the spiritual nature of Austen’s
work is one of these unexplored arenas.

Looser follows up this article with her 1996 “Jane Austen 'Responds' to the Men's
Movement” in which she begins the task she has identified. Here she considers
masculinist theories and looks at Austen's male characters. “Readers and critics have
measured Austen's heroines for their negotiation of traditional female roles or for their
degrees of ‘feminism.’ I would like to evaluate Austen's heroes in light of new theories
of masculinity” (159). Obviously, Looser wants to develop these new directions in
Austen criticism, addressing some of the contemporary inconsistencies in readings of
Austen.

It is just such a branching out which I propose in this dissertation by considering
the connections between Austen's feminism and spirituality. The discourse of
Christianity, particularly eighteenth-century Christianity, cannot be ignored in any
criticism of Austen's work. While some critics use Austen's Christianity as a sign of her
conservative nature, I assert that her particular spirituality gives its impulse to her
feminism. For Austen, it seems that one cannot exist without the other. In this
dissertation, I posit that there is a spiritual quality to Austen’s fiction which has been
overlooked or ignored in the research to date. As the overview of Austen criticism has
shown, while critics explore and explain complex attributes of Austen’s fiction and her
assumed politics, no one writes specifically of the spiritual nature of her work. I wish to
explore the apparent working out of Austen's beliefs in her novels, which seems to place
her between the more radical feminists, particularly Mary Wollstonecraft (as Sulloway

and Poovey argue) and the overtly declared Christian women writers of her time (Hannah

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More and Fanny Burney, for example). For more than walking a middle line, Austen
establishes common territory with both groups and, in her fiction, quietly defines her own
space — that of the Christian Feminist — and then places her characters squarely into
this space and allows them to act.
The Value of Narrative in Women's Spiritual Development

Drawing upon the research of feminist theologians gives insight into issues of
spirituality fiom which literary critics have generally kept their distance. Carol P. Christ,
a literary critic and pioneer in feminist theology writes:

Women's stories have not been told. And without stories there is no

articulation of experience. Without stories a woman is lost when she

comes to make the important decisions of her life. She does not learn to

value her struggles, to celebrate her strengths, to comprehend her pain.

Without stories she cannot understand herself. Without stories she is

alienated from those deeper experiences of self and world that have been

called spiritual or religious. She is closed in silence. The expression of

women's spiritual quest is integrally related to the telling of women's

stories. If women's stories are not told, the depth of women's souls will

not be known. (I)
This is the opening passage of Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual
Quest, named for Adrienne Rich's “Diving into the Wreck,” and Margaret Atwood's
Surfacing. Christ explores the dimensions of contemporary women's spiritual and social
quests for meaning and asserts that the two are inseparable. “Women's social quest
concerns women's struggle to gain respect, equality, and freedom in society—in work, in
politics, and in relationships with women, men, and children. . . . Women's spiritual quest
concerns a woman's awakening to the depths of her soul and her position in the universe”
(8). Christ argues that the dualistic nature of western culture has enforced the separation

of the social and spiritual elements of a woman's life in the same way that it has enforced

the idea of the separation of body and mind. A woman's social quest involves these

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struggles for position and equality to which Christ refers in this sentence but also
generally includes political, legal or governmental issues. Contemporary social.
feminists, who support equal pay for equal work and have civil and social equality as
their primary goals, immediately recognize the nature of the social quest.

Once Christ has established the parameters of a woman’s social quest, she
outlines more specific qualities of a spiritual quest. She states that there has been little
acknowledgment in theological, philosophical or literary circles that women have indeed
had spiritual quests. Before Christ's writing, very little scholarly work had examined the
unique nature of women's spiritual quest; most theological ideologies, at least in terms of
Western and Christian theology, were expressions of male experience. Indeed, most
western philosophy has concerned itself with the nature of masculine thought and, in
theology, with the masculine connection to the divine. As Christ states here, a woman's
awakening to the depths of her own being is the hallmark of a spiritual quest. Women's
spiritual quest involves recognizing the nothingness of one's place in the world,
awakening to one's potential, gaining insight into the power of the individual, and
arriving at a new naming of one's self and the world. While this process may be linear,
notes Christ, more often it is recursive in women's lives. Each awakening may lead to a
clearer understanding of the nothingness in which one has been living; one must
recognize where one is or where one has been in order to move forward. In
contemporary American culture, this nothingness may be apparent in young girls
receiving less attention for their academic achievements or in families where daughters
are not supported through college although their brothers are. Despite the low valuation

of her place, a woman's spiritual quest culminates in self-actualization, just as Maslow's

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Hierarchy of Needs outlines, but, Christ argues, her actualization must include a new
orientation to the world wherein a woman's place becomes her own and not one
prescribed by tradition or personal constraint.

Christ says that because the social and spiritual quests are inseparable, the search
for female fulfillment de facto includes the search for spiritual fulfillment. She explores
woman's spiritual quest as seen in literary representation and uses the research of literary
critics, rhetoricians and theologians to outline some of the early stages in the
development of feminist theology, particularly the Judeo-Christian branch. She then
draws these strands together in a rhetorical reading of five contemporary feminist texts by
Kate Chopin, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich and Ntozake Shange,
exploring the spiritual dimensions of the struggles therein.

Christ's principal task in this book is the rhetorical analysis of literary texts using
a spiritual yardstick. She turns a literary critic's eye upon texts as she re-evaluates
spiritual qualities and goals as expressed in contemporary literary works: stories that
women tell of their own lives. She says, “Women writers who name the gap between
men's stories about women and women's own perceptions of self and world are engaged
in creating a new literary tradition” (7). She carries this tradition beyond feminist literary
critique into the spiritual realm. Through her readings of these works, Christ generates a
vision of women's culture and in it a spiritual wholeness at the end of the quest. As her
opening paragraph states, without the telling and interpreting of women's stories,
individual women cannot make sense of their lives or weave their private experiences

into the cultural fabric of telling and meaning-making.

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In the manner that Christ has presented, Austen retells women's stories and asserts
a feminism that relates directly to women’s spirituality. This dissertation, a literary
examination of four novels by Jane Austen, uses critical, historical and theological
material to produce a close reading of four of Austen's novels. Historical research and
feminist criticism are drawn upon to support this examination and lead to the following
assertions: l) Austen is a feminist writer; 2) her feminism leads to women’s inclusion in
the discourse of spirituality; 3) she creates new stories through her narratives which
serve as models for women's spiritual development, and 4) the fields of feminist theology
and feminist literary criticism contribute to such an understanding of her work.

The dimensions of contemporary feminist theology illuminate Austen's concern
for the spiritual fulfillment of her women characters. As Christ claims, women's spiritual
and social quests are inseparable, and literary works serve as valuable resources in
developing understandings of both types of quests and their interconnections. Certainly
Austen criticism explores the socio-economic questing of her heroines. If Christ is
correct, then the spiritual questing of Austen's female characters is equally important and
inextricably linked to these social quests. To explore these quests, I will examine
established eighteenth-century standards of behavior for Christian women. Austen
transforms these eighteenth-century 'plots,' particularly those establishing the boundaries
of behavior for Christian women, and gives women new stories and new territories on
which to build their own fulfillment. As Christ's statement about women's spiritual
isolation argues: “Without stories [woman] is alienated from those deeper experiences of
self and world that have been called spiritual or religious. She is closed in silence” (I ).

Austen breaks this silence and takes her characters into spiritual realms from which

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women had been prohibited. While historical scholarship on Austen often asserts that she

is a moral writer, few critics consider that spiritual elements are equally part of her

characters' quests.4

Austen knows the work of the conduct books and similar religious documents,
and she rewrites the myths of Christian womanhood, creating examples, outside of those
discussed in the conduct books, of potential lives and new understandings of traditional
virtues for Christian women. The old myths and narratives were informed and enforced
by conduct books and clergy. It is my belief that Austen’s feminism and her own ideas
about spirituality are mutually supporting. Her stories, her reshaping and reinterpreting
of traditional marriage plots, serve as new models for Christian women's lives. Few
contemporary scholars argue against Austen's feminist tendencies, although the depth of
her feminism is sometimes challenged. As mentioned earlier, some contemporary
feminist critics object to Austen's use of marriage as the ultimate achievement for
Austen's women and see this as a relinquishing to a patriarchal system, on the writer’s
part, of a more affirrned selflrood of her heroines. However, heterosexual marriage in
itself is not the primary goal for Austen or her characters, and, I argue, Austen's feminism
should not be defined by so narrow a measure as use of the comedic plot device,
marriage. Austen's heroines do not seek marriage at any cost, to any one; they seek an
equitable partnership in which both parties attain spiritual, social and economic
fulfillment. Through this achievement, the partners are then able to turn their attentions
outward to fulfill their roles in the larger community. Finally, historical and
contemporary feminist literary criticism, along with research from feminist theology,

serves to enhance an exploration of these elements at work in Austen's novels.

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The Dual-Natured Quest —-Story and Fiction

Story, in feminist theology as articulated by Carol Christ, serves as a means of
transmitting information from woman to woman, generation to generation. Story
becomes a method for acknowledging the potential of a woman's spiritual life and serves
as a safe rehearsal for potential life patterns. As Christ notes, stog refers “to all
articulations of experience that have a narrative element, including fiction, poetry, song,
autobiography, biography, and talking with friends” (1).

In Christ’s definition, the use of story articulates for other women the nature and
challenges of spiritual and social quest. Christ emphasizes that the movement toward
wholeness in women's lives, made apparent through narrative, allows women to help
each other.

The drive to integrate the spiritual and the social quests also arises out of

the impulse toward wholeness in women's quest. Dualistic thinking

encourages a separation of the spiritual from the social, but whole thinking

looks forward to the realization of spiritual insight in social reality. . . .

Women's spiritual experience leads to a new sense of their own power of

being. . . . In a supportive community, women will be eager to point out

the false naming of power and value within patriarchy and to begin to

name self, power, and value anew based on their experiences. They will

be eager to create new ways of being in a new social world. (130-131)

In testing out their new lives, women come to know personal power as they redraw the
boundaries of their lives. They recognize that their struggles for place in society mirror
their struggles for spiritual understanding of self. Revealing the “false naming of power
and value” is a first step in delineating the bases of real power and value. Austen's
characters live out these struggles as they combat cultural limitation on action, on

personal freedom and on the right to assert their own places. As Christ explains, the

social quests for security, position and power carry these fictional women into spiritual

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territory. To achieve true security and power, a woman must also recognize, name and
criticize the elements of her life which have prevented her growth. This tripartite task
becomes a lifelong adventure toward more wholeness of spirit. While the process itself is
recursive and continuous, Austen's heroines move toward this wholeness of spirit and
through it defeat the historic dualisms of patriarchal philosophy which have constrained
women's lives.

What specific questions does a woman's spiritual quest address? While other
theologians may use different definitions or terms to describe spiritual searching, Christ
describes a woman’s spiritual quest as

a woman's awakening to the depths of her soul and her position in the

universe. A woman's spiritual quest includes moments of solitary

contemplation, but it is strengthened by being shared. It involves asking

basic questions: Who am 1? Why am I here? What is my place in the

universe? In answering these questions, a woman must listen to her own

voice and come to terms with her own experience. She must break long-

standing habits of seeking approval, of trying to please parents, lovers,

husbands, friends, children, but never herself. In probing her experience

and asking basic questions, a woman may begin to wonder whether she

has ever chosen anything she has done. (8-9)

A woman's spiritual quest might take many forms, as Christ hints here. Generally,
though, there are identifiable elements in a spiritual quest, according to Christ: seeking
moments of solitude to contemplate one's position or one's choices, recognizing and
drawing power from the natural world, learning to express one's thoughts and feelings at
moments of deepest self-awareness, viewing one's emotionalin or personal involvement
as positive and life-affirming and refuting the philosophical elevation of personal
detachment, and knowing that power comes from understanding one's rootedness in

nature and history. Each of these actions or insights leads a woman to a deeper

understanding of her place in the world, of her own spiritual value.

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Christ's call to recognize woman's spiritual quest and to name it as such is one of
the primary goals of feminist theology. Theologians delve into historical/biblical stories
of women and reinterpret and re-present women's stories to reveal their sacred
dimensions. This sacred dimension is not limited to biblical stories or religious and
philosophical treatises, according to Christ. She argues that all narrative might function
as a means of revealing this sacred element in women's lives. Alternative narratives
allow women to tell and evaluate the stories of their own lives, to use story to measure a
woman's spiritual fulfillment.

Like Christ, Austen, through her fiction, also steps forward, tells and names.
Writing two hundred years ago and on the cusp of two centuries, Austen is an early
example of a writer reaching for woman's spiritual fulfillment. She reacts against her
own time and its shallow or missing stories of women and begins to tell her own. She
writes stories of strong young women against the existing stories written about and for
women by men. Austen writes against the theology of her day by presenting a new
vision of womanhood; she is a feminist who, while obviously participating in the
western cultural tradition of Christianity, rewrites the behavior book for young women.
In the conduct books designed for women's edification, men explain the lives which good
Christian women are supposed to live, and those lives are generally short on thought and
empty of action. They quite literally instruct women to forego too much thinking about
religion; women should rely on fathers or husbands to sort through the difficult ideas for
them. Austen subverts this counsel by showing the spiritual awakenings of her characters
and the active role they take in guiding their own lives, in living their own virtues.

Austen's women characters refute the womanhood glorified in the conduct books and,

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among other positive actions to be examined, they venture into this solitary
contemplation. They struggle with the questions of personal meaning in life. Christ
explains, “Women have lived in the interstices between their own vaguely understood
experience and the shapings given to experience by the stories of men” (5). Austen steps
into this interstitial space and fills it with stories of women's experience from a woman's
perspective, giving them depth, giving them sacred dimension.

Revising Stories, Revising Theology

Feminist critics struggling with how to categorize Austen's work are sometimes
creating a false dichotomy of feminist, non-feminist. Theologians6 have a similar
struggle between feminists wanting to revise Christian theology and feminists wanting to
revolt and leave it behind. Austen, living in the thoroughly and overtly Christian West,
never ventures outside of the confines of eighteenth-century Christianity; it would be
foolish to call her a revolutionary. She is radical, however, in that she reinterprets texts
and presents new views of Christian womanhood through her stories. She remains
conservative in that she does not deny roots in Christian theology.

Austen's novels can be seen as her own articulation of Paul Tillich's definition of
religion: “the expression of humanity's ultimate concern - the articulation of longings for
a center of meaning and value, for connection with the power of being” (quoted in
Womflpifit. 2). Austen explores various stories of women's experience and leaves the
reader with models for achieving the spiritual and secular fulfillment of feminine
adulthood. Austen's novels, as the following chapter explores, also suggest the inherent
sexism in the spirituality of the conduct books; she gives voice to the fact that the

expected passive nature of a woman's spirituality precludes true fulfillment.

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Contemporary feminist theology can add fertile ground to feminist literary criticism
concerning women's spiritual growth and awareness as these are expressed in literary
works, even in work as early as Austen's.

Clearly Austen quietly criticizes the Christian traditions of her day just as she
quietly criticizes the economic plight of eighteenth-century women. She self-consciously
examines women's experiences and, most importantly, shapes those experiences to serve
as models for women's spiritual growth. The conduct books of that period tend to
represent masculine expressions of theology, and Austen reinterprets their texts to
produce a feminine expression of her theology: a feminist view of women's spiritual
quest through a redefinition of eighteenth-century Christian feminine virtues. I hope to
show that Austen creates new models of women's spirituality by reinterpreting stories of
women's spiritual achievement and offering her readers new paradigms for their own
lives in which feminine power subverts the patriarchy of traditional Christianity.

This revisionist line of feminist theology -— the reinterpreting and retelling of
women's stories. biblical or not — is especially important in an examination of Austen's
novels. While the patriarchal received stories against which Austen writes are not rightly
horror stories, she does call into question the clear domination of women: women
assigned to passive lives and with only passive virtues assigned to them. Austen attempts
to do in 1800 what feminist theologians are attempting to do nearly two hundred years
later.

The Dilemmas of Paradigm and Religious Expression
Another issue apparent in feminist theological studies concerns the concentric

circles of sexism within ideologies, religions, and secular social structures which

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reinforce each other. Feminist theologians and feminist literary critics often argue, as
Christ expresses in her introduction, that the position of ethical neutrality and detachment
so consistently adopted in academic and theological research, in the eighteenth or
twentieth centuries, is a disguise for maintaining the status quo by supporting ruling class
ideology.

Some of this detachment can be seen in interpretations of texts, scriptural and
literary, which reinforce the political status quo. When religious metaphors become
concrete prescriptions for women's behavior, as they did in the eighteenth century, the
concrete prescriptions tend to be conservative in nature. The eighteenth century conduct
books might be a working-out of biblical metaphors concerning Christian women's
behavior. For example, because one Genesis story tells of Eve being created from
Adam’s rib, women, over time, have come to be seen as lesser creatures in spiritual terms
and as helpers to men, not full human beings who might experience their own spiritual
quests. In New Testament terms, husbands are declared heads of the home and thus
become perceived as thinkers. Wives are seen as the heart of the home and therefore are
oppositely perceived as emotional and irrational creatures. Over time, these metaphors
came to be seen as concrete and became literal measures for women's spiritual behavior.

In a shifting spiritual paradigm, narrative can serve as a means for overcoming
the spiritual dualities against which women have always strained. The goal of feminist
theologians is to transform patriarchal culture, going into its roots in Judeo-Christian
theology, and including in this paradigm shift a place for women's voices, women's
experiences, and women's expression in theological affairs. This, too, is Jane Austen's

goal: to give voice to women's untold stories, untold experiences, allowing for a re-

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creation of woman's role in spiritual, and in Austen's case, particularly Christian, terms.
Some readers flinch at what they view as the oxymoronic nature of the phrase “Christian
Feminist.” Austen's eighteenth-century audience would have found it an indecipherable
label linking philosophies clearly seen as mutually exclusive, the first conservative and
the second radical. The twentieth-century explosion of feminist theological research
shows that it has taken two hundred years for feminist theology to achieve some measure
of respectability and legitimacy, but conservative branches of theology still decry
feminist research in Christian theology as inappropriate. While Austen never uttered
such a phrase as “Christian Feminism,” she connects these concepts in all of her novels.
This dissertation argues that Austen’s novels enact this connection.

Recognizing Austen as a feminist with a spiritual bent accommodates several of
the complex impulses found in her work. As the literature review has shown, various
strands of Austen scholarship over the decades have focused on one aspect or another of
the writer or the work but have failed to reach a satisfactory peace with their existing
contradictions. Any literary theory fails which does not consider each of Austen's
primary roles: those of writer, woman, feminist and Christian. One of the goals of this
work is to reconcile these four roles, to define Austen's feminism in terms of her
spirituality. 1 hope to show how Austen's philosophies concerning the ideal woman differ
from the standard and traditional Christian descriptions of the late eighteenth century and
are more closely connected to the spiritual questing described in the feminist work of this
and that century. Her heroines represent an active spirituality, opposing the passive

Christianity which bound them.

30

In outlining Jane Austen's concern for women’s spiritual lives, I offer a feminist
reading of her texts with a focus on how her literary choices exemplify her spiritual
ideals. Her spiritual ideals establish a pattern of behavior for young women that offers
new and greater possibilities for expanding the range, the depth, and the value of their
experience in both spiritual and secular terms. As Christ asserts in Diving Deem
Surfacing, these two dimensions are artificially distinct in western culture. Specifically,
then, Austen transforms the religious prescriptions of her day, especially the prescriptions
found in the conduct books and in the pattems of behavior expected in women. Austen
rewrites these into stories of women's lives in feminist terms, in which her heroines step
beyond the spiritual and secular boundaries established for them by male writers and
patriarchal cultural constraints to find spiritual and social firlfillment.

Organization of this Work

The question arises: what does it mean to discuss women's experience? Is there a
feminine experience which differs from the masculine? Women's lives are told in a
variety of ways; they are told in narrative, spiritual, mythical, psychological, and
physical terms. Woman's experience is told through matrimony, through maternity,
through exploration of gender, sexuality, and through culturally-bound definitions of
appropriate behavior.

Beginning this work with an overview of feminist literary criticism and twentieth-
century feminist theology, I lay the groundwork for a discussion of Austen's fiction along
with specifically religious writings of the eighteenth century. Contemporary feminist
theology offers a language for describing Austen's task, in the same manner that

discussion of contemporary feminist literary research offers a method for re-investigating

31

historical and contemporary texts in new light. Austen shares a reality with her readers.
particularly a feminist spiritual reality, which male writers of her day did not share. She
offers an alternate story for young women who are living their own bildungsroman, their
own spiritual quests. The religious writings of the eighteenth century with their
prescribed outlines of women's stories contrast with Austen's work, which shows the
potential reality which young women might choose and live. These historical and critical
materials serve as the framework for discussing four of Austen's novels and contribute to
an understanding of the spiritual basis of the feminist reality she presents as she rewrites
the possible stories of women's lives.

In an effort to understand the influences on Austen and other female readers, I
examine three of the traditional conduct books written by men during this period. They
are Rev. John Bennett’s Strictures on Female Education (1795), Thomas Gisbome’s All
Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex (1797), and Dr. John Gregory’s A Father's
Lagacv to His Daughters (1774). Although Gregory's work was originally published
much earlier than the other two texts, its continuing popularity through the 1830's
warrants its inclusion. Next, I compare and contrast their messages with the conduct
books written by three women. The first two women to be considered, Hannah More and
Elizabeth Hamilton, wrote conduct books of their own. Readers of eighteenth-century
literature are familiar with More's Strictures on the Modern System of Female Educgion
which appeared in 1799. Elizabeth Hamilton, slightly lesser known today, was a
contemporary of Austen's and belongs rightfully with the other didactic women writers of
her day. Her Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education, first published in 1802,

went through seven editions by 1824. Both More and Hamilton had wide audiences,

32

including Austen who specifically acknowledges their work Was, 24 & 30 January
1809, 31 May 1811; 6-7 November 1813).

The third woman under consideration here is outside of these professed religious
circles and is overtly political. Mary Wollstonecraft, once condemned by More and
Walpole as a “hyena in petticoats,” professes ideas similar in fundamental content to both
More and Hamilton but with a very different motivation. Her ideas serve as counterpoint
as I attempt to set the boundaries of the discussion before placing Austen and her work
into this historical debate conceming moral behavior and the framework of women's
spiritual experience. Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Womg (1792),
connected to the feminist tradition established by Mary Astell and Catherine Macaulay,
is, of course, a benchmark in the rhetoric of women's moral and educational history.
Connections among Wollstonecraft and the other conduct book writers are overt. While
outlining her own conduct guide for both sexes, Wollstonecraft critiques the work of
Gregory, for example, and argues “affectionately” showing that their philosophies as they
relate to women's education are not so dissimilar. “Such paternal solicitude pervades Dr.
Gregory's Legacy to his Daughters, that I enter on the task of criticism with affectional
respect. . .” (96). Vindication, however, makes a fundamental break with such didactic
writers by asserting a sweeping feminist approach not only to women's education but to
the very basis of gender differences in the moral arena. This concern places Vindication
at the center of the any discussion concerning women's secular or spiritual achievements.

Even before the time of Wollstonecraft's work, the Cambridge Latitudinarians had
proposed that the Calvinists were mistaken in defining morality as obedience to God and

had asserted that to be considered “moral” one must consider rationally the alternatives of

33

a decision and behave accordingly. This Kantian definition holds particular significance
for my discussion. While the conduct books written by men tend to enforce the older
Church doctrine concerning women's behavior with its heavy emphasis on obedience,
More and Hamilton tend to redirect attention from those assigned passive virtues, such as
obedience and modesty, to a more active definition of virtuous behavior. These active
virtues, however, are not public ones but are most often worked out in the highly private
and highly traditional roles of wife and mother. Wollstonecraft and then Austen ask in
what ways a woman can be considered a moral being if she has so narrow an
environment of decision-making in which to operate. This questioning becomes apparent
as both Wollstonecraft and Austen explore a character's limitation in physical space and
move into the larger arena of metaphorical boundaries on morality and spiritual self-
determination.

A series of questions arise from this dilemma and demand address. What virtues
might a Christian woman exhibit? What do these writers outline as appropriate behavior
for Christian women? In what arenas is it possible for a woman to be virtuous? What
values are espoused, and what forms do they take? Do these values relate to social and
economic class? How might education affect this virtuous state? How might Austen use
her fiction to teach values, and are these values feminist ones? Can we legitimately place
her in the company of either the didactic writers or the more radical feminists? For what
do Austen’s heroines quest?

In each of the novels under discussion here (Sense and Sensibility. Mansfield
P_arl_<, Em and Persuasion), Austen’s heroines perform within the boundaries

established by their worlds. But they do not all conform to the standard definition of a

34

Christian woman’s behavior: they are more than obedient ciphers. They weigh
information and consequences, make decisions, and take appropriate action. In moving
her women to specific action, Austen makes her most important stand for the position of
women in the eighteenth century. While she does not openly dispute that gendered
virtues exist in the way that Wollstonecraft does, Austen establishes relationships within
her fictional world where virtuous men and virtuous women support and respect each
other and share a clearly established set of virtues. She removes woman from the static
positions of obedient daughter and wife and gives her, sometimes, the power of self-
determination, in secular and spiritual terms. A virtuous and religious woman, then, is
not far removed in behavior or demeanor from a virtuous and religious man, and in this
lies Austen's primary connection to Wollstonecraft and more radical feminists who
attempt to eliminate the passive virtues ascribed to women. For both Wollstonecraft and
Austen the idea of gendered virtue becomes moot.

The traditional forms of expressed Christian values, such as those presented in the
conduct books, support patriarchy and gender-specific virtue with Pauline intensity,
teaching young women to be meek, obedient, and easily and agreeably led by fathers and
then husbands. Simply reading the table of contents of a variety of conduct books
enforces this idea. Young women should be amiable, silent and demure, chaste, obedient
and accepting of direction, modest, generous, self-sacrificing, busy, open and artless,
with a strong sense of duty. Perhaps Austen would not argue with this list of virtues. She
would, however, redefine these virtues, expand the list, and argue with the form these
virtues might take in a young woman's life, just as contemporary feminist theologians

argue for women’s inclusion in all levels of spiritual life. Austen avoids the trappings of

35

established religion. Austen's portrayal of the complexity of women’s lives clearly
departs from the simplistic morality of obedience often preached by the men who wrote
the conduct books. Her work places her in the highly charged and, at least for Austen,
highly undesirable political arena of the women writers and aligns her with the
Wollstonecraft of Vindication. Whatever the present century's hesitation for making
moral judgments, a complete evaluation of Austen's work must recognize her premises of
moral and spiritual rightness and identify her as a Christian and a feminist. Alistair
Duckworth comments on the tenor of Austen feminist criticism by “wondering to what
category of feminism Austen is being assigned” (Review, 85). I argue that her feminism
is a spiritual feminism, focused on women's spiritual fulfillment, linked with the
practiced Christianity of her day, but stepping beyond its boundaries to recreate
spirituality in liberating terms.

After considering the primary historical documents showing these links, I will
introduce Austen's work and show how her fiction differs in subtle yet fundamental ways
from the conservative authors of the 17903. The close readings of the four novels will
show to what extent they exhibit the dimensions of a spiritual quest and how each
narrative works as an alternate story given to women. My work considers the
relationship between Austen and the more didactic women and supports the view of
Poovey, Sulloway and others who align Austen more closely politically with the radical
writers of the time. I would like to explore these connections in more directly spiritual
terms, as Austen develops toward that ideal of spiritually-based feminism.

Austen's body of fiction might be viewed as a collective feminist theological

'bildungsroman' for the nineteenth-century female. In her stories, she recreates from the

36

Christian traditions a new behavior for women, a positive, moral and Christian adventure
toward wholeness that moves beyond the gender boundaries established by the Church of
her day. These boundaries are apparent in the conduct books written by both men and
women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as prescriptive guides on how to be
Christian young women. “Although it can be distinguished from roles or attitudes
prescribed for women by men and male culture, women's experience is always shaped to
a greater or lesser extent by the maleocentered cultures in which women live”

(Wom_apspirit, 7-8). Austen shows how the male-centered culture affects women’s lives

 

and steps outside of the attitudes presented in the conduct books with their focus on
outward and often trivial behaviors. Their focus is not on a deeper spiritual
understanding or even on a more extensive understanding of Christian theology as
practiced. Women were typically barred from participation in any real study of
Christianity but were expected to meet the standards of behavior established by the
patriarchal theology. In this theology, as is so often the case, readers see the stifling
social and spiritual effects of a patriarchy.

An investigation of Austen's feminism and her spiritual basis for it begins to
reconcile the disparate pieces of Austen's work. It moves beyond the standard
assumption of critics that Austen is a writer of morals and aligns her morality specifically
with the Christian faith she professed. It also shows that Austen’s concern with morals
and her allegiance to the faith was not merely a performance or matter of social norms,
but a context for spiritual questing. While the debate about Austen's tendency for High
Church or Low Church remains unresolved, this dissertation grounds her philosophies in

the Christian rhetoric of her day, but questions arise. What is Austen's ideal woman?

37

How does she differ from the late eighteenth-century ideal Christian woman as defined
by the conduct books of the day? The first step in my analysis is to say that a woman on
a spiritual quest must be a moral woman. This morality goes beyond the common
definition implying “good.” Moral, again as defined by the philosophies of the time,
connotes the ability to rationally consider options for behavior and then to act
accordingly. While this statement seems self-evident, embedded in it is the discussion of
whether or not women could be considered moral. Their abilities to consider, decide and
then act were severely limited by the rules of propriety. Can a woman so limited be
considered moral? Second, Austen shows that a spiritual woman would live by Christian
ideals. The conduct books make the traditional ideals apparent; for women, they are the
passive virtues growing out of New Testament traditions with an overlay of western
patriarchy. In her fiction, however, Austen often refers to the positive traits of duty, self-
control, sacrifice, affection, generosity, amiability, propriety, and constancy as all within
the purview of male and female achievement. She often contrasts these with negative
traits of reserve, artfulness, selfishness, deceit, inconstancy and greed. There are,
however, major differences between Austen's characterization and those described in the
conduct books, both in definition and resulting behavior; Austen rewrites their meaning.
The third point in this examination of spiritual quest involves the extent of Austen's
feminist leaning. As a writer, Austen is aware of the conditions controlling women's
fates and is concerned about them. She looks for ways to move her characters beyond
these controls to allow them a greater territory of operation, a larger moral playing field,
and more personal independence for establishing their own priorities in life and in their

behavior towards other people. Austen's Christianity, then, logically informs her

38

feminism. It gives a basis for defining her feminism which has not yet been settled
despite the multitude of feminist criticism of Austen's work since 1970.

While Austen is clearly a product of the eighteenth century and far removed from
the potential of any postrnodem understandings of texts, meaning, reality or the slippery
nature of language itself, she is equally clearly masterful at manipulating the language
and meanings at her disposal for espousing new stories and new interpretations of
Christian stories as she writes her own collection of new stories for Christian feminist
women. For example, how neatly that opening paragraph from Carol Christ echoes
Austen's statement by Anne Elliot in Persuasion. Captain Harville enters into a
discussion with Anne concerning woman's constancy. They debate:

'. . . as I was saying, we shall never agree I suppose upon this point. No

man and woman would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are

against you, all stories, prose and verse. . . . I do not think I ever opened a

book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's

inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But

perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.’

'Perhaps I shall.——Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in

books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story.

Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in

their hands. I will not allow books to prove any thing.‘ (234)

Using Christ’s heuristic of a spiritual quest, 1 will examine Austen’s novels, as she, pen in

hand, writes a wider range of women's experiences and fits these experiences into a

feminist and active spirituality.

39

Notes

1See both B. C. Southam's Jane Austen: The Critical Heritaga, Vols I and II,
Writers and Their Work: Jane Austen, and Claire Tomalin's J_ane Austen: A Life for
insights into historical Austen criticism.

2For example, see the work of Kirkham, Butler, Sulloway, Auerbach, Poovey and
Looser for clear explanations of Austen’s feminism. Several other works show the range
of this discussion: Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life: Alistair Duckworth, “Jane
Austen and the Conflict of Interpretations” and “Jane Austen and the Construction of a
Progressive Author”; and Moira Ferguson, First Feminists: British Women Writers 1578
—l 799.

3Kirkham includes a useful “Postscript: Jane Austen and the Critical Tradition”
giving another brief overview of historical and contemporary criticism. See also
Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen: A Famin Record and her new edition of Jane Austen's
Letters for recent considerations of Austen’s biography.

 

4See specifically Alasdair Maclntyre. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
explains the view that contemporary culture has lost a true understanding of virtue. In
this explanation, Maclntyre considers Jane Austen one of the last, great writers to
understand virtue and identifies the impulses in her work as a blending of Christian and
Aristotelian conceits.

5F or example, see the works of Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Elisabeth
Moltmann-Wendel, Rosemary Radford Ruether and Starhawk.

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Chapter Two
The Stories in the Conduct Books

Spiritual questing, as contemporary feminist theologians portray it, is a new
construct. As Chapter One outlines, a woman’s spiritual quest centers around her
exploration of the nature of self, the roles that self might play in the social world, and the
connection between that self and the greater expansiveness of being — the nature of life.
The quest to know this self is inextricably linked to the search for place in the social
world and one's understanding of that place, hence Carol Christ's linking of the two. Two
hundred years ago, this explanation would not have held true for women. Cultural and
social constraints kept women's involvement in explicitly religious activity limited. A
typical middle-class woman might be involved in charitable work on some level, might
attend church regularly and might have private devotions in her home and with her
family. The extent of her Christianity was measured in ordinary ways: basically through
the external revelations of her private virtues, the acting out of a guiding value system.

In eighteenth-century England, there is no question that the guiding value system
for the majority of people was Christian and Anglican. Oliver MacDonagh describes the
Church of England in J_ane Austen: RezL and Imaged Worlds: “By its very origin and
nature, Anglicanism was a median religion. By upbringing, disposition and reflection
alike, Jane Austen was (our shred of evidence suggests) a median member of the Church
of England in her day” (14). With or without the historical support of the Latitudinarians
of Cambridge, Anglican Christians were comfortable considering their Christianity as a
moral system, i.e. morality and Christianity were nearly synonymous. In this case, the

distinction between morality and Christianity emanates from the definition of a spiritual

41

quest. If the final question in a quest comes to the Divine, the search is spiritual in
nature. If the Christian mythos is also in place, then the moral system established by the
spiritual search is Christian.

Writings from the eighteenth century can illuminate current understandings of that
Christianity. The conduct books that flourished during this time provide good material

for investigation into practiced Christianity and some issues related to women's spiritual

quests. While twentieth-century critics might debate their worth,1 the enormous
popularity of the conduct books, shown by their multiple editions and dozens of versions,
speaks to the strength of the patriarchal structure in the culture of the eighteenth-century.
The gilded edges, leather bindings, and artful end papers seem to show their value as
perhaps today's high school graduates might view the inspirational and attractive books
they receive as graduation gifts. Their audiences seem similar. While the conduct books
exist as part of a larger, older tradition of religious meditations for men, their targeted
audience became young women as the readership grew and as the eighteenth century
progressed. Typically, men, the father figures and primary authors, wrote conduct books
or life directions for young women. Many of the works were written as letters to
daughters from loving fathers and then printed to extend the family limits to include all
gentle readers. Others, while not written specifically by fathers, were written by friends
to young women who needed advice. In the same way that husbands, due to age and
experience, directed the lives and pursuits of their young wives, the conduct book writers
asserted an equally paternal stance. These books, consisting of simple sermons, private

devotions, or letters on important topics were considered serious reading for young

42

women. Multiple volumes were not uncommon, with advice or explanation often
organized by character trait or in some cases chronologically by marital or sexual status.

A brief look at an early and popular conduct book writer makes these points clear.
Richard Allestree's works, including The Government of the Tongue, Whole Duty of
Man, and The Ladies Call—ing, all published anonymously, remained popular throughout
the eighteenth century and can serve as an example of the tradition out of which the
conduct books for women grew. While the first two claim to address general audiences,
they are more appropriately and specifically for men. The Whole Duty of Man consists
of an introduction and seventeen chapters to serve as separate devotions for seventeen
Sundays throughout the year. Allestree asserts that readers must understand the parts of
their souls so that the soul may receive adequate care. A small piece of the prevailing
attitude toward women, as well as the nature of his audience, shows in his command that
a man should, “. . . instruct the wife in the things that concern her Eternal Welfare. . . .
This should make men careful to get knowledge themselves, that so they may be able to
perform this Duty they owe to others” (304-305). The Government of the Tongue
consists of twelve chapters in which Allestree discusses problems arising from unguarded
speech. For example, some chapter titles are “Of the Use of Speech,” “Of Atheistical
Discourse,” “Of Lying Defamation,” and “Of F lattery.” Conceming the last he says,
“This is indeed the fatalist wound of the tongue. . .” (134). More importantly, however,
Allestree sets out his task: “. . . especially in this Age, wherein the contrary liberty has
got such a prepossession, that men look on it as a part of their birthright, nay, do not only
let their Tongues loose, but studiously suggest inordinances to them, and use the spur

where they should the bridle” (b). Again, typically, this book addresses the forms of

43

public discussion in which men would be most likely to participate. The tone of Lh_e
Ladies Calling, however, is different and is established from the beginning with the
editor’s note:

. . . whoever takes this Book in hand, would seriously consider it, and doing

so, receive the infinite benefits of uniform virtue, and sincere piety, the

documents whereof are here with all possible advantages proposed: and

thereby give the Author that greatest of Blessings, the being an instrument to

the eternal happiness of souls. (n.p.)
In this two-part work, Allestree outlines the natural virtues of the female sex (being
Meekness, Compassion, Affability and Piety) and contrasts these to a number of
masculine virtues. He says, “Such a degenerous age do we live in, that everything seems
inverted, even sexes; whilst men fall to the Effeminancy and Niceness of women,
women take up the Confidence, the Boldness of men . . .” (13). Allestree is comfortable
defining virtues by gender. While he admonishes women against the masculine virtues of
confidence and boldness, he also directs them to avoid the “spoilage of the mind” that
accompanies an “indecent curiosity” (161), supporting thereby the idea that ignorance is
its own protection against corruption. Allestree's stated purpose seems appropriately
pious, but he is not free of cultural biases. He says that to talk to women one must talk to
their understanding. Men are superior because they have been educated,

[a]nd truly had women the same Advantage, I dare not say but they would

make as good returns of it; some of those few that have been tried, have

been eminent in several parts of Learning. . . . But not to oppose a received

opinion, let it be admitted that in respect of their intellects they are below

men; yet sure in the sublimest part of humanity, they are their equals. (b4-

b5)
He admits that women have souls, but he does not fight the traditional idea that men are

intellectually superior to women. Allestree’s popular books served as models for the

conduct books appearing over the next century and show the prevailing attitudes of the

44

century: that men are intellectually superior to women, that the province of women does
not include serious intellectual work in secular or religious areas, and that virtues and
specific spiritual behaviors are gender-specific.

The explicit goals of the conduct book writers of the eighteenth-century who
follow Allestree are religious in nature and maintain the traditions established by
Allestree. As a genre, the conduct books also reinforce the traditional patriarchal
expression of Christianity, thus becoming one of the methods of maintaining the culture.
The books outline character traits, acceptable behavior and expected virtues as gender-
based and support the theological and political social order. The theological status quo,
seen in the assumptions apparent from Allestree's work forward, says that women should
be quiet receivers of ideas, should obey their fathers or husbands unquestioningly, and
should not assert themselves into social or public settings but remain satisfied with their
private and most often passive roles within the family. Like their secular roles, women’s
spiritual experiences were static and limited from the outside. Little sense of spiritual
questing existed for women if conduct books serve as any indication of eighteenth-
century guidelines.

If a person's place is appointed by God, as most educated people of the early
eighteenth-century believed, then any theological or spiritual explanation of one's role in
the world would support the religious status quo. What should be changed if God is the
appointer of position? Religious writings which encouraged women to maintain and
accept their established passive role also encouraged women to accept that this role
should not be challenged and that those who might challenge their positions also

challenged the laws of God.

45

This chapter examines six conduct books from the eighteenth century, considering
several of these issues. Three of the books were written by men and three by women.
The former are Strictures on Femle Education (1795) by John Bennett, An Enquiry into
the Duties of the Female Sex (1797) by Thomas Gisbome and A Father’s Legacy to His
Daughters (1774) by John Gregory; I have chosen these three because of their immense
popularity. All three books went through numerous editions over many years and
contribute to an understanding of both patriarchal and Christian values of the period, but
rather than showing a strong spirituality of religious action appropriate for women, these
conduct books advocate, at best, a gender-based, patriarchally-approved private and
passive female spirituality.

On the other hand, the three conduct books by women offer a bit more variability
in their guidance and suggestions for young women's spiritual lives. The three works are
Strictures on the Modern System of Female Educafira (1799) by Hannah More, _I£tLe_r_s
on the Elementary Principles of Education (1802) by Elizabeth Hamilton and Vindication
of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft. These books show the diverse
possibilities which women saw for the expression of their own spirituality and the
overlapping nature of their social and spiritual quests.

The intertwining issues to be examined in this chapter, then, are expressed in
these questions: 1) what is the nature of the content in the conduct books, 2) what is
revealed about the views of women's spirituality in the conduct books by men and
women, 3) how do specific and gendered virtues relate to women's spiritual expression

and experience, 4) how does the level and nature of women's education affect their

46

spiritual and social quests, and 5) how does this gender-based spirituality connect to a
patriarchal social order?
Written by Men for Women

Gregory, Gisbome, and Bennett typically chose a fatherly stance from which to
lecture young women on behavior and morals. Wiser, older men could reasonably
instruct a young woman on the ways of the world and her position in it.

Dr. John Gregory's work, A F aaher's Legacy to His Da_uthters, is the earliest of
these works (published in 1774, a year after his death, with many subsequent editions as
late as 1877) and is a personal address to his daughters from their aging father.
According to the editor, the work’s private nature and its coming at the end of a father's
life indicates to the audience its public value. Motherless daughters need extra guidance
to achieve the blessings which a mother would bestow. This catalyst of motherhood is
used by many men writing conduct books.

While supporting traditional Christian values, Gregory reveals his own
perspective on the issues by breaking the book into four sections: Religion; Conduct and
Behavior; Amusements; and Friendship, Love, Marriage. While his advice is always
conservative and enforces gender boundaries, he also says that he has his daughters’
welfare at heart. In Vindication, Wollstonecraft criticizes Gregory’s work and describes
his ambivalence in this way:

[H]aving two objects in view, he seldom adhered steadily to either; for

wishing to make his daughters amiable, and fearing lest unhappiness should

only be the consequence, of instilling sentiments that might draw them out

of the track of common life without enabling them to act with consonant

independence and dignity, he checks the natural flow of his thoughts, and
neither advises one thing nor the other. (97)

47

Gregory tries to walk the line of moderation between acknowledging the culture's undue
restrictions on the spiritual and secular lives of women and encouraging young women to
fight against these patriarchal restraints. A few comments from the sections of his book
indicate his ambivalence: he wants the best for his daughters, but he recognizes social
and cultural limitations and does not openly attack them. He tells educated young
women: “But if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially
from the men, who generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great
parts, and a cultivated understanding” (15). Perhaps his intent is practical, but his
message is damning; men will not abide women who think and speak.

Among these conduct books, Gregory's views of the character of women are,
perhaps, the most conservative. His presentation offers a clear separation by gender in
areas of virtue, education and religious experience and expression.

1 shall not repeat what I have said on this subject, and shall only observe, that

from the view I have given of your natural character and place in society, there

arises a certain propriety of conduct peculiar to your sex. It is this peculiar
propriety of female manners of which I intend to give you my sentiments,
without touching on those general rules of conduct by which men and women

are equally bound. (3-4)

The feminine virtues which he espouses include truthfulness, delicacy, gentleness of
spirit, modesty, charity and arniability — all virtues which will lend themselves to a
character pleasing to others, and as he points out in his introduction, virtues not especially
suited to men. Unlike other more serious-minded works, Gregory also includes a great
deal of practical advice in his book, including the practical virtues which women as wives
and mothers should have. “The domestic economy of a family is entirely a woman's

province, and furnishes a variety of subjects for the exertion both of good sense and good

taste (24).

48

In “Conduct and Behavior,” Gregory distinguishes between wit and humor (the
latter being desirable in women, the former not) and tends to undermine any self-
assertion and moral independence when he encourages a modest reserve, delicacy, and
silence in company. He cautions to have humor but warns that “Wit is the most
dangerous talent you can possess [and while] wit is perfectly consistent with softness and
delicacy; yet they are seldom found united” (15). In speaking of delicacy, Gregory
dismisses prudery and affectation; he wants his daughters to have real delicacy.
“Consider every species of indelicacy in conversation as shameful in itself, and as highly
disgusting to us [men]” (16). Numerous times, Gregory shows that a guiding principle
of his work is that his daughters should always strive to please men. Despite this guiding
principle, he advocates true elegance for his daughters by suggesting that they avoid
loose flirtation or affection. “I think you may possess dignity without pride, affability
without meanness, and simple elegance without affectation” (48).

Education, as such, gets scant notice in Gregory's work. He says, “I am at the
greatest loss what to advise you in regard to books. There is no impropriety in your
reading history, or cultivating any art or science to which genius or accident leads you.
The whole volume of Nature lies open to your eye, and furnishes an infinite variety of
entertainment” (24). This seems like an opening to women to pursue their own abilities
and tastes, but Gregory follows with the following statements:

If I was sure that Nature had given you such strong principles of taste and

sentiment as would remain with you, and influence your future conduct, with

the utmost pleasure would I endeavour to direct your reading in such a way as

might form that taste to the utmost perfection of truth and elegance. But when

I reflect how easy it is to warm a girl's imagination, and how difficult deeply

and permanently to affect her heart; how readily she enters into every

refinement of sentiment, and how easily she can sacrifice them to vanity or
convenience; I think I may very probably do you an injury by artificially

49

creating a taste, which, if Nature never gave it you, would only serve to
embarrass your future conduct. (24-25)

Gregory is exceedingly careful throughout his discussion to avoid any appearance of
encouraging young women to move outside of the established boundaries of appropriate
behavior in education, spirituality or daily obligation.

I do not want to make you any thing; I want to know what Nature has made

you, and to perfect you on her plan. I do not wish you to have sentiments that

might perplex you: I wish you to have sentiments that may uniformly and
steadily guide you, and such as your hearts so thoroughly approve, that you

would not forego them for any consideration this world could offer. (25)

He wants to teach without making his daughters unwomanly and to guide without
perplexing their understanding.

In his direct statements concerning religion, Gregory says that religion, for
women, is sentiment not reason. He tells women to “Fix your attentions. . . , and do not
meddle with controversy” (19) and avoid all that might shake faith. He supports the
attitude that women should not concern themselves with matters of theology but should
simply feel their religion and not question the authority of the Church, the teachings of
ministers, or the living lessons of faith. In setting out women's natural propensity for
“felt” spirituality, Gregory contrasts men and women.

Though the duties of religion strictly speaking, are equally binding on both

sexes, yet certain differences in their natural character and education, render

some vices in your sex peculiarly odious. The natural hardness of our hearts
and strength of our passions, inflamed by the uncontroled licence [sic] we are
too often indulged with in our youth, are apt to render our manners more
dissolute, and make us less susceptible of the finer feelings of the heart. Your
superior delicacy, your modesty, and the usual severity of your education,
preserve you, in a great measure, from any temptation to those vices to which

we are most subjected. (5)

Women are not expected to act out their passions, even religious ones, but should

maintain their delicate and modest control at all times. The gender separation of virtue is

50

apparent as Gregory outlines the vices into which men fall and the protection women
need from these. His statement that “The natural softness and sensibility of your
dispositions particularly fits you for the practice of those duties where the heart is chiefly
concerned. . . [i.e. religious devotion and family care]” (5) shows and supports this
separation. In their soft sentimentality, women are also naturally silly and vain,
according to Gregory, and need the reining force of religion to control them and to offer
them comfort when they suffer under uncontrollable misfortune. Men have the additional
outlets, unavailable to women, of plunging into business or dissipation of pleasure and
riot (6). The restraints of modesty and spirituality and softness of sensibility hold women
within the bounds of propriety.

Gregory talks about appropriate amusements which women might seek out,
offering little new advice, but softening some of the cultural antagonism toward reading.
“Such books as improve your understanding, enlarge your knowledge, and cultivate your
taste, may be considered in a higher point of view than mere amusements” (49). This
higher caliber of book certainly would not include the typical novel of his day but would
more likely involve sermons, tracts or stories which edify, the typical conduct books. He
teaches that standard accomplishments, what Gisbome will refer to as omaments of
education, have their place in a young lady's education: needlework teaches judgment
and “fills the solitary hours you must necessarily pass at home” (52). He does not
question his own assumption here. He goes on: dancing teaches ease and grace, but
gaming is bad and may lead young women into inappropriate company and activity. He
justifies the cultural admonition that young women need to entertain others by connecting

these social skills with the loftier characteristics of caring for home and family.

51

Gregory moves into darker and more serious issues when he discusses jealousy
and secrecy in the final section of this work. He says that jealousy prevents women from
being good friends with each other. Such remarks on jealousy seem to be common in
conduct books. Gregory discourages women from friendships with other women and
particularly advises that single and married women should stay away from each other.
He argues that single women should not tell secrets to manied women because married
women will simply repeat the stories to their husbands. Gregory does not explain the
origins of these problems, but he believes that men make better friends for young women.
His comments seem to show that suspicion of other women is the natural condition and
should be considered by young women as they make fiiends.

Throughout his work, Gregory admonishes his daughters to maintain “perfect
simplicity of heart and manners” (47). While he does not explain how to do this, he does
offer very practical advice in other areas. Remembering that his daughters are
motherless, he reminds them to keep secrets, to avoid gambling, to not marry a fool
(although he does not tell his daughters how to recognize one), and to remember to ask
about hereditary diseases when contemplating engagement. Gregory's noblest desires
show a father's affection for his daughters and his sincere wishes for their success and
happiness. These noble desires, however, include the integration of the gender-specific
virtues of eighteenth-century Christian womanhood.

Rev. John Bennett's Strictures on Female Education ChieflLas it Relates to the
Culture of the Hea_rt is a collection of four essays and the basis for a longer work in two
volumes entitled Letters to a Young Lzaly which went through nine editions from 1791 to

its first American printing in 1796. Bennett originally intended to write a three-volume

52

set to address the problems of proper education for young women, the historical treatment
of the education of women, the effect of women's education on society, the limitations of
women's understanding, and the poor quality of public education with support for quality
private education. Like Gregory, Bennett's “culture of the heart” refers to women's
assumed sensitivity, to the emotional role which women play in life and to the “superior
susceptibility of women, and that, exquisite sensibility, which so wonderfully disposes
them to receive all impressions. . .” (Strictures 17). It is the duty of those who educate
women, according to Bennett who echoes Allestree here, to preserve this delicacy and to

teach true virtue to a feminine sensibility. The full title of Letters reflects Bennett’s

 

attitudes and wishes for his book: “Letters to a Young Lady, on a Variety of Useful and
Interesting Subjects: Calculated to Improve the Heart, to Form the Manners, and
Enlighten the Understanding 'That our Daughters may be as polished Comers of the
Temple.'“

In Strictures on Female Education. Bennett defends the reputation of women by
harshly criticizing prevailing attitudes toward women such as those made popular by
Lord Chesterfield. Bennett attacks Chesterfield directly:

He [Solomon] has been followed by a number of servile imitators, of all

ages and nations, who indiscriminately, have applied the dark portrait to all.

I will not add a Chesterfield to a group, (whose letters to his son, from

beginning to end, are one continued libel upon women) because I wish the

memory of his immortal graces, and his refined dissimulation, to sleep

forever with him in his grave. (Strictures 15)
Specifically, Bennett attacks Chesterfield's denigration of women. Chesterfield says in
The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield: “To men, I talked whatever

I thought would give them the best opinion of my parts and learning, and to women, what

I was sure would please them —flattery, gallantry, and love” (319). Bennett condemns

53

this attitude toward women and this undermining of women’s credibility. He wants to
protect women’s natural innocence and sees Chesterfield's attack as ungentlemanly and
ungracious. Bennett does not want the secular and satiric voices like Chesterfield's to
dominate the cultural imagination. “From all quarters they [women] have been attacked,
and whilst their form is confessed to be enchanting, they are treated, by the bulk of men,
as fit for little else but some domestick drudgeries, or some indelicate enjoyments”
(Strictures 17). Women's greatest attributes lie, he believes, in the sensitive and
emotional areas of life. Bennett does not wish to see these destroyed or mocked.

Bennett's defense of women, while pointed, lacks real strength of assertion. His
support for women caters to the idea that women are especially fragile and childlike and
need protection from the world. His touch is gentle; he explores the gendered virtues,
like sensitivity and modesty, and explains their development. In making this defense,
Bennett criticizes the standards of education for women and advocates quality private
education for women. He does not go so far as to advocate educating men and women
equally, only in better educating women. To each her appropriate calling.

Bennett’s work, Letters to LY oung Lady, takes a more concerted approach to
directing the education and subsequent conduct of young women. In two volumes of
personal letters addressed to Lucy, a young woman whose mother has died, Bennett
discusses issues of importance for young girls growing into womanhood. According to .
his editor, Bennett’s

. . . intention [in Letters] is really to serve the fairest and most amiable part

of the creation; to rouse young ladies from a vacant or insipid life, into one

of usefulness and laudable exertion—to recall them from visionary novels

and romances, into solid reading and reflections—and from the criminal

absurdities of fashion, to the simplicity of nature and the dignity of virtue.
(Editor's Advertisement)

 

54

Bennett, more so than Gregory, expounds on appropriate reading material for young
women, as he catalogues writer after writer as the proper choice for a woman's religious
education, her spiritual growth and development into a useful, Christian woman.
Specifically, he lists multiple sermon and devotion writers, including Tillotson, Ogden,
Seeker, F arringdon, St. Austin, and Taylor. Within his explanations are support for and
critiques of these various writers, and he admonishes, “Sermons that aim to amuse or

entertain are beneath the pulpit” (Letters 36). To Bennett, study of devotional material

 

should be serious work.

While Bennett agrees with the prevailing attitude that women should not push
themselves intellectually over philosophical or theological problems, he does not believe
that women should be ignorant of religious history or practice. He writes many letters in
Volume One briefly describing various world religions and some of the varieties of
Christianity at work in England. Bennett believes that a young woman's education
should include an understanding of how her religion differs from others in the world. He
does not, however, present such information objectively. He directs young women to
English, Anglican Christianity: “The public worship of the papists is overloaded with
ceremony. It is performed in a learned language unknown to the vulgar, and intermixed
with such a continual change of dress, attitude and ceremonies as are only calculated to

excite the ridicule of a rational and enlightened mind” (Letters 52). Bennett's goal is for

 

young women to know the superiority of the Church of England and to know their place
in that Church. He says, “If I wished a woman to be universally charming, I would
recommend this expedient. Compassion is the highest excellence of your sex, and charity

is the sacred root from which it springs” (Letters 74). Both compassion and charity,

55

 

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while acknowledged to be practiced by all, are virtues specifically assigned to the realm
of female spirituality, especially at this time in the Church of England.

Despite Bennett's praise and support of women, his work also reinforces the
gender restrictions in secular and religious education. “Though religion is indispensibly
[sic] necessary to both sexes, and in every possible character and station, yet a woman
seems, more peculiarly, to need its enlivening supports, whilst her frame must be
confessed to be admirably calculated for the exercise of all the tender and devout
affections” (L_e1te_rs 9). This echoes Gregory's beliefs about the nature of women; they
have physically tender bodies, natural tirnidity and emotional and spiritual sensitivity.
Even Bennett's caring language and attitude cannot erase the power or the restrictive
nature of these assumptions.

His assumptions include an understanding of the proper pursuits for women. He
says, “Your reason and understanding were given you to be improved; a proper pursuit
of knowledge, at the same time, will aid and inflame your piety, and render you much
more valuable and interesting to all your acquaintance” (80-81). Doubtless this is true;
knowledge aids piety and both make one interesting. The heart of the statement is that
women become more interesting for men to have around. A second lingering notion
from this statement, “the proper pursuit of knowledge,” pushes Bennett into explaining
which pursuits are proper for young women. He cautions in Letter XLIV that learned
women are as much of a problem as ignorant women; moderation in everything is the
answer, along with an understanding of which pursuits lend themselves to women's
capacity:

The prominent excellencies of your minds are taste and imagination, and
your knowledge should be of a kind which assimilates with these faculties.

56

Politics, philosophy, mathematics, or metaphysics are not your province.

Machiavel, Newton, Euclid, Malebranche or Locke would lie with a very ill

grace in your closets.
After outlining the subjects which women should not study, Bennett, in the same passage,
explains why these subjects are inappropriate and into which areas women’s studies
should take them.

They would render you unwomanly indeed. They would damp the vivacity

and destroy that disengaged ease and softness, which are the very essence of
your graces.

The elegant studies are, more immediately, your department. They do not

require so much time, abstraction or comprehensiveness of mind; they bring

no wrinkles, and they will give a polish to your manners, and such a liberal

expansion to your understanding as every rational creature should endeavour

to attain. (Letters 81—82)
The underlying statements argue that women are only as womanly as they are soft; they
are only as desirable as they are 'disengaged' from worry or deep thought. In this,
Bennett agrees with Gregory. Bennett says, “The discipline of the imagination is the first
thing to be attempted. . . . No consequence can justify one single act of caprice,
sullenness or ill-humour. It is a direct violation of that universal law of charity, which
requires us, in all our actions, to keep in view, the happiness of others, as well as our
own” (Letters 78, 79). Grace, ease, softness, elegance, accomplishment, emotional
sensitivity, compassion, devotion, piety, charity and self-govemment— according to
Bennett, these are the virtues and natural talents for women to mine, always with an' eye
toward pleasing others.

Bennett differentiates women from men.

Whilst men, with solid judgment and a superior vigour are to combine

ideas, to discriminate, and examine a subject to the bottom, you are to give

it all its brilliancy and all its charms. They provide the fumiture; you

dispose it with propriety. . . . Cultivate, then, such studies, as be within the
region of sentiment and taste. Let your knowledge be feminine, as well as

57

your person. And let it glow within you, rather than sparkle upon others

about you. A diamond, so polished, will always be valued. You will

charm all, but the ignorant and vulgar. You will be a rational, entertaining ,

companion. . . . (m 82-83)

The masculine virtues or skills are intellectual in nature. Men think critically about and
investigate important subjects. These subjects are outside the province of female
exploration and would destroy the femininity of any woman found exploring them. A
woman should be passive and attractive and sentimental. This strong delineation
between femininity and masculinity, supported by his understanding of Christian
behavior, runs through both volumes of Bennett's work.

After having said this, Bennett seems slightly more generous when he explains
the appropriate categories of a woman's secular education. He approves for women the
“elegant studies” of history, natural history, botany, astronomy, geography, biology and
literature. He recommends Goldsmith, Robertson and Hume for their historical studies,
but he cautions against the danger of reading their works which lie outside of the
historical realm. He especially condemns Hume's metaphysical work as immoral. He
continues, however, to differentiate the kind of work a young woman might do from the
serious study appropriate for a man: “Stretch's Beauties of Histom will furnish you with
many short, agreeable anecdotes, both ancient and modern, at a very small expence [sic]
of time and trouble. Knowledge this epitomized, is what I should recommend. On such
subjects, you want short and pithy sketches, rather than laboured and prolix dissertations’
(EELS. 86). This summarized material will enlighten a woman but not tax her, and in
this lack of depth rests the primary difference between masculine and feminine education.

The purpose of women’s education, again, seems to be the entertainment of those around

them.

58

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Even while proposing this limited exposure to substantial texts, Bennett defends
women. “They, who talk degradingly of women, do not know the value of the treasure
they despise. They have not sufficient taste to relish their excellencies, or purity enough
to court their acquaintance. They have taken the portraits of abandoned women, and they
think the features applicable to all” (9). He asserts that women have been banned by
their faulty education, but that they may rise to exceed expectation with proper guidance.
“The education of women, is unfortunately directed rather to such accomplishments as
will enable them to make a noise and sparkle in the world, than to those qualities, which
might ensure their comfort here, and happiness hereafter” (9). Bennett believes that piety
and virtue are the only sources of real enjoyment for women. Men, in the position of
power, should know this and lead the women in their lives to these virtues.

Thomas Gisbome's tone is more serious, more systematic and more directly
religious in nature than the work of Bennett or Gregory and is more like the earlier work
of Richard Allestree. In his Preface to An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex,
(1797 with its 8th edition in 1810), Gisbome elaborates on the abundance of work in this
genre and asserts that, in his efforts to be original, he did not read other conduct books
until he had drafted his own. After completing his draft, he read others and revised his
own to ensure “useful rules and just conclusions” and adds that he has been careful “not
to load a practical work with controversy” (flit—ies iv, v).2 So, with conscious care to
avoid offense or controversy, Gisbome sets out his plan. He addresses the higher and
middle classes and differentiates between single and married women, women of the city
and of the country, and the variety of stations in life. Each, he states, has her own

problems and her own duties, established by God and assigned by class. His work, he

59

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says, is deduced from scriptural authority, and he condemns writers who reject Christian
guidelines but continue to write for young women, thus leading them away from
righteousness.

In the sixteen sections of Duties, Gisbome includes many of the customary topics
of the conduct books: Amusements, Dress, Education, Marriage Considerations, and
Duties associated with life's stages. Chapter Two concerns the responsibilities of women
to their duties. Early in the chapter, he says that women must not undervalue the duties
given them by reason and revelation (10-11). Intelligent women, even learned women,
should understand the value in distinguishing themselves in areas appropriate to their sex.
He admits the limitations of such a life:

The sphere of domestic life, the sphere in which female exertion is chiefly

occupied, and female excellence is best displayed, admits far less diversity of

action, and consequently of temptation, than is to be found in the widely

differing professions and employments into which private advantage and

public good require that men should be distributed. (Duties 2)

In making this statement, Gisborne acknowledges the cultural discussion of this issue and
begins to define and support the boundaries imposed on women's lives. He criticizes
young women who fail to find such a restricted life challenging or fulfilling.

Young women endowed with good understandings, but desirous of justifying

the mental indolence which they have permitted themselves to indulge; or

disappointed at not perceiving a way open by which they, like their brothers,

may distinguish themselves and rise to eminence; are occasionally heard to

declare their opinion, that the sphere in which women are destined to move is

so humble and so limited, as neither to require nor to reward assiduity; and

under this impression, either do not discern, or will not be persuaded to

consider, the real and deeply interesting effects which the conduct of their sex

will always have on the happiness of society. (Duties 10-11)

Gisbome seeks to educate young women to their true and Christian calling by pointing

out that many of the problems they experience lie in their own definitions and ambitions.

60

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Women should not have ambitions beyond the domestic and private sphere. They should
find contentment in their assigned roles, and Gisbome adds that not only are those roles
designed by God and established by class, they are dictated by biology. Gisbome says
that even women of outstanding ability should not consider a worldly demonstration, as
this represents only pride and ambition. He leaves little room for women who might
want to and might be capable of making a larger contribution to human society. A
woman is called to care for husbands and parent, to moderate the vices of men through

her manners and disposition, and to nurture children (Duties 8-9). Female influence “is

 

like the dew of heaven which descends at all seasons, returns after short intervals, and
permanently nourishes every herb of the field” wigs 12). These assertions show the
limits which Gisbome sets to the physical and psychic spaces in which women must
function.

In seeking to alleviate what might be perceived as an injustice, Gisbome adds:
“But, to protect weakness from the oppression of domineering superiority, those who He
has not qualified to contend, He has enabled to fascinate; and has amply compensated the
defect of muscular vigour by symmetry and expression, by elegance and grace” (DLiea
20). A woman’s superiority lies in her ability to charm and entertain the men who
dominate her.

It is accordingly manifest, that, in sprightliness and vivacity, in quickness of

perception, in fertility of invention, in powers adapted to unbend the brow of

the learned, to refresh the over-laboured faculties of the wise, and to diffuse,

throughout the family circle, the enlivening and endearing smile of
cheerfulness, the superiority of the female mind is unrivalled. (Duties 22)

61

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These virtues of pleasing fit a woman for her natural calling; Gisbome argues that the
influence of the female character on the world and the characteristics required to
accomplish this influence are found in this pleasing.

Were we called upon to produce examples of the most amiable tendencies and

affections implanted in human nature, of modesty, of delicacy, of

sympathising [sic] sensibility, of prompt and active benevolence, of warmth

and tenderness of attachment; whither should we at once turn our eyes? To

the sister, to the daughter, to the wife. These endowments form the glory of

the female sex” (Datias 16).

In contrast to these feminine endowments, Gisbome asserts that God has endowed men
with stronger bodies, stronger passions and propensity for violence and with “the powers
of close and comprehensive reasoning, and of intense and continued application, in a
degree in which they are not requisite for the discharge of the customary offices of
female duty” (D_uti_as 15). Men, according to Gisbome, have been given these natural
talents by God in order to perform the duties required of them in legislation, navigation,
commercial enterprises, philosophy and research.

Gisbome also outlines the vices into which women might fall. He includes
unsteadiness of mind, fondness of novelty, habit of frivolousness, dislike of sober
application, unreasonable regard for wit, thirst for admiration, and vanity and affectation.
While men also have vices, they are not on this list. Obviously the “vices” which
Gisbome attributes to women are the vices of a person with few inner resources. Lack of
education, lack of potential for action, lack of control of one's life, lack of development
and lack of an understanding of one's spiritual potential would all lead to such flaws.

Nowhere in his discussion does he venture to say that women must explore their own

spiritual ideas or intimate that women might experience any kind of spiritual quest.

62

Gisbome defends his support of the gendered virtues and vices by asserting that
some writers (although unnamed, perhaps Wollstonecraft) shame women by ignoring
these “natural” boundaries.

Genius, taste, and learning itself, have appeared in the number of female

endowments and acquisitions. And we have heard, from time to time, some

bold assertors of the rights of the weaker sex, stigmatizing, in terms of

indignant complaint, the monopolising injustice of the other; laying claim, on

behalf of their clients, to co-ordinate authority in every department of science

and erudition; and upholding the perfect equality of injured woman and

usurping man in language so little guarded, as scarcely to permit the latter to

consider the labours of the camp and of the senate as exclusively pertaining to

himself. (12M 19)

Most certainly, writers like Wollstonecraft used forthright language, asserting that
women have a place in any field in which they excel, but Gisbome bluntly seeks to
uphold the gender boundaries which some women writers were trying to eliminate; for
him, the boundaries represent God's plan. The separation between man and woman is
intellectual, emotional, spiritual, physical, social, and biological. According to this
scheme, male and female virtue and male and female spiritual behavior would be equally
distinct. Gisbome supports this separation.

In his evaluation of the relationship between education and virtue, Gisbome does
not discourage women from learning. He believes that mothers are, after all, the best
teachers for children. “That instructor who is loved the best will commonly prove the
most efficacious” (57). Therefore, the most natural subjects for women are those which
provide a useful understanding of the physical world, making them better teachers of
young children. Each potential mother needs a better education to fulfill this duty. To

achieve this better education, Gisbome specifically lists Language, Geography, Natural

History, History, Astronomy, Science, and French. Gisbome identifies the continued

63

attention to the ornaments of education, i.e. drawing, music, beauty, and dress, as one of
the greatest faults in women's education. Unlike earlier writers, he questions the
emphasis placed on these accomplishments because he believes that they feed pride,

vanity and fashion. He adds, “Good sense and virtue are the only qualifications which

endure or deserve lasting esteem” (86), a statement with which Austen might agree.3
Gisbome, however, might have gone a great deal further in his condemnation of
ornamental education. He understates the necessity of a grounded education for women;
too strong a statement for change in women’s education might push Gisbome into the
dangerous territory of boundary redefinition.

In the specifically spiritual realm, Gisbome again takes a traditional position. He
says that man has “the fixed preeminence over the other” (_Du_tiea 230) and uses scripture
to support this. He mentions, briefly, men's duty in marriage and quotes specifically
Colossians 3: 19: “Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.” Gisbome
uses Paul to support the spiritual status quo. This is the cultural base for Gisborne. From
his scriptural edict for marriage where man is the head, Gisbome states that a young
woman should rely on her parents to choose a good match for her. A woman obeys God
by first obeying her parents and then obeying her husband. In so doing, she also

contributes to the propagation of the secular and spiritual culture.

Typically, Gisbome's position takes on political as well as religious dimension. Like
other writers from this period, including Bennett and Gregory, Gisbome assumes the
superiority of English civilization and accepts its truths as universal and timeless. His
argument about women's education is an offshoot of this stance. He takes a politically
conservative approach, believing that education should transmit the accepted cultural and

religious philosophies. In Duties, chapters three and four, Gisbome writes on

 

64

male/female differentiation and its connection to education. There are “treacherous
underrniners” who would destroy women and culture through an inappropriate education.
Education should control that excess of vivacity and imagination that “can lead to an
unsteadiness of mind” (Dang 33). Just as in moderation vivacity and imagination might
be seen as women's gifts, in excess they become women's greatest vices. Gisbome
argues that education should lead women to the specifically-feminine virtue to which

they were born.

What stories do these conduct books tell about the nature of women and the
expected course of their lives? In their answers to these questions, much common ground
exists among Allestree, Gregory, Bennett, and Gisbome though their writings span one
hundred fifty years.

Their fundamental conservatism underpins all of their positions and seems to
approve of the cultural status quo. Each views education as the primary tool for
transmitting and maintaining the culture. Each seems to believe that God smiles on some
individuals but not on others and that human beings should not tamper with this. These
writers espouse that God controls all and that God has designed all of the systems at work
in the world, down to the specific placement of individuals in particular social classes.
These conduct book writers wish to transmit and support the existing culture, particularly
as it establishes gender-specific guidelines for behavior. Having a woman continue in her
traditional role of wife and mother is vital for the continuation of the established power
structure.

What does this mean for an individual woman’s life? The story of a woman’s life

as told in these conduct books is simple. All women should:

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-participate in established religion, feeling it deeply, espousing its tenets, but not

investigating its mysteries or inconsistencies, avoiding difficult questions

-obey authority

-maintain feminine softness, both physically and temperarnentally

-maintain an air of innocence and charm to please others

-possess the specific virtues assigned to their gender

-leam about the world but avoid intellectual rigor

-follow parents’ advice in choosing a spouse

-marry and have children

-be an entertaining and lively partner

-raise children into the dominant culture

-participate in Christian, British culture

What do these rules mean for an individual woman’s spiritual life? Discussing
spirituality or attempting to define it is slippery. In spirituality lies the idea of a numen.
It asks the question: Is there a divine spirit controlling or guiding or creating and
Operating behind the physical world which we inhabit? Spirituality involves the
connectedness of all of life and one’s search for the driving force or the driving purpose.
Spirituality is apparent when individuals question the purpose of their lives and the
reasons for their existence, as Christ describes in Diving Deep and Surfacing. Spirituality
is evident in piety and to examine piety one must examine an individual’s behavior.
Piety is shown through an individual’s belief system, sense of duty and attitude towards

self and others.

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A rich spiritual life entails the ability of an individual to question any of these
precepts in any of these areas. Open investigation is encouraged whether the
investigation is intellectual, metaphysical or if it works itself out through experimental
living or experiential questing, trying out a variety of life plans or belief systems. A
constrained spirituality is one in which some questions are not permitted or some answers
are dictated. The constraining forces might be cultural, religious or political, but limits
are placed on one’s search for answers. Cultural approval is withheld and survival might
be at stake if the cultural mandates for a spiritual quest are not followed.

The narrative strands in the story told in these conduct books are stunted. A
woman who steps outside of or beyond these delimited boundaries is walking into
dangerous and uncharted territory. She risks alienation, isolation and desertion, losing,
among other things, her sexual identity. What would her story be then?

Written by Women for Women

Just as there is variation in the level of conservatism in the men writing conduct
books, so also do the women vary. Hannah More and Elizabeth Hamilton, the more
conservative of the three women under discussion here, found it necessary to avoid
seeming too worldly and so developed an approach to writing their conduct books for
women which differs from those approaches used by men. After all, Gregory and
Bennett were physicians and Gisbome was a respected clergyman; they had position,
status and power supporting them. Women, typically, did not have this social and
cultural authority. More declares herself to be within the political and religious
conservative element seeking to protect tradition and ritual; the Dictionary of Natianal

Biography reports that she and Thomas Gisbome were close fiiends. She behaves,

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however, outside of the prescribed private arena in which women were typically
confined. Hamilton, always aligned with the Scottish Church as Bennett was, was more
practical in her approach and in her goals; she established homes for single young
women and found them appropriate jobs aimed at their self-sufficiency. Her public
behavior combined practical advice for 'modem' young women who found themselves
outside of the traditional and protected 'gentlewoman' category, acknowledging and in a
sense supporting the social hierarchy by offering different advice and guidelines to young
women based on their social class.

Social class was not the only issue determining who could or who could not have
a public voice. Marital status and a public persona were also aids. Women were
regularly trained to be governesses and teachers; therefore, it would be acceptable to
draw on this expertise for writing about the world. Neither More nor Hamilton married,
and even had they, there seems to have been little market for conduct books filled with
motherly advice. As experienced and educated women, however, More and Hamilton
could address others who might share their concerns, particularly when these concerns
affect the livelihoods of many women. The nature of the conduct books by these women
is, therefore, fundamentally different from those written by men. They are more
practical, speaking from and addressing arenas of social lives outside of the very limited,
traditional images; they address particular issues of education often addressing an
audience responsible for the education of children: both parents and teachers. They
seriously discuss education, morality, and Christianity as the bases of women's existence,
but they attack more liberal tendencies which they see as threatening to destroy the fiber

of English culture and its backbone, Christian womanhood.

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Writers like Hamilton and More, while deeply and devoutly Christian, are also
deeply entangled in the politics of gender distinction, despite their assertions to the
contrary. Stated directly in their works are references to maintaining one's position in life
and society and respecting the authority of church and king and often husband, as well.
What separates their work from other writers is their pretense that the work is not of a
political nature. While also true for Hamilton, it is especially evident that More regularly
denigrates herself and often uses an apologetic rhetoric in giving advice. In his 1998
work, Poisoniag the Minds of the Lower Orders, Don Herzog explains this phenomena as
a response to the rise of democratic action in a staunchly conservative patriarchy. On this
subject, he says,

So the women novelists tread lightly on the public stage. They offer their

incisive observations about domestic life and so hesitantly vindicate their

presence in public. [Haniet] Martineau and Wollstonecraft, writing on

hotly contested political questions, have no such vindication to offer. They

have strayed too far from the domestic sphere and are punished by

forfeiting their sexual desirability. (428-429)

Neither More nor Hamilton were ever stigmatized in this way. Their conservatism, their
denial of political motives and the meekness of their public stances prevented this
criticism from taking hold. Gendered division in the spiritual realm was directly
connected to the anti-democratic and patriarchal conservatism in England during this
time.

Hannah More's Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education With a
View of the Principles & Conduct Prevalent Among Women of Rank and Fortune (1799)
exemplifies this connection. For young women seeking to enact their spirituality, More

defines the public forum as simply as giving to the poor, or forgoing purchasing new

ribbons and 'sacrificing' in order to donate something of one's self to the greater good.

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Interestingly, More writes about the importance of acting out one's convictions in a
public forum, but she defines this forum very narrowly.

In part, public support of More’s work rests on her continuous assertion of
humility. In a letter from 21 November 1817 to Zachary Macaulay, long-time friend and
father of Thomas B. Macaulay, she writes:

I have lately been called upon for a correct copy for a new edition of

'Coelebs,' and of 'Practical Piety.’ In spite of the dull task of reforming points

and particles, I found the revisal, of the last especially, a salutary and

mortifying employment. How easy it is to be good upon paper! I felt myself

humbled even to a sense of hypocrisy, to observe (for I had forgotten the

book) how very far short I had fallen myself of the habits and principles and

interior sanctity which I found it so easy to recommend to others. I hardly

read a page which I did not carry some reproach to my own heart. I

frequently think of a line which Prior puts into the mouth of Solomon: --

'They brought my proverbs to confute my life.’ (Letters 101)
More’s public persona is modest and humble despite the fact that the two works she
mentions here had fifteen and eleven editions respectively. Obviously, this humility is
part of the projected persona. She was astutely aware of the political nature of her
literary acts, addressing the underclasses with her “Cheap Repository Tracts,” for
example, and admonishing the elite with works such as “An Estimate of the Religion of
the Fashionable World” (1791) and “Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the
Great to General Society (1788). As a devout and active Christian, she only slightly
hesitates in addressing her readers, and the hesitation does not concern her message but
concerns her ability as a woman to have a public voice, as Herzog notes. Maintaining her
demure posture about her writings, More acknowledges her limitations in this arena but

obviously continues to write. Claudia L. Johnson highlights this in her introduction to

More's “Considerations on Religion and Public Education”:

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Because the separation of spheres, which assigned women to the supposedly
apolitical space within the home and men to the political world outside it, was
still under construction -- in part by ideologues such as More herselfl -- the
intervention of 'proper' women into public affairs was not uncommon. In

writing these pamphlets, More and Burney alike are crossing a gendered

boundary they are in the process of delineating. (Intro to Publication 262 v)

This dual process separates More and the other women writers of conduct books from the
men who wrote them. The women are proclaiming the privateness of their spirituality
and their work while continuing to behave in a public forum. Men like Gisbome, Bennett
and Gregory make no apologies.

More's persona, or at least the stereotypical characterization of it, shows her as a
stern, serious, religious woman. While this picture is accurate, it is only partial. Hannah
More also socialized with Dr. Johnson and David Garrick (who produced her plays),
made annual visits to London, involved herself in the anti-slavery movement, and
corresponded regularly with Horace Walpole. She wrote “Bas Bleu, or Conversation,” in

1782 (published in 1786) elaborating on and defining the Bluestockings of London. This

poem, as much as the story of Mrs. Vesey and Benjamin Stillingfleet, helped to move the

Bluestockings into the public eye and into the history books.4 It is sometimes difficult to
reconcile her humble talk with these additional pieces of her life. Importantly, More and
the other women writing conduct books continued, despite their personal influence and
power, to speak meekly about their abilities to participate in the public arena.

In Strictures, More directly tips her hand and reveals her philosophies on woman's
place in the world. This work addresses young women of the upper and middle classes,
as Gisbome's work does. More begins with a disclaimer: as a woman she writes with
only the best of intentions for improving the true lot of women in the world, and these

good intentions serve “as a substitute for a powerful performance” (Strictures

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Introduction). While she makes only the smallest claim to being an expert, she believes
that she has valuable information to share with young women. She closes the work with
a prayer and a similarly diminutive comment on “this lite work” (Strictures 287), much as
other women writers do, prefiguring even Austen's description of her own work.

Scripture serves as the foundation of this work, and More asserts her position as a
fundamentalist and evangelical. She believes in original sin and sees no good in natural
man. She attacks Rousseau and other French philosophers saying that their philosophy
“annihilates the value of chastity,” and she argues that natural man is a “wayward,
unfixed, unprincipled being” where Rousseau sees that “law and religion are unjust
restraints on natural man” (Strictures 25). This attitude underlies her system of education
as well when she asks, “Is it not a fundamental error to consider children as innocent
beings, whose little weaknesses may perhaps want some correction, rather than as beings
who bring into the world a corrupt nature and evil dispositions, which it should be the
great end of education to rectify?” (Strictures 40). More believes in the literalness of
original sin and supports the role of religion and culture in taming the wild beast, thus
revealing the conservative nature of her politics and her religion.

Let me not be supposed so to elevate politics, or so to depress religion, as to

make any comparison of the value of the one with the other, when I observe,

that between the true British patriot and the true Christian, there will be this

common resemblance: the more deeply each of them inquires, the more will

he be confirmed in his respective attachment, the one to his country, the other

to his religion. (Strictures 115)
More reveals her conservative nature by looking to the past for answers to these
problems, while linking the patriot and the Christian, as a good conservative would.

More addresses the connections among a woman's education, her spirituality and

her social status in this political hierarchy. She criticizes the current system of women’s

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education and asserts that women are being educated into vanity and frivolity, not into
useful Christianity and true patriotism. “To use their boasted power over mankind to no
higher purpose than the gratification of vanity or the indulgence of pleasure, is the
degrading triumph of those fair victims to luxury, caprice, and despotism. . . .” But she
adds,

I am not sounding an alarm to female warriors, nor exciting female

politicians: I hardly know which of the two is the most disgusting and

unnatural character. Propriety is . . . the first, the second, the third requisite.

A woman may be knowing, active, witty, and amusing; but without propriety

she cannot be amiable. Propriety is the centre in which all the lines of duty

and of agreeableness meet. (Strictures 12, 13)
This seems a straightforward slap to Wollstonecraft's introduction to Vindication who
calls for both warriors and politicians. Lest we doubt More's target, she discusses
Wollstonecraft directly in several passages, while refraining from mentioning her name.5

. . .a direct vindication of adultery was for the first time attempted by a woman,

a professed admirer and imitator of the German suicide Werter. The Female

Werter, as she is stiled by her biographers, asserts, in a work intitled, ‘The

Wrongs of Women [sic]’ that adultery is justifiable, and that the restrictions

placed on it by the laws of England constitute one of the Wrongs of Women.

(Strictures 32, her emphasis)
More condemns Wollstonecraft, her compatriots and seemingly all of Romantic literature
to hell: “Their's [sic] is an iniquity rather of phlegm than of spirit: and in the pestilent
atmosphere they raise about them, as in the infernal climate described by Milton, 'The
patching air/Bums frost, and frost performs the effect of fire” (Strictures 32). More
continues, “This cool, calculating, intellectual wickedness eats out the very heart and core

of virtue, and like a deadly mildew blights and shrivels the blooming promise of the

human spring” (Strictures 33). She sees a direct line between democratization and the

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fall of the social hierarchy which supports patriarchal life and the gendered separation of
political, spiritual and social behavior.

More continues her attack on Wollstonecraft through Paine: “The rights of man
have been discussed, til we are somewhat wearied with the discussion. To these have
been opposed, with more presumption than prudence, the rights of woman” (Strictures
75). With her comment, so similar to Gisbome's, More ridicules Wollstonecraft and
facetiously asks if the rights of children will be the next great issue. Two hundred years
later, of course, the answer is yes. She directly links the political with the spiritual: “Too
many consider Christianity rather as a political than a religious distinction; too many
claim the appellation of Christians, in mere opposition to that Democracy with which
they conceive infidelity to be associated. . .” (20). While More would not support the
democratic impulses at work in the eighteenth century, she also would not assert that
simple political conservatism equaled Christianity. She wants the explanation to be much
deeper.

The heart of More's argument appears in Chapter XIII:

The chief end to be proposed in cultivating the understandings of women, is to

qualify them for the practical purposes of life. Their knowledge is not often
like the learning of men, to be reproduced in some literary composition, nor
ever in any learned profession; but it is to come out in conduct. . . .The great
uses of study are to enable her to regulate her own mind, and to be useful to
others. (Strictures 143)
She uses the example of literary activity as more appropriate for men than for women, but
her point is broader. A woman's education should be designed to make her useful to

others, in control of herself and capable of serving a practical purpose. Knowledge for its

own sake is frivolous and vain for women, but a woman’s education should show itself

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through her conduct. Here More links education, moral behavior and spirituality in one
stroke.

Importantly, she states that a woman's education, and concomitantly her
spirituality, come out in the form of conduct. A woman's behavior, public and private, is
the sum of her spirituality and education, not simply the acting out of a political
philosophy. Improper reading leads to improper knowledge which leads women into
decadence. The irony in the passage is that More exempts herself from her own
discussion. She is the real woman of genius who must, through literary composition,
seek to improve the conduct of both men and other women. While showing that she has
read Rousseau and the German Romantics, More still separates the moral measure of the
sexes through education to conduct. Men might create; women only behave.

To emphasize her point about the connection between conduct and education,
More criticizes the excesses of women's education designed to help women “to allure and
to shine” (33). If women are educated only for this physical life, then the current
educational system is adequate, More argues, but if women are to be educated as
Christians with immortal souls with a spiritual future, then a great gap exists. Learning
the simple arts of pleasing through art, dancing or music is insufficient. The middle
classes need to educate women to fulfill the duties of their class, not to waste time with
trifles reserved for the wealthy and aristocratic. “Do we not educate them for a crown,
forgetting that they are to live at home? for the world, and not for themselves? for show,
and not for use? for time, and not for eternity?” (41). To begin to effect this change,
More criticizes the current state of women’s education and proceeds to offer a limited

reading list for young women.

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The swarms of Abridgments, Beauties, and Compendiums, which form
too considerable a part of a young lady's library, may be considered in
many instances as an infallible receipt for making a superficial mind. The
names of the renowned characters in history thus become familiar in the
mouths of those who can neither attach to the ideas of the person, the
series of his actions nor the peculiarities of is character. (89)

Here she directly disagrees with Bennett who has recommended Beauties as a valuable

 

tool in developing a woman’s ability to converse on historical topics. More goes on to
specifically recommend that young women read Watt's or Duncan's Logic, Locke's
“Essay on Human Understanding” and Bishop Butler's Analogy. She also argues that
both history and geography might tea’ch women about human fallibility and “may serve
to give a clearer insight into the corruption of human nature (96). In this
recommendation she refutes the position of some of the male conduct book writers who
see no place for such study in a woman's education. More argues effectively that,

Serious study serves to harden the mind for more trying conflicts; it lifts

the reader from sensation to intellect; it abstracts her from the world and

its vanities; it fixes a wandering spirit, and fortifies a weak one; it

divorces her from matter; it corrects that spirit of trifling which she

naturally contracts from the frivolous turn of female conversation, and the

petty nature of female employments. . . . (92)
She carefully avoids criticism of this position with another disclaimer: “Far be it from
me to desire to make scholastic ladies or female dialecticians. . . . Neither is there any
fear that this sort of reading will convert ladies into authors” (93). Her reason for
recommending a more solidly intellectual education for women is not to create more
women authors or more women scholars. She wishes to upgrade women’s understanding
to make them better Christians. More continues her attack speaking specifically on

Rousseau as one of these corruptors.

[The] writings of the French infidels. . . are now sedulously laboring to
destroy the religious principles of women, and in too many instances have

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fatally succeeded. For this purpose not only novels and romances have been

made the vehicles of vice and infidelity, but the same allurement has been

held out to the women of our country, which was employed by the first

philosophist to the first sinner —knowledge. Listen to the precepts of the

new German enlighteners and you need no longer remain in that situation in

which Providence has placed you! Follow their examples, and you shall be

permitted to indulge in all those gratifications which custom, not religion,

has tolerated in the male sex! (29, 30)

Knowledge for its own sake or knowledge which challenges cultural authority is not in
her plan. She attacks the novel as genre, eschewing its ability to teach morals, which is
her primary goal: “Novels, which chiefly used to be dangerous in one respect, are now
become mischievous in a thousand. They are continually shifting their ground, and
enlarging their sphere, and are daily becoming vehicles of wider mischief” (Strictures
25). Most of the writers of conduct books condemn novel reading in young women
because of the dangerous nature of its subjects, particularly the imaginative, potential,
romantic life. But More ventures to add that “It is surely not necessary to state, that no
disrespect can be here intended to those females of real genius and correct character,
some of whose justly admired writings in this kind are accurate histories of life and
manners, and striking delineations of character” (94). She asserts that there are novels
which might be valuable additions to a young woman's education.

More operates under the assumption that the second primary goal for educating
women at all is to make motherhood a powerful force for social and spiritual continuity.
More discusses the importance of women's roles in educating children, and she outlines a
plan for educating young women who will one day assume this role. “If you neglect this
your bounden duty, you will have effectually contributed to expel Christianity from her
last citadel [the English home]” (Strictures 38). Again, patriotic fervor and Christian

ideals are collapsed into one goal. Motherhood within the English family is the source of

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propagation for English Christianity. Once again readers find the words aligned here:
Duty, Conduct, Virtue, Education, Amiability, Patriotism.

Perhaps the question arises about the inclusion of amiability in a broader
discussion of Christian virtue and female spirituality. How can such an innocuous term
or characteristic be referred to as specifically Christian? More answers this succinctly;
women whose spirituality guides their behavior do not fall into the “impatience, levity,
and fickleness” (193) of which they are accused but will show that “true good nature is
the soul, of which politeness is only the gar ” (184). Virtues are the outward
manifestations of an inward spirituality, in this situation Christian, and these virtues are
fostered by an education which teaches beyond the surface of memorized facts. More
says that “The customs which fashion has established, when not in direct opposition to
what is right, should unquestionably be pursued in the education of ladies! Piety
maintains no natural war with elegance, and Christianity would be no gainer by making
her disciples unamiable” (51). True Christian ladies will exhibit the virtues of patience,
constancy, politeness, elegance and amiability and will have learned these through an
education proper for their station in the social world.

While politically and religiously aligned with More, Elizabeth Hamilton stands
somewhat apart from the other women in this study. Being a Scot and a member of the
Reform Church separates Hamilton from More, but Hamilton’s work, Letters Addres_s_ac_l
to the Daughter of a Nobleman, on the Formation of Religiamnd Moral Principle
(1806), is not unlike More’s work in addressing the different social classes. Her
philosophies of learning and education connect her with the Scottish Common Sense

schools, and her education certainly allows for it. She read William Paley and quotes

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him when she defines education: “Education . . . is the means employed to cultivate the
moral and intellectual faculties of human beings, to the degree that is requisite to render
the individual capable of fulfilling his religious and relative or social duties” (Series of
Popular Essays I, 38). She asserts that knowledge of these principles

1) forms a just estimate of our own abilities,

2) makes us careful in measuring the merits of our own or other's characters,

3) confirms faith in divine revelation, and

4) helps us know our own hearts so that we may improve them.
She is much concerned with human capabilities, particularly female capabilities, and
believes in continuing self-improvement. Her interest took practical shape in her work
with the Female House of Industry in Edinburgh, where young women could work and
earn a fair living, but she also wanted readers to remember intelligent and creative acts of
women in history, so she recorded some of their stories for posterity in Memoirs of the
Life of Agg'ppina, wife of Germanicus. She wanted to record a different kind of
woman’s story for future readers, to offer positive examples for how women might lead
more fulfilling lives.

Like More and other women authors of the time, Hamilton maintains the public
posture of female modesty. She says in Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton,

—a life which appears as void of incident and adventure, that to have

conceived the idea of leaving a sketch of it behind me, may seem ridiculous. I

am, however, convinced, that to my own sex at least it might convey

instruction. . . . (Memoirs 24)
She does not wish to seem too proud or too vain. Her goals are instructive and meek: her
biography might serve as a model for other young women. It was written of her by a

friend:

Even though most Scotchwomen read, and were not inferior to their southern
neighbors in general information and good taste, very few had ventured to

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incur the dangerous distinction of authorship. The vulgar term of 'blue
stocking,‘ was more hackneyed even in polished circles of our literary
metropolis, than you can easily imagine. It was, therefore, most fortunate for
the interests of her sex, that when an authoress did appear amongst us, she
should be one whose kind heart and unpretending manners, should set the
sneers of prejudice at defiance. (Memoirs 176-77)

Despite her extensive education, despite her incredible publication record, the most
important public statements made about Hamilton concern her Christian and feminine
demeanor. She is admired for her natural cheerfulness, the activity of her mind, and her
religion spiritual and practical (181). These are the qualities which all of the conduct
books outline as the virtues of a Christian woman. Maria Edgeworth says of Hamilton:

In recommending to her own sex the study of metaphysics, as far as it relates

to education, Mrs. Hamilton has been judiciously careful to avoid all that can

lead to that species of vain debate of which there is no end; she, knowing the

limits of the human understanding, does not attempt to go beyond them, into
that which can be at best but a dispute about terms. She does not aim at
making women expert in the wordy war; nor does she teach them to astonish
the unleamed by their acquaintance with the various vocabulary of
metaphysical system-makers: such juggler's tricks she despised; but she has
not, on the other hand, been deceived, or overawed, by those who would
represent the study of the human mind as one that tends to no practical

purpose, and that is unfit and unsafe for her sex. (Memoirs 210-211)
Edgeworth acknowledges the debate over appropriate study for women, calls it semantic,
and then asserts that Hamilton would not be a part of the fight. She would not toss
women into the “wordy war.” Hamilton does, however, include metaphysics in her
suggested education for women, a radical step in itself.

Hamilton bases her recommendations for women's education on her own
experience and comments on the general attitudes toward women's education when she
explains the responses of others when women read:

Mrs. Marshall [her guardian], on discovering what had been her private

occupation, expressed neither praise nor blame, but quietly advised her to
avoid any display of superior knowledge, by which she might be subjected

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to the imputation of pedantry. . . . [Hamilton] once hid a volume of Lord
Karne's Elements of Criticism under the cushion of a chair, lest she should
be detected in a study which prejudice and ignorance might pronounce
unfeminine. (Memoirs 50)

While not approving of or following the gender guidelines for study, Hamilton
acknowledges their pervasiveness and the element of gender-prejudice inherent in
them.

Logically, then, in Letters on the Elementary Principles of Educflon, Hamilton
outlines a less restrictive plan for the education of women than More does. She does not,
however, propose equal education for the sexes but supports personal and intellectual
development for women “to the highest perfections of which they are capable” (Letters 1-
2). This position is similar to More's in recognizing the natural abilities of ordinary and
extraordinary women. Hamilton supports the teaching of the traditional activities to all
women, but they are supported in terms of the ultimate calling of womanhood, i.e.
motherhood. She defines the nature of a woman’s most important task as spiritual.

That the direction given to desire and aversion must conduct to virtue or to

vice, is a consideration so serious, as to call our attention to every minute

circumstance by which it can be influenced. And if it be by means of early

and powerful associations that the desires and aversions of the heart are

principally excited, it necessarily follows, that to watch over the associations

that are formed in the infant mind, becomes the first and most momentous of

the maternal duties. (Letters 16)

But guiding children into virtue is not the only demand which Hamilton places on young
mothers. She adds,

Were the prejudices which prevent the due consideration of its importance to

be happily removed, it would become a primary object of solicitude to the

Christian and the patriot, to raise the female mind to a sense of dignity of a

situation, which enables it not only to effect the happiness or misery of

individuals, but to influence the character of nations, and ameliorate the
condition of the human race” (Letters 17).

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Hamilton states that the education of women should be a priority for Christians and
patriots. Her call for reform in women's education is not esoteric; she wishes to bring
the practical effects of education to work in the raising of children into Christian behavior
and in the preserving of British culture.

Just as More does, Hamilton links education with virtue and spirituality. She
outlines the desirable virtues in _L_e_t_t_e_rs_: benevolence, gentleness, truthfulness, politeness
(“exquisite observance of the feelings of others” 99), filial duty, Divine obedience, and a
sense of justice. As she discusses these virtues, Hamilton explains how a proper
education can teach these. She also outlines vices and shows how a poor education can
encourage non-Christian behavior. “We must take care that they are not taught to
consider the duties of religion as separate and distinct from the common concerns of life.
. . . We accordingly hear from infant lips, the cant of sensibility, the cant of taste, the cant
of sentiment, the cant of religion” (Leira 280). Hamilton argues that true spirituality
goes beyond form and influences all behavior; she is deeply concerned that religious
show not make people “pretenders to God's favour” (281).

Religious admonition and direction are typical in didactic writing of the time, and
Hamilton blends with these a clear understanding of educational principles. In this
conduct book and in her other writings, she attacks the ordinary education which women
received by asserting, “When you repeat what you have learnt by heart, without knowing
or attending to the meaning, do you at that time make any use of the understanding in
which are you superior to parrots and monkeys?” (Examples Part II “Divine Attributes to
Impress the Heart” 50). Her answers teach readers to differentiate between instruction

and education. Education teaches one “to analyze, draw out (educo) and cultivate as far

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as can be done, the various powers of the understanding and the affections” (Examples
iii). None of the other conduct books in this study make this distinction. With questions
such as these and with goals so lofty, Hamilton guides the reader through a variety of
practical and spiritual lessons teaching, among other things, the importance of performing
one's duty in the world. In doing this, Hamilton refutes the statements in books written
by men. Repeatedly, the men distinguish between the intellectual tasks and subjects
appropriate for men and appropriate for women. Hamilton, here, says that women and
men should pursue learning into as many areas and to as high a level as they are capable
but always with the practical application of such learning in mind, to promote happiness
through virtue.

But as knowledge is only valuable in proportion as it has a tendency to

promote social and individual happiness, by giving new motives to virtue,

and thus extending the influence of the benevolent affections and

counteracting or extirpating the malevolent, it follows, that whatever

produces a tendency to the malevolent passions, defeats the noblest

purposes for which knowledge has ever been acquired. (Letters 61-62)
These comments, interestingly enough, echo Wollstonecraft's similar statements in

Vindication. Support for this connection is found in Hamilton's 1800 satire, Memoirs of

the Modern Philosophers, where she refers to Wollstonecraft as “the very sensible

authoress” and spares her the harsh critique so apparent in more conservative writers.6
This comment, representing numerous of her expressed views, aligns Hamilton, despite
their theological and political separation, with Wollstonecraft. Hamilton, closely
connected to the Common Sense philosophies and pragmatic in her Christianity and her
educational theories, is a step closer to Wollstonecraft’s radicalism and a step removed

from the more blatantly evangelical writing of Hannah More.

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Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Womaa is distinctly different
from the works of More and Hamilton and generally more appealing to Mentieth-century
readers. As Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace demonstrates in Their Fathers' Daughtersalate
twentieth-century readers identify more easily with Wollstonecraft than with more
didactic women of the late eighteenth century like More or Hamilton. Contemporary
readers seem more comfortable discussing the political aspects of women's station than
relying on Christian doctrine or religious phraseology to make their arguments.
Contemporary readers feel an ambiguity toward righteousness, and, as Wayne Booth says
in The Rhetoric of Fiction, “Many of us find it embarrassing to talk of emotions based on
moral judgment at all, particularly when the emotions have any kind of affirmative cast”
(260).

On the condition of women in the eighteenth century, Wollstonecraft does not
hesitate to speak directly and openly and with strong moral judgment. She writes of her
fellow Englishwomen as “mere dolls” (145), participants in legal prostitution (60, 148),
slaves to their husbands to whom they offer “the fawning fondness of spaniel-like
affection” (141), and “standing dishes to which every glutton may have access” (138).
Her criticism of woman as a cultural product is scathing in moral, educational, and social
terms. Women socialized into such a condition cannot be considered virtuous by
Wollstonecraft's definition. Despite the hundreds of conduct books written about proper
education, Wollstonecraft finds the condition of women in England pathetic and makes
public her criticism of a system which produces such women.

She blames, among other institutions, the education offered to women. In

practical areas, Wollstonecraft, like Hamilton, rejects education by memorization, the

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primary educational method employed in women's education. She asserts that a girl's
education has consisted of routine memorization of facts without the necessary
development of reason to critique these. “The memory is loaded with unintelligible
words, to make a shew of, without the understanding's acquiring any distinct ideas; but
only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of mind, which
teaches young people how to begin to think” (Vindication 163). Wollstonecraft does not
believe that the prevalent education qualifies as true cultivation of mind, and without true
cultivation, virtue cannot develop and criticism of women logically follows.

Educated then in worse than Egyptian bondage, it is unreasonable, as well as

cruel to upbraid them with faults that can scarcely be avoided, unless a degree

of native vigour be supposed, that falls to the lot of very few amongst mankind.

For instance, the severest sarcasms have been levelled [sic] against the sex,

and they have been ridiculed for repeating 'a set of phrases learnt by rote,’

when nothing could be more natural, considering the education they receive,

and that their 'highest praise is to obey, unargued'—the will of man. If they be

not allowed to have reason sufficient to govern their own conduct—why, all

they learn—must be learned by rote! (Vindication 117)
Quoting Swift and Milton, respectively, in this passage, Wollstonecraft is on common
ground with More and Hamilton advocating for a more rigorous reading regime.
Wollstonecraft condemns ornamental education as insipid and consisting of the niceties
of accomplishment, denying the support given to it by some male writers: “From the
same source flows an opinion that young girls ought to dedicate great part of their time to
needle-work; yet, this employment contracts their faculties more than any other that
could have been chosen for them, by confining their thoughts to their persons”
(Vindication 75). She wishes to expand the parameters of women’s education to move

women beyond themselves. Pursuits other than needlework would contribute to this

growth.

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Gardening, experimental philosophy, and literature, would afford them

subjects to think of and matter for conversation, that in some degree would

exercise their understanding. The conversation of French women, who are not

so rigidly nailed to their chairs to twist lappets, and knot ribands [sic], is

frequently superficial; but, I contend, that it is not half so insipid as that of

those English women whose time is spent in making caps, bonnets, and the

whole mischief of trimmings, not to mention shopping, bargain-hunting, &c.

&c. (Vindication 75-76)
Wollstonecraft insists that knowledge and understanding are vital for the development of
virtue. Virtue cannot be cultivated in ignorance. In radical terms, she applies this
concept to both sexes and for sex education as well, a step which opens her work to even
greater ridicule and condemnation. She wishes to erase the gendered nature of virtue as it
is understood by eighteenth-century Christians and the gender-specific education which
produces it. The outcome of such a gender-less education seems obvious to her:

In this plan of education the constitution of boys would not be ruined by

the early debaucheries, which now make men so selfish, or girls rendered

weak and vain, by indolence, and frivolous pursuits. But, I presuppose, that

such a degree of equality should be established between the sexes as would

shut out gallantry and coquetry, yet allow friendship and love to temper the

heart for the discharge of higher duties. (Vindication 169)
A stronger, more egalitarian and co-ed education would lead to a stronger display of virtue
by both men and women, argues Wollstonecraft. “Consequently, the most perfect
education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to
strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to
attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent” (Vindication 21). In this she
agrees with Hamilton: let each grow to her own potential. It is through this growth that
virtue is nourished. Intellectual, physical and spiritual development are conjoined,

coordinated efforts. True development would lead to “dignified beauty and true grace”

(171). In her paraphrase of scripture which says that women should consider that their

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bodies are temples of God, Wollstonecraft uses the popular icon—The Body as Temple of

Virtue.
A Christian has still nobler motives to incite her to preserve her chastity and
acquire modesty, for her body has been called the Temple of the living God;
of that God who requires more than modesty of mien. His eye searcheth the
heart. . . . (Vindication 130)

Chastity becomes, then, not a means to worldly ends, but a higher virtue stemming

from a genuine modesty and a desire to live up to the expectations of God.

She carries this discussion further as she attacks the cultural definition which

equates virtue with chastity and says that for a young woman to maintain any semblance

of virtue, she must be chaste.7 Wollstonecraft blames most of the wrongs of woman on
the greed, immodesty and sexual appetite of men. She explains:

The leading principles which run through all of my disquisitions, would

render it unnecessary to enlarge on this subject, if a constant attention to keep

the varnish of the character fresh, and in good condition, were not often

inculcated as the sum total of female duty; if rules to regulate the behaviour,

and to preserve the reputation, did not too frequently supersede moral

obligations. But with respect to reputation, the attention is confined to a

single virtue—chastity. If the honour of a woman, as it is absurdly called, be

safe, she may neglect every social duty; nay, ruin her family by gaming and

extravagance; yet still present a shameless front—for truly she is an

honourable woman! (Vindication 136-37)
Obviously, Wollstonecraft is infuriated by this sort of reasoning. She wants to move both
men and women beyond a discussion of chastity and into a closer examination of what
makes a man or woman truly virtuous. “For I will venture to assert, that all the causes of
female weakness, as well as depravity, which I have already enlarged on, branch out of
one grand cause—want of chastity in men” (Vindication 138). She advocates teaching

children of both sexes to be more modest, saying that the sexual freedom of men

undermines the character of both sexes.

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In arguing for a direct connection between a woman's education and the virtue she
exhibits, Wollstonecraft says that any education which does not prepare a woman for real
thought does not prepare her for real religious experience. Anything less subverts true
religion. She repeatedly emphasizes the necessity of educating women to make them
virtuous. She does not see true virtue in the traditional, passive roles assigned to women.
“Women, commonly called Ladies, are not to be contradicted in company, are not
allowed to exert any manual strength; and from them the negative virtues only are
expected, when any virtues are expected, patience, docility, good-humour, and flexibility;
virtues incompatible with any vigorous exercise of intellect” (Vindication 58).
Wollstonecraft shows that the typical virtues assigned to women are negative or passive
ones.

This passivity and the constraint of intellectual exploration also reach into
women's spiritual lives. Wollstonecraft, again, contradicts the concept so common in
conduct books by men that religious thought is not the province of women.

If it [religion] be merely the refuge of weakness or wild fanaticism, and not

a governing principle of conduct, drawn from self-knowledge, and a rational

opinion respecting the attributes of God, what can it be expected to

produce? The religion which consists in warming the affections, and

exalting the imagination, is only the poetical part, and may afford the

individual pleasure without rendering it a more moral being. (Vindication

114-15)

Wollstonecraft asserts that the works of Gregory, et al., undermine the very core of
women's value as human beings by refuting their ability to evaluate and believe. Not

only do these other works bar a woman from reaching her intellectual potential, but they

separate her from the experience of any true spiritual life.

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Wollstonecraft not only criticizes the education and religious lives made available
to women, she goes so far as to say that even under the guise of religious instruction,
women are taught behaviors contradictory to the expressed virtues. Wollstonecraft wants
men and women alike to exhibit the virtues of affection, amiability, modesty, chastity,
devotion and benevolence. She attacks what she terms dissimulation as it is taught in the
standard conduct books and asserts that women must see beyond the decorum of behavior
and into its heart. Wollstonecraft appreciates Bennett's arguments and his defense of ill-
prepared women, particularly as it relates to dissimulation and takes up the argument
against Chesterfield. She believes that Chesterfield focuses on women’s vices and
weaknesses and especially as they might be manipulated by men. Her attack is direct.

Taking a view of the different works which have been written on education,

Lord Chesterfield's Letters must not be silently passed over. Not that I mean

to analyze his unmanly, immoral system, or even to cull any of the useful,

shrewd remarks which occur in his epistles—No, I only mean to make a few

reflections on the avowed tendency of them—the art of acquiring an early

knowledge of the world. An art, I will venture to assert, that preys secretly,

like the worm in the bud, on the expanding powers, and turns to poison the

generous juices which should mount with vigour in the youthful frame,
inspiring warm affections and great resolves (Vindication 106).

 

Sounding significantly like William Blake's “The Sick Rose,” Wollstonecraft worries
about the worldliness that comes too soon to many young people, and she interestingly
“unsexes” Chesterfield and those like him by calling his code of behavior not only
immoral but unmanly.

But, like More and Hamilton and most of the writers of the conduct books,
Wollstonecraft makes her more radical position palatable to Christian readers when she
calls on God to guide her, her readers and the nation.

Gracious Creator of the whole human race! hast thou created such a being as
woman, who can trace thy wisdom in thy works, and feel that thou alone art

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by thy nature exalted above her,—for no better purpose?—Can she believe
that she was only made to submit to man, her equal, a being, who, like her,
was sent into the world to acquire virtue?—Can she consent to be occupied
merely to please him; merely to adorn the earth, when her soul is capable of
rising to thee?—And can she rest supinely dependent on man for reason, when
she ought to mount with him the arduous steeps of knowledge?—

(Vindication 67)

Wollstonecraft's obvious answer to the questions in this prayer is no.

Wollstonecraft outlines the problems which grow out of woman's inadequate
education and her dependency on the support of a husband or brother. She uses Christian
terminology to support her theories just as More and Hamilton do. Wollstonecraft wants
to improve the lot of woman by erasing that invisible and impenetrable gender boundary
which More and others work so hard to maintain: “for I here throw down my gauntlet,
and deny the existence of sexual virtues. . .” (Vindication 51) and

I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless

where love animates the behaviour. For this distinction is, I am firmly

persuaded, the foundation of the weakness of character ascribed to woman; is

the cause why the understanding is neglected, whilst accomplishments are

acquired with sedulous care: and the same cause accounts for their preferring

the graceful before the heroic virtues. (Vindication 57)

To achieve her ends, Wollstonecraft outlines a most specific directive on female
education. Her entire chapter “On National Education” erases many of the distinctions
between male and female education. She does not erase class distinctions or assert that
boys and girls need the same education, but she does call for co-education with children
studying common subjects until they are divided at a later age (usually by class). “In
order to open their faculties they should be excited to think for themselves; and this can
only be done by mixing a number of children together, and making them jointly pursue

the same objects” (Vindication 157). She argues that attending day schools while living

at home promotes the'development of virtue in young girls. “The only way to avoid two

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extremes equally injurious to morality, would be to contrive some way of combining a
public and private education” Vindication 158). She argues that, out of this hybrid
process of education, public affections and public virtues would grow and “must ever
grow out of the private character” ( Vindication 162).

it It all

What stories do the conduct books by women tell about the nature of women and
the expected nature of their lives? While there are principles common to all of the works
examined here, the women writers differ from the men in several fundamental ways.
These differences begin to tell a new story for women’s spiritual and social lives.

More is clearly the most conservative of these women, yet her criticism of the
standard education of the day is clear. She supports the idea of gendered virtues, but she
does not believe that women should be necessarily limited in what they read and what
they learn. While wanting to protect basic femininity as it was defined in the culture, she
understands that women are rational as well as emotional creatures. Their intellectual
and spiritual lives should reflect this.

Hamilton walks a middle ground between More and Wollstonecraft. Her
considerations for improvement in women’s lives focus on education but also on the
practical working-out of responsibilities and life’s daily duties. Like More, her basic
tenet is Christian and traditional, although as an intellectual woman she supports more
strenuous academic work for women who are capable.

Wollstonecraft wishes to eliminate the idea of gendered virtue and in doing so, to

open all fields to women as they are capable. Her position would support the theological

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development of women generally by educating women in religion beyond the exercise of

the emotion involved in regular worship.
How do these positions vary from the tenets established by the male writers?
—obey all authority: While More and Hamilton would support the directive to
obey God and State, they would not necessarily include every man as a woman’s
authority figure.
—maintain feminine softness, both physically and temperamentally: More and
Hamilton would support behavior protecting women’s temperament, but neither
they nor Wollstonecraft recommend maintaining physical softness. They
recognize the importance of physical health and strength.
—maintain an air of innocence and charm to please others: All three women
might support this principle, believing that innocence and charm might be signs of
a true Christian spirit. None of the women would support this idea if innocence is
defined as ignorance of the world.
—possess the specific virtues assigned to one’s gender: These women tend to be
less supportive of specific feminine virtues and move toward creating one list of
virtues for all human beings. Wollstonecraft is the only one to state this directly.
More and Hamilton, as Claudia Johnson says, are maintaining these boundaries
while they simultaneously move beyond them.
—learn about the world but avoid intellectual rigor. As intellectuals themselves,
these writers struggle with the persona of public figure. They recommend more
education and stronger education for women, generally, but More and Hamilton

avoid making their statements too strongly.

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—follow parents’ advice in choosing a spouse: Wollstonecraft would be the least
likely to support this idea. She believes in Christian guidelines for respecting
parents, but she also believes that parents must respect and help their children.
The primary difference, then, in the view of the women writers, is that all women
must evaluate the advice they are given, regardless of its source.
-—marry and have children: Ironically, Wollstonecraft is the only one of the three
women here to marry or have children. Clearly, these women found a way to
narrate their own lives outside of this particular cultural norm.
—be an entertaining and lively partner: Again, Wollstonecraft is the only one to
marry. Hamilton and More would perhaps support the idea that every person
should seek to be an interesting companion to others.
—raise children into the dominant culture: More and Hamilton support this claim
insofar as the dominant culture is Christian and British. All of these women state
that the greatest duty of womanhood is motherhood.
—participate in Christian, British culture: All three participate in both private and
public arenas. Hamilton and Wollstonecraft are more apt to participate through
criticism of the culture, but even More asserts that the education given to women
does not prepare them to become actively involved in the world in which they
live, whether spiritual or social.
Generally, these three women blur the boundaries defined and supported by the male
cOncluct book writers. They work to achieve more freedom in women’s ordinary lives
through education and practice of an active Christianity.

How might an active spirituality for women be defined?

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The Revised Story of Women's Spirituality

Feminist theologians of the latter twentieth century have been carving new
spiritual territories for women. In these new territories, the feminist theologians describe,
categorize and outline the spiritual lives that have been available to women historically
and then write new narratives for future spirituality for women. Their goals are to
explore their own spirituality through their own lenses to achieve more, to act more, in
public and private spaces, or in other words, to find appropriate and personally acceptable
ways to act out their own faith. These actions transform the traditional avenues of
spirituality, offering women an understanding of the depth of their own experience, a
depth of self-consciousness about their own lives, permitting them to move beyond the
strictures of private living and private Christianity and taking them into more public
spheres of action. They are building, of course, on hundreds of years of alienation from
decision-making on spiritual issues. They are creating a spirituality for women which
moves women out of passive roles and into active roles of creating and naming their own
religious experiences.

In the eighteenth century, however, social structure, the Church of England,
common practice and thought, and the status quo of conservative patriarchy all strictly
defined women's roles, spiritual or otherwise. Women, confined by the strength of these
bonds, could make few overt moves to stretch beyond the established boundaries into
new arenas of action. The conduct books by men tended to support the status quo of
women's spiritual and secular experience. Gisbome's position is the most traditional and
religiously conservative of those presented here. While both Bennett and Gregory were

physicians by profession and wrote their conduct books out of personal and cultural

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concern, Gisbome was a member of the clergy with official standing and power. They
all, however, supported three issues important in the traditional expressions of women's
spirituality.

The first of these three issues is the emphasis on the gender-specific nature of
human virtues. The received story of women's spirituality indicates the passive nature of
virtues assigned to women: modesty, obedience, chastity, and amiability, for example.
These virtues tend to reflect a virtue by omission of sin, not a proactive virtue of doing.

A woman's spiritual life consisted of obeying God by obeying the men in her life. While
certain acts of charity might be considered active, boundaries of sensibility and delicacy
keep potential acts of charity from ranging too far afield to be proper for a woman.

The second major point of agreement on women's spirituality is the limitation
placed on a woman's formal education. Just as there are gendered virtues, there are
gendered intellectual fields appropriate to each sex. This intellectual boundary by default
limits the extent of a woman's true understanding of any ideas deeply religious or
philosophical. Exploration in the arenas designated appropriate for men could damage a
woman's value by diminishing her femininity. According to the conservative writers of
conduct books, true women accept the emotional experience of practiced religion, such as
listening to moving sermons, without conceming themselves with the depths of spiritual
study or the conflicts apparent in multiple theologies. A woman’s concern should center
on being a caring neighbor or serving as a good example to her family.

The third point in women's traditional religious expression concerns another
omission. Where men might grow spiritually through experience and study, women have

no similar paths for spiritual questing. A woman's focus should be on her family and her

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conduct on earth. Her spiritual reward comes to her through her obedience and good
behavior; she does not quest for spiritual answers; she does not expose herself to the
possibility of doubt or to the possibility of being “unsexed” by too much masculine study.
The conduct books written by women begin to subvert this standard of woman as
passive receiver of spirituality. Even a conservative evangelical writer like Hannah More
takes women's potential for action farther than the men who write conduct books. Despite
her arguments to the contrary, More's ideal women take a measure of control of their own
spiritual destinies, even when their economic destinies might suffer. Their actions may be
public or private; they may include solitary moments of reflection and decision-making;
they may be composed of action which no one else sees. The active spirituality she
describes is one step away from the passive lives described by the male conduct book
writers. Elizabeth Hamilton, with her pragmatic, common-sense approach, moves beyond
More's defined spirituality. She asserts that the lives being lived belong to women and
that women should expect a decent education and a decent living, depending on their
class, and that spirituality is theirs to investigate, to understand, and to act upon. She
approaches the idea that a woman's quest in life to find her own person is as much of a
spiritual searching as a secular one. Of course Wollstonecraft is the most radical of the
women writers. The fundamental difference between the philosophies of Wollstonecraft
and More is their view of human nature. Even though their advice is similar, often
offering the same solutions to problems in women's education, Wollstonecraft aligns
herself with French philosophes who view natural man as good and perfectible while
society is the corrupting influence. To more conservative writers like More, society and

education are the guiding influences on the naturally corrupt human being; she believes in

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original sin. Wollstonecraft wants to use education, not to create greater limits on women,
but to open new possibilities for women's lives by educating them to change the world, to
allow women the freedoms of education, religious involvement, secular success and
public expressions of self.

This active spirituality is contrary to the eighteenth-century idea of woman's
spirituality. Christian womanhood, with its ordained and approved behaviors, accessible
to twentieth-century readers in a variety of forms including the conduct books, shows a
spiritual life devoid of excitement and discovery. Spiritual quests did not exist for
women and would have been a laughable idea to conservative conduct book writers. But
the women who also wrote these books pushed gently or forcibly against the cultural
restraints and presented a potential variation in the boundaries of a woman's spiritual life.
Turning then to Austen, readers might see how she manipulates the spirituality of the
conduct books through her characters' lives and continues to rewrite the story of women's

spiritual and social quests which More, Hamilton and Wollstonecraft have begun.

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Notes
1See Duckworth and Sulloway particularly.

2 Perhaps he refers to the debate heated by Wollstonecraft's Vindication in 1792,
or to the scandal surrounding her name during the political trials of William Stone, or to
her attempted suicides. Wollstonecraft died in 1797, the year of Duties' publication.

3This seems borne out by Austen's response in a letter to Cassandra, dated 30
August 1805, in which she says that she is pleased with Gisbome's work despite the fact
that she had “quite determined not to read it.” Jane Austen's Letters, collected and edited
by R. W. Chapman. 1, 47.

4Mrs. Vesey , apocryphally perhaps, invited Benjamin Stillingfleet to one of her
'Sundays.’ He declined saying that he lacked appropriate dress. She responded that he
could come in his blue stockings, i. e. his ordinary worsted stockings.

5 Emphasis within the quotation is More's. Wollstonecraft's The Wrongs of
Wm. or Maria was published posthumously in 1798.

6 See Claire Tomalin's The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft for other
contemporary responses to Wollstonecraft's work.

7Mary Poovey's The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer examines the historical
development of this attitude.

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Chapter Three
Sense and Sensibility:

The Prototype of a Quest
Assumptions

Beginning this discussion of Austen’s novels requires a drawing together of some
of the critical and historical materials presented in Chapters One and Two. These
materials are the groundwork for discussing the spiritual and social quests in which
Austen’s heroines participate. Several key assumptions guide this work.

First, Austen’s work is fundamentally feminist. Review of the past thirty years of
Austen criticism supports this, although no one definition of her feminism has been
reached. Feminist critics continue to examine the complexity of Austen’s novels and
characters, and while some, like Julia Brown, doubt the validity of some feminist
criticism, most critics agree that Austen’s novels are feminist examinations of women’s
lives in early nineteenth-century English culture and the constraints of the culture on their
lives.

Second, Carol Christ, as a feminist theologian, has designed a heuristic for
examining women’s spiritual and social quests. This heuristic provides a framework for
talking about spirituality, especially as that spirituality is feminist and is exhibited in
literary works. The structure of the quest, as Christ defines it, is more often recursive
than linear. This recursive nature reflects a woman’s struggle to reach self-actualization.
The spiritual and social aspects of the quest are inseparable, and a woman on such a quest
reaches no conclusion, no final pinnacle of spiritual or social success. She spends her life
forever reaching, moving and re-moving through the stages Christ has outlined:

nothingness, awakening, insight and naming.

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The third assumption guiding this dissertation concerns methods for determining
the level and identifying the nature of one’s spirituality. In addition to a belief in or
experience of the Divine in human existence, spirituality, generally, involves a working-
out of itself in external behaviors and value system. One method for examining
spirituality, then, considers a character’s value and belief systems. Outward behavior or
exhibition of virtue can show one’s spirituality. Readers can begin to judge a character’s
spirituality by external behaviors and direct statements which reveal beliefs and value
systems. These statements, behaviors and beliefs simultaneously guide characters
through life quests and reveal the nature of those quests as the characters seek answers to
life’s greatest questions.

These assumptions underlie the following examinations of four representative
Austen novels: Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, _E_m_ma and Persuasion. I will
consider each heroine’s belief system as it is apparent in her behavior and in her espoused
values, how her individual virtues contribute to her ability to participate in a genuine
spiritual quest, and what stages of Christ’s spiritual and social quest are evident in each
novel. Through this research, I would like to examine to what extent Austen’s novels
portray a new narrative for spiritual and social questing, particularly for her nineteenth-
century readers.

Before considering the details of Sense and Sensibility, two questions stemming

 

from these three basic assumptions must be addressed. First, what are the external
behaviors which reflect internal spirituality? Second, how is internal spirituality
translated into external moral behavior? Answers to these questions can be found in the

work of Immanuel Kant, the reigning eighteenth-century voice in philosophical analyses

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of morality. Kant defines moral behavior in Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics
of Morals (1798) when he explains “good will” and its relationship to duty and virtue. In
essence, he asserts that morality is based not on the outcomes of behaviors but on the
initial impulse which guides the behavior.

A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its

aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the

volition, that is, it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be esteemed

much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favor of any

inclination, nay, even of the Stun total of all inclinations. (l 8)

He goes on to say that “[Reason’s] true destination must be to produce a will, not merely
good as a means to something else, but good in itself, for which reason was absolutely
necessary” (21, his emphasis).

Alisdair Maclntyre's work, After Virtue begins with the thesis that an
understanding of morality and moral behavior, especially as Kant defined it, has been lost
between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, stating that the language of moral
behavior has been retained but a true understanding of it has not. As Maclntyre asserts,
Kantian philosophy of the eighteenth century says that using other people as a means to
one's personal ends is immoral behavior. Kant distinguishes moral behavior from
immoral behavior on this basis of motive. Any manipulative actions taken against other
people, to serve selfish purposes, are immoral, according to Kant and according to

eighteenth-century standards of accepted social behavior. Maclntyre says, “It [the will to

be moral] is to be unwilling to influence another except by reasons which that other he or

she judges to be good” (23). With or without direct influence from Kant, Austenl,
according to Maclntyre, seems to support this premise as one of the signs of moral

behavior.

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Maclntyre defines a virtue as “an acquired human quality the possession and
exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to
practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods”
(178). This definition is key to understanding the connection between moral behavior
and women's spiritual and social questing. For Austen, these acquired human qualities
(specifically constancy, amiability, self-knowledge, and attention to duty) define moral
behavior and are the fundamental values apparent in each of her novels, evidenced by
both the authorial voice and the characters’ actions. Maclntyre defines constancy in
Austen’s work as “a virtue the possession of which is a prerequisite for the possession of
other virtues” and amiability as a virtue wherein it was possible for “the possessor . . . to
have a certain real affection for people as such. (It matters here that Jane Austen is a
Christian)” (183). He later elaborates on the nature of self-knowledge in Austen’s work,
calling it “a Christian rather than a Socratic self-knowledge which can only be achieved
through a kind of repentance “ (241). Maclntyre says, “The intent of Jane Austen’s
theory of the virtues . . . [emphasizes] how profoundly Christian her moral vision is”
(185). As a writer of her time, Austen’s moral vision is Christian; in her work, readers
may discern a blending of Kantian philosophy and Anglican spirituality. In a spiritual
quest, the attendant virtues so important to Austen and their acquisition might serve as
outward symbols of an inner success; however, nothing guarantees that such virtuous
behavior might lead to worldly success. Indeed, virtuous behavior may be highly
unfashionable and unsuccessful in the world that Austen reflects. A successfirl spiritual

quest, in Christ’s terms, may or may not be aligned with a successful social quest.

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As Maclntyre explains, the Christian call to moral behavior offers no guarantee of
ultimate physical happiness:

. . . Kant rejects the view that the test of a proposed maxim is whether

obedience to it would in the end lead to the happiness of a rational being. . . .

all men do indeed desire happiness; and he has no doubt that the highest good

conceivable is that of the individual's moral perfection crowned by the

happiness which it merits. But . . . our conception of happiness is too vague

and shifting to provide a reliable moral guide. Moreover any precept designed

to secure our happiness would be an expression of a rule holding only

conditionally; it would instruct to do such-and-such, if [it] would in fact lead

to happiness as a result. Whereas Kant takes it to be the case that all genuine

expressions of the moral law have an unconditional categorical character.

They do not enjoin us hypothetically; they simply enjoin us. (After Virtue 44)
Austen's heroines are enjoined by their writer to exhibit this fundamentally Christian and
outwardly moral character, exhibiting the virtues of constancy, self-knowledge,
amiability and sense of duty; they are enjoined to exhibit this character regardless of its
immediate benefit. Her heroines search for fulfillment in a world which does not
acknowledge a woman's potential for such spiritual searching. Kant's eighteenth-century
definitions of morality and happiness pervade Austen's works, where her heroines
sometimes suffer material and emotional losses while keeping their senses of duty and
obedience intact.

Inversely and importantly, a lack of the virtues of constancy, amiability, attention
to duty and self-knowledge prevents a woman from undertaking a spiritual quest. She
must have the moral character, or in Kant's terms, the will to good, to enter into the
spiritual debate, to participate on any level in a spiritual quest. This idea, that one's
spirituality is apparent in one's possession of particular virtues, serves as the nexus for a

comparison of Austen's heroines to the heroines who might be created from conduct book

definitions of a virtuous woman. In the gaps between these two types of heroines,

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readers may discern how Austen sketches out new territory for women's spiritual lives
and shows that women might participate in spiritual quests.

According to Maclntyre, Austen, therefore, holds a special place in modern
letters. He sees her as a writer who blends seemingly discordant moral philosophies into
a cohesive pattern of virtue and behavior.

We thus have at least three very different conceptions of a virtue to

confront: a virtue is a quality which enables an individual to discharge his

or social role (Homer); a virtue is a quality which enables an individual to

move towards the achievement of the specifically human telos, whether

natural or supernatural (Aristotle, the New Testament and Aquinas); a

virtue is a quality which has utility in achieving earthly and heavenly

success (Franklin). (After Virtue 185)

These three philosophies are at work in Austen's fictional worlds illuminating the nature
of spiritual and social quests, particularly as the two quests undergird each other or
merge. Austen's concern with duty serves both the Homeric and Christian ideals of
obligation to others or to one's community. While in Kantian terms they need not do so,
for Austen, the outcomes of virtuous behavior ultimately lead her heroines to their earthly
success, reaching their classical and Christian, spiritual and social goals simultaneously.

As he elaborates more specifically on eighteenth-century views on morality,
Maclntyre interprets Kant's moral philosophy in this way:

. . .if the rules of morality are rational, they must be the same for all

rational beings, in just the way that the rules of arithmetic are; and if the

rules of morality are binding on all rational beings, then the contingent

ability of such beings to carry them out must be unimportant — what is

important is their will to carry them out. (After Virtue 43-44)

In determining moral behavior, motive and intent are all. When seeking the good of

others guides a character's behavior, then that character is exhibiting true amiability,

fundamental to Christian ideals. On the other hand, when self-interest guides a

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character's behavior, then that character is exhibiting a philosophy grounded in greed, not
in sacrifice or caring. For example, in Sense and Sensibility. readers see the success of a
young woman who operates solely from a sense of self-interest:

The whole of Lucy's behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned

it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an

earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be
apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no

other sacrifice than that of time and conscience.2
Characters like Lucy, who lack amiability, are questing only for social and material
success. They show no concern for or awareness of deeper spiritual principles which
might guide their behavior. Readers see no evidence of a spiritual quest.

Austen blends these perspectives on spiritual and social achievement, and, as she
does so, she approximates Christ's definition of spiritual and social questing, moving
through the stages of nothingness, awakening, insight and naming. Austen expresses a
woman's potential for spiritual searching beyond that defined by the conduct books while
maintaining a realistic perspective on providing for her heroines' physical and social
selves. Elinor Dashwood serves as the writer's first, full-scale attempt to explore such a
quest.

None of Austen’s successes in life, whether social, spiritual or financial, seem to
have come easily. Sense apd Sensibility, part of her earliest work, must have seemed like
a great triumph. Although it was sixteen years in coming to publication, Sense and

Sensibilig began as an epistolary novel, Elinor and Marianne in 1795. Austen says of

 

Sense and Sensibiligy, “. . . I am never too busy to think of Sense and Sensibility. I can
no more forget it, than a mother can forget her sucking child . . . . I think she [a potential

reader] will like my Elinor. . .” (Letters 25 April 1811). Austen expresses a writer's

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tender attachment to the novel and to her heroine, Elinor Dashwood, and she still speaks

of the novel’s success two years later: “You will be glad to hear that every Copy of S. &

S. is sold & that it has brought me £140—besides the Copyright, if that shd ever be of
any value—I have now therefore written myself into £259.—which only makes me long
for more (Lettis 3 - 6 July 1813). The novel and its heroine thus brought a measure of
financial, artistic and critical success to the writer.

Already in this her first novel, Austen explores many of the strands of thought
which reappear in all of her works. She examines the economics of marriage in the
eighteenth-century, relationships within families and among community members, the
importance of personal virtue, and the makings of good marriages. It seems reasonable to
think of Elinor, this first heroine, as that “sucking child” and as the prototype of each of
Austen's future heroines, bound on their individual social and spiritual quests.

As outlined in Chapter One, Carol Christ defines four stages in a woman's
spiritual quest: Nothingness, Awakening, Insight, and Naming. A woman moves
through these stages as she begins to recognize her place in the world, to know it for what
it is, and to articulate this experience and this knowledge. Each woman's spiritual quest,
however, is guided by her own telos: the reality or philosophy which is her final
destination and which gives her life meaning. The telos for Austen's heroines is both
corporal and numinal. The economic and social aspects of their searchings are easy to
identify: her heroines seek happiness in life, particularly through the achievement of
economic stability, community respect, and marriage with the right partner. Simply,

marriage is not the goal for her heroines. Austen shows through numerous fictional

examples of bad marriages3 that her heroines quest for a virtuous and appropriate partner.

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The numinal aspects of her heroines’ strivings are less easily identified. As I
have argued, Austen's world is a Christian world where moral behavior, evidenced by a
character’s possession of the virtues of constancy, self-knowledge, amiability and sense
of duty, is equated with Christian ideals. In Sense and Sen_sibility, Marianne utters these
words: “Had I died,—it would have been self-destruction. I did not know my danger till
the danger was removed; but with such feelings as these reflections gave me, I wonder at
my recovery,—wonder that the very eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for
atonement to my God, and to you all, did not kill me at once” (346). This rare reference
to God might be lost in the reader's consideration of Marianne's penance to Elinor; but,
Austen has Marianne add: “His [Willoughby's] remembrance can be overcome by no
change of circumstances or opinions. But it shall be regulated; it shall be checked by
religion, by reason, by constant employment” (347). These references remind readers
that Austen's world is Christian and that her heroines are defined by the internal and
external expressions of their virtuous selves. Only through a process of searching and
growing do these characters achieve happiness, and that happiness is found only in a life
of virtue. Their searchings are spiritual insofar as they seek answers to life's greatest
questions: who am I? what is my place in the world? what is my duty to perform?
While heaven itself is seldom overtly mentioned in Austen's novels, achievement of a
good life in this world is one key leading to entry into the successful life to come.

These social and numinal aspects of a woman's life quest become entwined
naturally, according to Christ. “Women's spiritual quest provides orientation for women's
social quest and grounds it in something larger than individual or even collective

achievement” (Diving 11). This spiritual grounding supports Austen's heroines as they

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choose, for example, not to engage in marriages with the wrong partners and seems
missing in characters like Lucy Steele who seek to marry anyone with money. Austen's
characters reflect this seeking for wholeness in life, and through this seeking “the
oppositions between body and soul, nature and spirit or freedom, rationality and emotion
are overcome” (Mag 26).

As Austen explores a woman's potential through Elinor, readers see what a
woman might be and how she might act as she moves through a spiritual quest. While

Austen considers a number of subjects and characters in Sense and Stasibility, her focus

seems to remain on Elinor.4 Elinor's character, her virtues and her quest for social and
spiritual actualization are the writer's primary concerns, but marriage and the economics
of marriage serve as the backdrop for Austen's examination of her character.

Drawing on the language of the conduct books, it is easy to assemble a list of
virtues for Austen's first heroine: self-control, sacrifice, affection, a sense of duty, strong
familial ties, modesty, decorum and restraint, propriety, self-knowledge and, most
importantly, amiability and constancy. These qualities, as already mentioned, are typical
of the tables of contents of the conduct books of Austen's time, and all of these traits are
present in Elinor. In many ways, Elinor represents a woman who lives up to the conduct
book standards and who is rewarded for her self-sacrifice and self-control. Her strength
of character and intelligence, essential in Austen's heroines, enhance these quiet virtues
and create an almost ideal woman.

Elinor's best qualities might be read as passive ones: keeping quiet when she
might speak, sacrificing a potential mate who is, in actuality, already promised to

another, and caring for her family before herself. Her actions are limited to this domestic

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realm. Elinor's spiritual and social questing, then, may seem small in scale. She is not
perfect; but she is also not a flat character representing feminine perfection. Along with
her strengths, Austen writes weaknesses into her character, a sense of self-doubt, of
uncertainty with her own motives, and a touch of priggishness which irritates her family.
How Elinor comes to recognize these traits in herself, to acknowledge her own and her
culture's failings and to recognize them for what they are represent the heart of her
spiritual quest. As she quests, these seemingly passive qualities become translated into
action.

The virtues of having strong family ties, sharing true affection, and feeling a
sense of duty to others dominate Austen's fiction and certainly dominate in the character
of Elinor. To represent their author's Christian and feminist impulses, Austen's characters
must openly show all of these virtues, and in this novel, where family members regularly
forsake each other in moments of crisis, these traits are of especial importance. These
traits are easily apparent in the Dashwood women as they support each other, under
Elinor's guidance, through the crisis of Mr. Dashwood's death, through Marianne's near-
fatal illness and into their new lives. Elinor “possessed a strength of understanding, and
coolness of judgment, which qualified her, . . . to be the counsellor [sic] of her mother”
(6). She uses this judgment throughout the novel to guide her family members into what
she sees as 'right' behavior. For example, Elinor guides her mother in choosing a new
home. “But she [Mrs. Dashwood] could hear of no situation that at once answered her
notions of comfort and ease, and suited the prudence of her eldest daughter, whose
steadier judgment rejected several houses as too large for their income, which her mother

would have approved” (14). Elinor always speaks to her mother with respect while

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attempting to guide what she sees as mistaken ideas, stemming from Mrs. Dashwood's
lack of “acquaintance with the world” (56) and the excess of sensibility which she shares
with Marianne (7). A conversation between Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor about Marianne's
possible engagement to Willoughby shows their conflicting inclinations and Elinor's
reasonable hand:
But there was one method so direct, so simple, and in her opinion so eligible
of knowing the real state of the affair. . .that she could not help suggesting it
to her mother.
“Why do you not ask Marianne at once,” said she, “whether she is or is not
engaged to Willoughby? From you, her mother, and so kind, so indulgent a
mother, the question could not give offence. It would be the natural result of
your affection for her. She used to be all unreserve, and to you more
especially.”
. . . Elinor . . .urged the matter farther, but in vain; common sense, common
care, common prudence, were all sunk in Mrs. Dashwood's romantic delicacy.
(84-85)
Already Elinor seeks, however gently, to guide her mother and Marianne into making
appropriate choices and behaving with propriety. She has no ulterior motives, and she
does not attempt to manipulate her mother, only to convince her of the value of
questioning Marianne.

Austen imbues Elinor with the raw material of a heroine by establishing her
strong belief system and her strong sense of virtue, thus giving her the potential for a
spiritual quest. While imperfect, Elinor is at heart good and giving and not driven by
self-interest. In these traits, she matches Kant’s definition of moral behavior. Elinor

quietly follows the murmurings of her own heart and seeks fulfillment beyond the social

arenas of her life.

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The Stages of Elinor's Spiritual and Social Quests

Elinor possesses Austen's favored virtues of constancy and amiability as the novel
begins; however, these traits do not continue undisturbed throughout the novel. As
Elinor faces disappointment and grief, she sometimes falters in her judgment, but she
seldom fails, despite these falterings, to uphold outward signs of propriety, always using
her manners to carry her through difficult and public situations. She is already
experiencing what Carol Christ defines as the first stage of a woman's spiritual quest,
nothingness. A spiritual quest “begins in an experience of nothingness. Women
experience emptiness in their own lives —in self-hatred, in self-negation, and in being a
victim; in relationships with men; and in the values that have shaped their lives” (13, her
emphasis). Moving backwards in time two hundred years does not seem to affect these
issues. Christ's contemporary definition of a woman's place in the world seems to hold
for the eighteenth century as well as for the twentieth century.

This stage of nothingness in a woman's spiritual and social quest is obvious and
important in all of Austen's novels. All of her heroines, to some extent, experience this
place of unimportance in society. Even the witty and vivacious Elizabeth Bennet
experiences the struggles of silence, low social status and lack of independent direction in
her life. Somewhat less obvious are the stages of awakening and insight in the spiritual
and social quests of these heroines. Most of the characters seem to understand their place
in the world and suffer in them. The process of a quest, spiritual or social, seems to be
recursive in a woman's life, and the stages reappear as her life experiences change and
develop. Christ says that “A woman's awakening to great powers grounds her in a new

sense of self and a new orientation to the world. Through awakening to new powers,

1]]

women overcome self-negation and self-hatred and refuse to be victims” (_D_iyi_ng 13).
Few of Austen's heroines show signs of self-hatred but most struggle with self-negation
and with developing an ability to assert themselves against victimization. Austen's novel
begins with an explanation of Elinor's 'lost-ness.'

The stage of nothingness in Elinor Dashwood’s life is clear. She is nineteen years
old, displaced, unmarried, and has just lost her father. “He survived his uncle no longer
[only one year]; and ten thousand pounds, including the late legacies, was all that
remained for his widow and daughters” (4). Not only are the Dashwood women bereft of
their husband and father, but they face an uncertain future with too little money and the
loss of their home. “Mrs. John Dashwood now installed herself mistress of Norland; and
her mother and sisters-in-law were degraded to the condition of visitors” (8). As Lore
Segal writes in “The Uses of Story” in Antioch Review. “Mrs. John Dashwood promptly,
perfectly legally, perfectly heartlessly, installs herself as mistress of Norland, turning
Henry’s grieving widow and daughters into visitors in their own home” (135). Despite
her good judgment and keen sense of right, Elinor is helpless to change the condition of
life in which she, her mother and sisters find themselves. As Segal emphasizes, the
actions taken against them, while inexcusable, are legal and accepted. Theirs is an
invisibility and nothingness peculiar to impoverished and displaced women and not
limited to fictional texts.

The economic victimization of the Dashwood women fills the novel. Austen
always delves into the financial and social realities of the worlds in which her heroines
live. Characters’ reactions to these realities show their virtue and wisdom or their

ignorance and greed. In gape Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds. Oliver MacDonagh in

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seeking to illuminate English history through a study of Austen’s novels, gives a close
accounting of the financial realism of the novel in his chapter, “Receiving and Spending:
Sense a_n_d Sensibility.” While he does not call Sense and Sensibilifi a Marxist work, he
asserts its primary concern with economic issues. “The sudden impoverishment of Mrs.
Henry Dashwood and her daughters is central to the action; it is this which brings all else
into play. It is Marianne's lack of money which 'preserves' her from Willoughby, and it is
Edward's lack of income which saves him initially from Lucy” (64). While Mrs.
Dashwood never has a clear understanding of her situation, Elinor does. She awakens to
her position and experiences the loss of financial security, social status and prospects for
future, married happiness. Her insight is keen. Her ability to change the world is limited.

According to MacDonagh,

For all their strength of character, Elinor and Marianne are cast in

essentially passive roles. Their fates depend on others' gains and losses;

they wait on the roulette wheel which determines others' fortunes. No

more than Cassandra and Jane Austen do they contemplate becoming

govemesses or schoolmistresses, the only conceivable occupations for

girls of their class unless, by some extraordinary chance, they had both the

talent to earn their living by their pen and the luck to find an outlet for

their writings. (64)
Obviously, he is correct in asserting that the fates of Marianne and Elinor depend on the
actions of others, but MacDonagh does not concern himself with the spiritual nature of
their awareness. The actions which MacDonagh ignores are the very actions which
Austen would consider most important. In following the dictates of her own conscience,
Elinor exhibits Christian behavior with a strong sense of personal integrity. Elinor is not

fashionable by eighteenth-century standards. She is not a young woman of the world.

Elinor relies on honesty, self-control, sacrifice, and attention to duty to provide her with,

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while perhaps not an easy life, an honorable one. All of these virtues are apparent in her
dealings with other people, despite the nothingness of her position.

While she cannot control the prevailing forces in her life or the state of
nothingness in which she finds herself, Elinor can control her own responses to those
forces and circumstances. Elinor's silent pain figures prominently throughout the novel.
First, exhibiting those Christian behaviors, she sacrifices by controlling her own sense of
loss, keeping her suffering private to protect her family, particularly as Edward abruptly
ends his visit with the Dashwood women.

This desponding turn of mind, though it could not be communicated to

Mrs. Dashwood, gave additional pain to them all in the parting. . . and left

an uncomfortable impression on Elinor's feelings especially, which

required some trouble and time to subdue. But as it was her determination

to subdue it, and to prevent herself from appearing to suffer more than

what all her family suffered on his going away, she did not adopt the

method so judiciously employed by Marianne, on a similar occasion, to

augment and fix her sorrow, by seeking silence, solitude, and idleness.

Their means were as different as their objects, and equally suited to the

advancement of each. (104)

Her behavior contrasts sharply with that of Marianne who naively and romantically
believes that those who suffer gracefully do not suffer genuinely and assumes that true
suffering is visible suffering. She will not, cannot, temper the display of her feelings.
Elinor, on the other hand, is equally determined to keep her suffering private and to avoid
inflicting her despair over the loss of Edward on her family. Again, Austen shows this
hiding of feeling and the altruism which prompts it:

Elinor sat down to her drawing-table as soon as he was out of the house,

busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought or avoided the

mention of his name, appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in

the general concerns of the family, and if, by this conduct, she did not

lessen her own grief, it was at least prevented from unnecessary increase,

and her mother and sisters were spared much solicitude on her account.
(104)

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Repeatedly, Austen shows Elinor determining to protect her family from the hurt she
suffers. While her attempts are always admirable, Elinor’s family does not always
interpret them as such. On learning of Edward's engagement to Lucy Steele, Elinor
considers their respective losses:

As these considerations occurred to her in painful succession she wept for
him, more than for herself. Supported by the conviction of having done
nothing to merit her present unhappiness, and consoled by the belief that
Edward had done nothing to forfeit her esteem, she thought she could even
now, under the first smart of the heavy blow, command herself enough to
guard every suspicion of the truth from her mother and sisters. And so well
was she able to answer her own expectations, that when she joined them at
dinner only two hours after she had first suffered the extinction of all her
dearest hopes, no one would have supposed . . . that Elinor was mourning
in secret over obstacles which must divide her for ever from the object of
her love. . . . (140-141)

She is comforted by the knowledge of having done no wrong. She is also comforted by
the knowledge that she protects her family at the expense of their potential consolation.
Elinor carries this behavior so far that even Marianne suspects her of having only calrn
feelings (104). Marianne does not acknowledge the value of discretion, and Elinor
continually sacrifices her own inner peace to fulfill her promise of discretion to Lucy, to
protect herself from public humiliation and to protect others from hurt. She suffers at
Lucy's hand, over Lucy's secret engagement to Edward. “She was silent.—Elinor's
security sunk; but her self-command did not sink with it” (131). Elinor's experience of
nothingness is tempered by her virtue; she cannot affect the situation, but she faces it
with control. She speaks “with a composure of voice, under which was concealed an
emotion and distress beyond any thing she had ever felt before. She was mortified,

shocked, confounded” (135). She carries this mortification and shock through most of

the events of the novel.

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Each of these examples reflects on the stage of nothingness in Elinor’s life. The
combined losses of her father, her home, her social status, and her chances of marrying
Edward show this nothingness. Elinor’s responses to these losses, relying on the strength
of her virtues, carry her into the next stages of her spiritual and social quest: awakening
and insight.

Readers see repeated scenes of Elinor's awakening and insight throughout the
novel. Scenes of quiet admission are plentiful:

Mrs. Jennings, though regretting that she had not been five minutes earlier,

was satisfied with the compromise; and Elinor, as she swallowed the chief

of it [a glass of wine], reflected that, though its good effects on a cholicky

gout were, at present, of little importance to her, its healing powers on a

disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried on herself as on her sister.

(198)

Elinor recognizes and knows the state of her own life. Her disappointed heart remains a
quiet fact while she seeks to make her way through life, to make the lives of her family
members more comfortable. All of Elinor's insights are not so charitable. She admits, at
least to herself, that she does not like Lucy Steele, and, while the author does not intend
for either Elinor or the readers to approve of Lucy, she is careful to protect Elinor's
sensibilities and not make her too crass or direct in her emotional response to others.
“Elinor only was sorry to see them. Their presence always gave her pain, and she hardly
knew how to make a very gracious return to the overpowering delight of Lucy in finding
her still in town” (217). Elinor is equally able to admit feelings of anger and bitterness,
especially those stemming from loyalty to Marianne. Upon reading Willoughby’s
rejection letter to Marianne, Elinor responds with strong emotion. “She paused over it

[Willoughby’s letter] for some time with indignant astonishment; then read it again and

again; but every perusal only served to increase her abhorrence of the man, and so bitter

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were her feelings against him, that she dared not trust herself to speak, else she might
wound Marianne still deeper” (184). Abhorrent and bitter feelings are not missing from a
woman's spiritual quest but are part of a necessary awakening and insight into her own
being, into who she is and what her place is in the world. Knowing these feelings for
what they are is part of the process of both spiritual and social growth.

According to Christ, in a bildungsroman, a character “defines himself through tests
and trails, and retums with a clear understanding of himself and his place in the world. . . .
Because female social roles are different from men’s, the content of the female quest
differences from that of the male” (Dilipg 9). Elinor’s life, as readers see it in Sense and
Sensibilig, meets this definition of bildungsroman, and readers glimpse her quest in the
outward choices which she makes in response to these trials. She faces the trials of losing
her father and her place in society, losing Edward to a less worthy woman, and nearly
losing her sister. Through these trials, she awakens to a clearer understanding of herself
and the nothingness of her place in the world.

Elinor’s insights into the realities of that world often come out in her advice to
Marianne. “Elinor could not be surprised at their [Marianne and Willoughby] attachment.
She only wished that it were less openly shewn; and once or twice did venture to suggest
the propriety of some self-command to Marianne” (53). Elinor understands the dangers to
Marianne of revealing herself too fully in public situations. Propriety, self-respect and
discretion might all combine to help a character control her behaviors. Public sanctions
could arise easily. Again, Elinor tries to guide Marianne’s outbursts: “’Pray, pray be

composed,’ cried Elinor, ‘and do not betray what you feel to every body present’” (176).

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Elinor cannot change the value system of the world in which she lives, but she can try to
guide her sister through its minefield.

Elinor’s insight into her own self is not always so clear. Early in the novel, her
mother accuses her of judging Willoughby somewhat harshly. On the occasion of
Willoughby’s abrupt departure from the neighborhood of the Dashwood family, Mrs.
Dashwood says to Elinor: “. . . you, Elinor, who love to doubt where you can. . . . You
had rather take evil upon credit than good. You had rather look out for misery for
Marianne and guilt for poor Willoughby, than an apology for the latter” (78). Elinor
responds avowing her wish to be fair in her own judgment. “There is great truth, however,
in what you have now urged of the allowances which ought to be made for him
[Willoughby], and it is my wish to be candid in my judgment of every body” (79). Within
their family, the contrast of Elinor’s calm temper to Marianne’s vivacity often fails to
flatter either character. Both her mother and Marianne consider Elinor a bit too serious
and a bit too prudish. On planning a trip to London, Mrs. Dashwood says, “. . . if Elinor
would ever condescend to anticipate enjoyment, she would foresee it there from a variety
of sources” (157). Elinor’s quest for insight sometimes causes pain. As Elinor gains
insight into herself, she is not always comforted by what she finds. There is room for
growth in Elinor’s heart. The pain Elinor suffers on introspection is often shared with the
reader. Elinor quests and suffers; Austen holds up the mirror, and the reader quests and
suffers as well. As Segal says, “Jane Austen is holding the mirror up to my nature. Story
has the power to prevent my natural tendency to cover myself from my own observation”
(139). As Austen writes her heroines through their spiritual and social quests, she also

writes a new path for the spiritual and social quests of her readers

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The self-awareness which Elinor gains does not always please her. As she and
Marianne ride to London for a possible reunion with Willoughby, Elinor envies
Marianne’s prospective happiness. She is jealous of“. . . the rapture of delightful
expectation which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes of Marianne” and cannot
avoid realizing “. . . how blank was her own prospect, how cheerless her own state of

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mind in the comparison” (159). She attempts to correct her own feelings: . . . she must
then learn to avoid every selfish comparison, and banish every regret which might lessen
her satisfaction in the happiness of Marianne” (159). For her sister’s sake, Elinor
succeeds in controlling this jealousy. However, once in London and faced with Lucy, her
sister, Mrs. Ferrars and Mrs. John Dashwood at a dinner party, Elinor responds
emotionally: “But while she smiled at the graciousness so misapplied, she could not
reflect on the mean-spirited folly from which it sprung, nor observe the studied attentions
with which the Miss Steeles courted its continuance, without thoroughly despising them
all four” (233).

Christ says that “Women often describe their awakening as a coming to self,
rather than a giving up of self, as a grounding of selfhood in the powers of being rather
than a surrender of self to the powers of being. . . [a grounding that] leads to newfound
self-awareness and self-confidence (Qiyjpg 19, 21, her emphasis). Elinor grows
throughout the novel and learns to trust her perceptions and her knowledge of people. As
her response to the four women indicates, she is not naive to the faults of the people
around her or to her own. She becomes grounded in the knowledge that she has acted

rightly, despite temptation to ignore her own value system and act more designedly in her

own interests. Elinormight respond to the situation following the example of Lucy

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Steele; she might flatter and cajole her way into the F errars’ good graces. She chooses to
act otherwise. Elinor speaks her awakening to nothingness and her insight into her
condition in the world but determines to live her life according to that value system.
Thus, in responding to Marianne’s question of how she bore her suffering, Elinor replies,
“ By feeling that I was doing my duty. . . and I owed it to my family and friends, not to
create in them a solicitude about me, which it could not be in my power to satisfy” (262).
Christ’s statement explaining the value of women's voicing their predicaments
and realizations applies not only to the author, in this case, but also to her heroine. Elinor
shares her understandings with Marianne, narrating her experience of suffering and
realization and the subsequent self-control she developed. Elinor adds that along with her
sense of duty to protect her family from hurt, she found strength in knowing that she
loved them. “But I did not love only him;—and while the comfort of others was dear to
me, I was glad to spare them from knowing how much I felt. Now I can think and speak
of it with little emotion. . . I have many things to support me” (263). While readers might
be skeptical of Elinor’s denial of feeling, her conscious choice to protect others from her
pain shows her strong sense of self and strong allegiance to her value system. She takes
comfort in the fact that she acted rightly throughout her encounter with Lucy and
Edward. She knows that she cannot control the outcome of the situation; Edward is to
marry Lucy, and Elinor will be left, unmarried, with her mother and sister. Elinor's
spiritual base and sense of self are strong enough to carry her through this turmoil. Her
ability to voice this experience makes it possible for other women to consider Elinor’s

behavior and adapt its guiding principles to their own lives.

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This knowing on the part of her characters becomes part of Austen's task as well.
If she is rewriting the possibilities of spiritual grth for her characters, she is also
rewriting the spiritual possibilities for her readers. According to Christ, naming is the
final step in a woman's spiritual quest. Naming is important for several reasons. It
reinforces a woman's own understanding of her quest. It makes her quest more real.
“After a woman experiences the grounding of her quest in the powers of being, it is
important for her to name her experience in words. When one woman puts her
experiences into words, another woman who has kept silent, afraid of what others will
think, can find validation” (23). The author's task is to share new experiences, new
insights and new narnings with her readers, to offer new options to her readers for living
their own spirituality.

For just as women are excluded from autonomous significance and value in

men's stories, so women must even read themselves sidewise into analyses

of the experience of nothingness. Women need a literature that names their

pain and allows them to use the emptiness in their lives as an occasion for

insight rather than as one more indication of their worthlessness. Women

need stories that will tell them that their ability to face the darkness in their

lives is an indication of strength, not weakness. (17)
Through this telling of stories, naming becomes apparent. Elinor faces the darkness of
her life with strength. She seeks to give her own life meaning through caring for her
immediate family. Without the possibility of marriage to Edward, Elinor sees the
boundaries of her future. Austen shows that Elinor’s insight and her willingness to face
this darkness are strengths to be desired. Austen knows the emptiness and nothingness

for what it is, and her heroine, Elinor, lives it, names it, survives it, offering readers new

ways to view their own lives and new experiences of their own spirituality.

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One part of this naming experience concerns the heroine's understanding of her
social and financial status. In this novel, Austen gives particular attention to her knowing
the appropriate value of wealth. A Christian and a feminist, she understands the role of
economics in a woman's life, and she neither values money too highly nor ignores the
financial realities of her own or others' lives. She understands true value and knows that
value has everything to do with heart and action and very little to do with wealth.

While Austen does not often use the words 'greed' or 'avarice,' she often measures
moral character against one's need for, desire for, and efforts to obtain money, critiquing
economic behavior. In his essay, “Jane Austen and The Moralists,” Gilbert Ryle says that
Austen “pin-points the exact quality of character in which she is interested, and the exact
degree of that quality, by matching it against the same quality in different degrees, against
simulation of that quality, against deficiencies of it. . .” (108). In the case of Sense and
Sensibility, Austen considers financial greed and how it affects characters and families.
She contrasts Elinor’s reasoned concern for her own and her family’s economic welfare
with the avarice shown, for example, by Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood who refuse help to
his sisters. Simulation of generosity, or simulation of any kind, has no place in Austen’s
world. Her characters possess virtues in varying degrees, and some simply do not possess
them at all. Through the contrast among these characters’ acting out of virtue, Austen
explores the paths which women might take and the outcomes of their choices. Her
heroines’ outward choices, even those concerning finances, sometimes reveal stages of
their spiritual and social growth.

Elinor criticizes the culture in which she lives in a number of ways, and these

criticisms also represent part of the naming phase of her spiritual growth. In quiet ways,

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she faults the systems of primogeniture and entailment. To this end, Elinor becomes the
observer of situations and people and responds as wisely as possible to each. The readers
first knowledge of Elinor comes amid her family’s devastation resulting from her father’s
death. While the author shows the results of primogeniture and entailrnent on the
Dashwood women, Austen allows Elinor to respond with prudence. Elinor convinces
Mrs. Dashwood to stay at Norland for a respectable amount of time after John and Fanny
take possession. “Her eldest daughter induced her first to reflect on the propriety of
going [leaving Norland too soon]. . . and for their sakes avoid a breach with their brother”
(6). Elinor understands the consequences of fostering such a break so soon after her
father’s death. The women would be homeless and virtually without funds. Again,
concerning the economics of inheritance, Elinor specifically criticizes Mrs. Ferrars’
financial hold over her children and the way she is allowed to manipulate them with
promises of reward or threats of withdrawal. Had the culture a stronger law conceming
the distribution of wealth through inheritance to all family members, this manipulation
could not occur. “What Mrs. F errars would say and do, though there could not be a doubt
of its nature, she was anxious to hear; and still more anxious to know how Edward would
conduct himself’ (260). Elinor anticipates Mrs. Ferrars’ behavior, and she is correct.
Mrs. F errars disinherits one son, rewarding the other.

Christ considers the differences between the quests of men and women.

Men have often found it difficult to give up conventional power and ego

gratification to open themselves to union with the powers of being. Women,

in contrast, live in a male-defined world in which culture has, for the most

part, denied them access to power. The ordinary experience of women in
patriarchy is akin to the experience of nothingness. (17-18)

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This male-defined power which often excluded women is apparent in the world Austen
creates. Elinor is trapped by a culture which denies her access to external displays of
power, whether social or political. Elinor asserts control over the situations which she
can control and finds a personal power in maintaining her value system. She knows the
rightness of her own behavior and seeks to alleviate the pain of others, even when she
cannot alleviate her own.

But Elinor had more to do; and so anxious was she, for his [Edward’s] sake

and her own, to do it well, that she forced herself, after a moment's

recollection, to welcome him, with a look and manner that were almost

easy, and almost open; and another struggle, another effort still improved

them. (241)

At this juncture, Elinor believes that Edward will marry Lucy and that she will manage
alone. Despite her feelings of despair, she acts kindly and affectionately to Edward, as
his station and family connections might require. At this point in the novel, she
acknowledges to herself that marriage to Edward is no longer a possibility.

Elinor's spirituality does not exist in a vacuum. She has a strong realistic nature
and a clear understanding of the social realities of her life. Late in the novel, after she
and Edward decide to marry, Elinor continues to grapple with the social aspect of her life
quest. How will they live? From where will the money come? “One question after this
only remained undecided, between them, one difficulty only was to be overcome. They
were brought together by mutual affection, with the warmest approbation of their real
friends, their intimate knowledge of each other seemed to make their happiness certain —
and they only wanted something to live upon” (369). Their mutual struggle for economic

security is named and eventually overcome. Elinor’s social quest attaches to that of her

husband, and together they find security, comfort and community. “[I]f Edward might be

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judged from the ready discharge of his duties in every particular, from an increasing
attachment to his wife and his home, and from the regular cheerfulness of his spirits, he
might be supposed no less contented with his lot, no less free from every wish of an
exchange” (377). Elinor’s quest merges with that of Edward. With him, Elinor achieves
the position she has sought, Christ’s new way “of living in human community” Mg
31). Her spiritual and social quests have merged, and she has come to recognition and
delight.

As Christ describes it, “The moments of women's quest are part of a process in
which experiences of nothingness, awakenings, insights, and namings form a spiral of
ever-deepening but never final understanding” ( l4). Austen's heroines never arrive; they
are forever questing. Perhaps the continuous nature of a spiritual quest, then, is best
shown by ending her novels with weddings. This social movement carries her heroines
into a larger world and into a greater social context where their awareness of self
becomes a tool for participating in the greater good of the community. Each woman
takes her appropriate place and looks forward to the delights and the duties inherent in
that place.

Conclusions

Despite its concern with the weighty topics of inheritance, economics, greed, and
marital happiness, Sense and Sensibility is no heavy tragedy. Austen brings the reader to
a comedy's conclusion, a spiritually and financially rewarding marriage for each of her
primary women. In a seeming twist, Austen allows Elinor, in all of her sensibleness, to
marry for love, providing her with sufficient income for her comfort, that predicted

£1000 mentioned in an early discussion with Marianne (91 ). The writer tames Marianne

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through disappointment, heartbreak and two years' growth and concludes with a mature
young woman who marries an older man out of esteem and friendship. “She was born to
overcome an affection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment
superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another!”
(378). The writer's touch is light here with her smile apparent in the irony of the passage.
Ultimately, Marianne comes to wealth and happiness through a spiritual though not at
first spirited, union with C01. Brandon. Austen defines married love in these comments,
and, by example, Elinor and Edward also have a love founded on this mutual esteem and
friendship.

How does this working out of Austen’s plot reflect on the narratives of women’s
lives? First, unlike the conduct book writers, Austen is more apt to reveal the flaws in the
culture for which women cannot be blamed but which make women victims. Second,
pointing out these flaws shows women that their plight is not entirely personal but
extends into the socio-economic realm. Women might recognize their connectedness to
other women suffering similarly. Third, Austen rewards the personal virtues exhibited by
her heroines despite the conditions in which they might find themselves. She shows that
virtue brings its own reward and that reward should be first internal and spiritual.
Women might find strength in their self-command and in their ability to perform morally
when others around them might fail. Finally, although Austen’s telos, as Maclntyre
explains, rests heavily on marriage, it rests on a kind of marriage which takes the heroine
into a new community. In this new community, she will function with power, prestige

and arniability—the final mingling of the spiritual and social.

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Austen’s heroine differs from the conduct book ‘heroines’ in several important
ways. Elinor, as a young woman on a spiritual quest, strives to act morally. The
eighteenth-century definition of moral behavior, as the earlier discussion of Kant and
Maclntyre has shown, includes the ability to make choices concenring one’s behavior. A
conduct book heroine would find her choices severely limited. She would not be allowed
to make decisions on her own, to learn to make rational, moral choices. Austen’s
heroines and the conduct book heroines possess virtues similar in name, but in nature
these virtues seem to take a new form in Austen’s work. Austen’s continual focus on
constancy and amiability gives a specific Christian dimension to her heroine’s quest.
Conduct books teach young women to obey directions, and, as Austen’s fiction will
show, sometimes in obeying directions from others, personal integrity and constancy are
lost.

The assessment of this novel's conclusion lies not only in a recognition of
Austen's particular definition of these virtues but also in her definition of a good
marriage. Austen draws on her definition of a good marriage and blends the social and
spiritual searchings of her heroines to include their search for fulfilling partnerships. To
eighteenth-century rational Christians, to be good, to serve others, to render one's duty
willingly and thoughtfully, is at once an unselfish and a selfish act. By making moral
choices, by growing through a spiritual quest, Austen’s heroine wins. Had all of her
characters behaved in such a way, their stories might have ended differently. Had
Willoughby been unselfish, had Lucy Steele been less artful, had Marianne shown a
greater self-command, all would have been served. Elinor, however, stands out as a

character faithful to her values, who maintains her dignity while seeming to lose all else

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of value in her life. Elinor quests and finds. Austen does not allow the reader to miss

these realizations in the happiness of the novel's conclusion.

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Notes

' Concerning Austen’s access to Immanuel Kant’s Fundamental Principles of the
Metaphysics of Morala, biographers have been unable to determine the exact nature of the
library at Steventon parish. Evidence, however, supports Rev. Austen’s willingness to give
his daughters open access to his library. Claire Tomalin writes in Jane Austen: A Life that
“It is clear too that he gave her uncensored access to his books; for if she was allowed to
read Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison as a child, which gives detailed accounts of
maternal drunkenness and paternal adultery, and lays out the correct attitude to adopt
towards a father's mistress and illegitimate half-brothers, Mr. Austen cannot have kept
much from her. In this as in his unruffled response to her bold stories, he was an
exceptional father to his exceptional daughter” (67).

2Jane Austen, The Novels otlane Austen, Vol. 1, Ed. R. W. Chapman, 376. All
references to the novels are identified in context and refer to this edition of Chapman's
work.

3Consider these examples of couples: Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Preiudice.
the John Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility or the near marriage of Edmund and Mary i_n
Mansfield Park.

4Elinor is typically viewed as the heroine and main character, although in Irony as
Defense and Discovery, Marvin Mudrick argues that Marianne is the central figure in the
noveL

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Chapter Four
My;
Fanny Price’s Real Quest

When Austen began writing Mansfield Park in 1811, she had just published m
and Sensibility. As Chapter Three suggests, Sense and Segibilig lays the groundwork
for all of Austen's future novels and her heroine, Elinor Dashwood, establishes an early
pattern of spiritual and social development. More than sixteen years after it was begun,
Pride and Preiudice was readied for publication during this same period. Elizabeth
Bennet in Pride and Preiudice is one of Austen's most beautiful, good and charming
characters. Readers love her. After writing Sense and Sensibility and Pride and
Prejudice, Austen wrote Mansfield Park whose heroine is so self-effacing and
unchanning that readers stop and ask themselves why Austen would want to create such a
character. One of Austen’s first references to Mansfield Park says, “Now I will try to
write of something else;———it shall be a complete change of subject—Ordination” (I’M
29 January 1813). She adds six months later, “I have something in hand—which I hope
on the credit of P. & P. will sell well, tho’ not half so entertaining” @gara 6 July
1813). While the subject of Mansfield Park is not ordination, the novel does address
issues important to the church of Austen’s day, including ordination, the role of the
minister in leading the community, and the buying and selling of the benefice. While
these topics creep into most of Austen’s novels to some extent, a consideration of the
spiritual concerns apparent in Mansfield Park might lead readers to a better understanding

of the author’s desire to explore this territory more thoroughly.

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To say that Mansfield Park shows the heroine's social and spiritual quest is self-
evident. The pervasiveness of Austen's concern with spirituality in her novels hints at the
complexity of the issue. In her earlier novel, Austen has Elinor Dashwood struggling to
make her way in a hostile world while maintaining her own sense of virtue. In the novel
following Mansfield Park. Emma Woodhouse must develop self-awareness and
emotional maturity—her social position is established from the beginning. In Austen’s
last complete novel, Persuasion, Anne Elliot blossoms under the influence of love and
respect and grows to trust her own decisions while recognizing her duty to others. What
does Fanny Price, referred to by Claudia Johnson as “the nerdiest of heroines” (“What
Became” 62), learn and gain? In considering these questions, readers find that each of
Austen’s novels contains elements of the heroine's internal and external searching, the
struggles of spiritual and social questing.

Among the novels, Mansfield Park, indeed, proves somewhat problematic. In her

essay “What Became of Jane Austen? Mansfield Park ” where Johnson names Fanny as

 

nerdiest, she examines several examples of critical comment, including the views of
Alistair Duckworth and Marilyn Butler who read Mansfield Park as evidence of Austen's
political conservatism. They argue, in Johnson’s account, that Mansfield Park “posits
stability, authority, custom, sobriety, and staunch morality as values cultivated in the
country-houses of the Tory gentry” (59). Johnson also discusses two historical camps of
Austen criticism, the first of which holds that Austen is a repressive Christian “bringing
about the correction of her heroines” (60). In the second camp, which begins with
Margaret Oliphant's 1870 critique of Austen's “feminine cynicism” and extends through

D. W. Harding's naming of her as an ironist, critics have perceived Austen as “not in the

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least committed to the values of her neighborhood or to any values gu_a values at all. . . .”
(60). They argue “that she is fundamentally disengaged from dominant moral and
political norms, particularly as these are underwritten by the institutions of heterosexual
love and marriage”(60). Johnson adds that “clearly, on the score of sexuality, some have
feared that Austen had too much, too little, or none at all” (61). These extreme
differences of opinion seem irreconcilable.

Part of the difficulty in categorizing Mansfield Park and Fanny Price stems from
modern interpretation and reaction to the eighteenth-century conduct books. It appears
logical to readers and critics that a fictional heroine who seems to adhere to the virtues
expounded by the conservative and religious conduct books would be de facto religiously
and politically conservative. While this assumption may or may not be correct, it remains
possible that some readers misread Fanny Price. In her re-reading of Mansfield Park,
Susan Greenfield argues that contemporary interpretation of conduct book philosophy is
ambiguous. She offers a more liberal interpretation of them both in “Fanny's Misreading
and the Misreading of Fanny: Women, Literature, and Interiority in Mansfield Pap.”
Although in Greenfield’s reading, the novel upholds the standards of ideal womanhood
commonly promoted in conduct books of the period, I would argue that Fanny goes
beyond the conduct books. Greenfield comes close to supporting this idea when she
asserts that the novel subverts the social order on which the standards of womanhood
stand. She argues that

. . .conduct books implicitly challenged the assumption that people should be

valued according to external assets such as property and title. Because

conduct books also stressed the importance of woman's role inside the home,

the ideal female came to stand for interiority in a dual sense: as a model of

moral behavior, woman contained and represented the proper space inside the
mind; as domestic governor, she controlled and epitomized the sanctity of the

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middle-class home, that inside space, removed from the supposedly corrupting

influences of the external world, where good minds could be developed.

(315)

The intent of this dissertation is not to resolve definitively this critical tension on how to
read Fanny Price but to draw on the richness of the critical debate, to examine the novel
for the ways in which it moves beyond the conduct book descriptions of women’s
spirituality and for the ways in which it serves as a vehicle for discussion of a character's
spiritual quest.

Fanny's quest is apparent throughout the novel, particularly in her conscious
choice to recognize virtue and to behave accordingly. In contrast, Mary Crawford's
failure lies in her inability to sustain choosing rightly, not fashionably. Without the
ability to judge a situation, to make a reasoned decision based on observation, and to
stand behind that decision with constancy, a person could not be considered moral.
Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. first published in 1759, illuminates
Austen's text by detailing the components of moral behavior. These components are
based on the ability to choose and then to act with prudence and propriety.

Virtue and the propriety of conduct consisted in choosing and rejecting all

different objects and circumstances according as they were by nature

rendered more or less the objects of choice or rejection; in selecting always

from among the several objects of choice presented to us, that which was

most to be chosen, when we could not have them all; and in selecting, too,

out of the several objects of rejection offered to us, that which was least to

be avoided, when it was not in our power to avoid them all. (Theogy 403)

As this quote expresses, morality requires the ability to accept or reject. Thus it is that
women, in stereotypical, straitened eighteenth-century circumstances, could not be

evaluated as moral creatures. The discernment needed to make moral decisions was not

seen as theirs. Morality involves choice and standing behind a principle. In the late

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eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, women made few choices, had few choices,
and were considered inconstant. They were, therefore, outside the sphere of conscious
morality. Smith's work does not address directly the morality or arnorality of women.
His is a description of a man's morals and a man's actions in a man's world.

Smith’s eighteenth-century work reflects an approach to spirituality similar to
Kant’s, advocating the virtues of a Christian life. These virtues are a love of God and a
love of man as directed in the biblical commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind;
and thy neighbour as thyself” (Luke 10:27). Smith rephrases this commandment. He
says,

. . .that to feel much for others, and little for ourselves, that to restrain our

selfish, and to indulge our benevolent, affections, constitutes the

perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that

harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace

and propriety. As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great

law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves

only as we love our neighbour, or, what comes to the same thing, as our

neighbour is capable of loving us. (Theopy 27)

While Smith's focus is a rational definition of moral behavior, he does not ignore the role
of Christian teachings in supporting and defending his theories. Austen addresses these
inversely; the Christian teachings come first and lead to an outwardly substantiated
moral behavior, and, in Mansfield Park, this outward expression of spirituality is
rewarded in concrete, earthly ways.

Alisdair Maclntyre elaborates on eighteenth-century virtue and moral behavior in
Platonic terms of beliefs and knowledge and in Aristotelian terms of the resulting actions.

He argues that Smith and other eighteenth-century writers would agree that “Morality . . .

is never the mere inhibition of passions. . . . Morality is rather meant to educate the

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passions; but the outward appearance of morality may always disguise uneducated
passions” (Maclntyre 224). Eighteenth-century philosophers would agree that the
passions must be controlled, subdued, and subverted for a person to live a virtuous life.
Austen shows this struggle for self-command in Mansfield Park. Controlling, subduing,
and subverting are part of the challenge of a spiritual quest. As Christ explains, “The
drive for wholeness and for the integration of spiritual and social quests is part of the new
naming” (Lying 120). Recognizing all parts of the self and understanding the
relationship between that self and the world are fundamental parts of the spiritual quest.
Subsequent to mastering both positive and negative emotions and traits is the challenge to
redirect passion with a sense of positive action outward from the self. How is outward
behavior related to spirituality? Austen has Edmund Bertram say to Mary Crawford that
the church and, specifically the clergy, “has the charge of all that is of the first
importance to mankind, individually or collectively considered, temporally and
etemally—which has the guardianship of religion and morals, and consequently of the
manners which result from their influence” (92). When Mary insults country clergymen,
Edmund defends them:

They are known to the largest part only as preachers. And with regard to

their influencing public manners, Miss Crawford must not misunderstand me,

or suppose I mean to call them the arbiters of good breeding, the regulators

of refinement and courtesy, the masters of the ceremonies of life. The

manners I speak of, might rather be called conduct, perhaps, the result of

good principles; the effect, in short, of those doctrines which it is their duty
to teach and recommend. . . . (93, Austen’s emphasis)

Speaking through Edmund, the hero in this novel, Austen shows her understanding of the
co-mingling of virtue, manners and spirituality. In Kant, in Smith and in all of Austen’s

novels, manners, morality and spirituality are linked, and eighteenth-century culture is

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shown to be inadequate as it leaves women without the resources for entering upon
spiritual quests in which varying degrees of visible spirituality might be explored.

In Mansfield Park, Austen examines the nature of virtues and vices, assuming this
Christian orientation in a world moving quickly away from traditional Christian values.
Her attention to duty in all of its forms, as well as manners, serves as evidence of this
orientation. Austen measures, praises and condemns her characters by how faithfully and
with what attitude each performs her duty to others. Fanny's strong sense of duty comes
from a conscious obedience of Christian law, but more deeply from a living of its practice
and from true amiability. Amiability and constancy prohibit one's tossing aside of values
for expediency's sake. The intellectual choice to follow Christian teaching and to make
moral decisions must, however, go hand in hand with emotional and spiritual constancy.
As Chapter Six will note, Anne Elliot in Persuasion says that women are more constant in
their feelings than are men. This statement contradicts the typical eighteenth-century
portrait which held women to be inconstant, making them incapable of moral behavior.
According to the common view of the time, women’s emotions were inconstant and
could not be counted on when decisions of morality had to be made. Part of the new
story which Austen tells in Mansfield Park concerns this prevalent attitude. Austen
shows through Fanny’s quest that women have the ability to discern right from wrong,
that they are capable of thinking deeply about moral behavior, that they can take a moral
stand against external pressure from family or friends and that they can learn to have
peace and firlfillment by performing their duties to others, with or without husbands.

Self-knowledge through self-examination makes these virtues of amiability and

constancy possible and conscious, and without them, other virtues cannot develop and

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one’s duty remains unrecognized and unaccomplished. Fanny Price, Mansfield Park’s
heroine, moves through life on a dual quest—a spiritual one to achieve goodness by
developing and living by these virtues and a social one to know and to achieve her place
in the world.

Fanny Price exemplifies the cultural struggle between enforcement of gendered
virtues and a recognition of women’s spiritual and moral potential. In Mansfield Park,
readers see negative examples of what the culture can produce: women without the
necessary insight to make choices for virtue and morality. The boundaries of their
spiritual awareness and potential are severely limited. Lady's Bertram's example serves
as an indicator of what Fanny might become: a silly, thoughtless woman who is
incapable of attending to any serious tasks, even the elevated feminine task of raising
children:

To the education of her daughters, Lady Bertram paid not the smallest

attention. She had not time for such cares. She was a woman who spent her

days in sitting nicely dressed on a sofa, doing some long piece of
needlework, of little use and no beauty, thinking more of her pug than her
children, but very indulgent to the latter, when it did not put herself to

inconvenience. . . . (19-20)

Under the roof and under the tutelage of the Bertrams, why should Fanny not develop
into this kind of woman, into the kind of woman that her cousins will become? The
answers lie in Fanny's own spiritual journey, in the steps she makes moving from
inarticulate child to giving, thoughtful partner. Fanny learns constancy; her amiability
strengthens as she learns to have confidence in herself and her own judgment. She is
truthful, honest, meek and kind— almost always.

From early in the novel, Fanny shows herself to be steadfast, her constancy is

clear. When Edmund decides to participate in the production of the play, Fanny thinks:

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After all that she had heard him say, and seen him look, and known him to

be feeling. Could it be possible? Edmund so inconsistent. Was he not

deceiving himself? Was he not wrong? Alas! it was all Miss Crawford’s

doing. She had seen her influence in every speech, and was miserable. The

doubts and alarms as to her own conduct, which had previously distressed

her, and which had all slept while she listened to him, were become of little

consequence now. The deeper anxiety swallowed them up. (156-157)
While Fanny wants to blame Mary for Edmund’s lapse, she knows that he has faltered in
his constancy toward proper behavior. After Sir Thomas returns and shuts down the play,
Edmund speaks highly of Fanny: “Fanny is the only one who has judged rightly
throughout, who has been consistent. Her feelings have been steadily against it from first
to last. She never ceased to think of what was due to you. You will find Fanny every
thing you could wish” (187). Fanny later says of Henry Crawford, “1 cannot think well
of a man who sports with any woman’s feelings; and there may often be a great deal
more suffered than a stander-by can judge of” (363). In these two instances, both of
Fanny’s potential partners falter in their constancy to right behavior and to others. Fanny
sees their lapses and reaffirms the importance of constancy in her own conduct and in the
conduct of others in all relationships.

While Fanny’s constancy is seldom in doubt, she is not without childish
tendencies. Upon entering the chapel on the Sotherton estate, Fanny's reacts:

Fanny's imagination had prepared her for something grander than a mere,

spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of devotion—with

nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion of mahogany,

and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge of the family

gallery above. 'I am disappointed,‘ said she, in a low voice to Edmund.

'This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing

melancholy, nothing grand. . . . No signs that a 'Scottish monarch sleeps

below.‘ (85-86)

Austen does not paint Fanny so stiffly that readers forget how young, imaginative and

untutored she is; Austen smiles at the sense of the gothic.

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Charm does not rank highly with Austen. Charm, in itself, might hide
deceitfulness and is valued inasmuch as it reveals a true caring for other people. While
decidedly uncharming as a girl, Fanny becomes more charming as she grows, but she
understands enough about posturing to distinguish between charm and true amiability.
Both Mary and Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park are exceedingly charming.

. . .Mrs. Grant received in those whom she hoped to love better than ever, a

young man and woman of very prepossessing appearance. Mary Crawford

was remarkably pretty; Henry, though not handsome, had air and

countenance; the manners of both were lively and pleasant, and Mrs. Grant

immediately gave them credit for every thing else. (41-42)

Ultimately, however, Mrs. Grant's faith is misplaced and both young people reveal their
lack of moral strength as the novel unfolds. So compelling is Henry's charm that he
almost wins Fanny as his great prize. During his visit to Portsmouth, he says:

“I know Mansfield, I know its way, I know its faults towards you. I know

the danger of your being so far forgotten, as to have your comforts give

way to the imaginary convenience of any single being in the family. . . . If,

therefore, (turning again to Fanny) you find yourself growing unwell, and

any difficulties arise about your returning to Mansfield . . . if you feel

yourself at all less strong, or comfortable than usual, and will only let my

sister know it . . . she and I will immediately come down, and take you

back to Mansfield. You know the ease, and the pleasure with which this

would be done. You know all that would be felt on the occasion.” (410-

411)

After this speech, both Fanny and the reader begin to soften towards Henry. His potential
is not unlike that of Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility; with Fanny's influence as his
wife, Henry could become a good man. His temperament of open charm and his lack of
steadfastness, however, win out and lead him into a clandestine relationship with Maria

Bertram. After all, Mary describes him early in the novel as “the most horrible flirt than

can be imagined” (43). He is lost both socially and morally.

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Fanny’s amiability, although not her greatest strength, stands in contrast to Mary
and Henry’s charm. Even Mary says to Fanny, “I hate to leave you. I shall see no one
half so amiable” (359). From her first appearance at Mansfield Park, Fanny is too timid a
child to immediately provoke the accolade of amiability. Fanny shows her true
amiability in small measures: in the strength of her attachment to her brother and sister,
William and Susan, and in her willingness to offer her life to giving comfort to her Aunt
Bertram. In this,

Fanny [was] devoted to her aunt Bertram, returning to every former office,

with more than former zeal, and thinking she could never do enough for one

who seemed so much to want her.

To talk over the dreadful business with Fanny, talk and lament, was all

Lady Bertram’s consolation. To be listened to and borne with, and hear the

voice of kindness and sympathy in return, was everything that could be done

for her (449).

Fanny performs her duties to others, learns amiability, possesses self-knowledge and is
constant in her affections and her quest for virtue and purpose in life. As Fanny learns
self-confidence and learns to value herself, she also learns to share her true amiability
with others.

The Stages of Fanny’s Spiritual and Social Quests

Fanny Price's social, spiritual and emotional growth reflect the stages of Carol
Christ's social and spiritual quest: growing from nothingness, to awakening, to insight,
and finally into naming. The nothingness of her childhood is apparent. Her awakening
becomes evident when she begins to distrust the motives and understandings of people

around her, including Edmund, and begins to make moral decisions for herself. Fanny

has “moments of lucidity. . . when the meaning of our lives seems clear,” as Carol Christ

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says Mg xxi). She awakens and sees the world in a new way, and in this new world,
Fanny, ultimately, shapes her life out of nothing, guided by no one.

Mansfield Park is the only Austen novel showing a character's development from
childhood into adulthood. While the pages devoted to childhood are brief (Fanny is
eighteen years old in chapter five when Mary questions her eligibility status as “in or
out”), these pages shed light on the starting point of Fanny's life and the nothingness from
which she rises. The narrator describes the ten-year—old girl as unhappy, afraid, ashamed,
homesick, small, sickly, timid, uneducated, unpolished, and despondent with acute
feelings which others cannot appreciate (12-14). Readers suffer with Fanny as she
struggles through early adolescence under the burden of such a personality. She is
further constrained by the constant reminders from Aunt Norris that she is socially and
natively inferior to the Bertram daughters, can never be their equal and should be grateful
for having a home at Mansfield Park at all.

Despite her youth and innocence, Fanny is Mansfield Park’s example of a true
spiritual nature. She achieves goodness almost single-handedly, not having had the
benefit of virtuous parents to train her. At age ten, she is removed from her home and
taken in by the Bertrams with none of the women guiding her as a mother might. Like
Elinor Dashwood and Elizabeth Bennet, Fanny is virtually motherless. Fanny's own
mother, while not uncaring, was too much distracted by “her ninth lying in” (5) and by a
husband “disabled for active service, but not the less equal to company and good liquor”
(4) to be of much use to her daughter.

Fanny comes to Mansfield Park from such a home with little formal education,

making her a target for the Bertram girls' ridicule. “Fanny could read, work, and write,

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but she had been taught nothing more; and as her cousins found her ignorant of many
things with which they had been long familiar, they thought her prodigiously stupid. . . .”
The girls report to their mother as this passage continues: “Dear Mamma, only think, my
cousin cannot put the map of Europe together or my cousin cannot tell the principal rivers
in Russia—or she does not know the difference between water-colours and crayons!—
How strange!” (18). Her cousins also criticize Fanny for never having learned French or
“the chronological order of the kings of England . . .” (18). The Bertram girls have been
given the standard education of the day.

The women conduct book writers deplored this system of education for girls
which Austen examines here. Elizabeth Hamilton ridicules it when she says that “those
little nursery catalogues of Kings and Queens. . . can never be mistaken for a knowledge
of history” (Le_tt_e_r_s_ 23 0-3 1). Hamilton critiques this method and explains that, for
women, knowing a few good writers well is better than having a smattering of useless
information. Austen draws upon this attitude as she fictionalizes these incompetent
women and as she shows Fanny’s more appropriate quest for a genuine education.

Fanny’s life of nothingness is clear. She has no money, no real home, no
education of value, and a complete lack of self-regard projected by painful timidity.
Fanny’s awakening to her condition in the world and her perceptions on how this position
might change represent the stirrings of her spirituality. She is the product of poor,
uneducated, and ill-equipped parents, yet, as she quests for spiritual and social place, her
faculties of perception, attention, conception, judgment, imagination, taste, memory, and
reflection grow. In Fanny, Austen gives an example of a woman's potential for spiritual

growth despite the child's lack of preparation for it. Where the conservative conduct

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books would see no room for a woman to experience spiritual exploration, Austen reveals
the nature of a woman’s quest through Fanny’s seeking. When Carol Christ writes about
a woman’s spiritual awakening, she gives examples of women finding access to their own
power through the power of the natural world. In Man_sfield Park, Austen shows Fanny
seeking answers and self-assurance and coming to moments of awakening in solitude.

Fanny has grown up in Mansfield Park with a lack of self-regard, particularly
stemming from her recognition of her inferior social class. Vanity could never be one of
her faults. Austen shows, however, that Fanny takes comfort in and gains insight from
the time she spends alone in her room, searching for understanding. There, Fanny
surrounds herself with works of art, with nature in her plant collection, and with books
and in doing so develops her own sense of taste and discrimination.

The comfort of it in her hours of leisure was extreme. She could go there

after any thing unpleasant below, and find immediate consolation in some

pursuit, or some train of thought at hand—Her plants, her books—of

which she had been a collector, from the first hour of her commanding a

shilling—her writing desk, and her works of charity and ingenuity, were

all within her reach; —or if indisposed for employment, if nothing but

musing would do, she could scarcely see an object in that room which had

not an interesting remembrance connected with it.— Every thing was a

friend... . (151-52)
Her collection of private possessions reflects her self and the purpose she seeks:
intellectual work in reading and writing, connection to nature with her plants, charity
work and creative expression. All of these activities nourish Fanny’s spirituality.

Other solitary moments are spent outdoors. Some of the first moments that
Edmund spends alone with Fanny are spent walking outdoors. “Let us walk out in the

park and you shall tell me all about your brothers and sisters” (15). In this setting, Fanny

is able to calm herself and reveal her feelings, and from this experience, Edmund is

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“convinced of her having an affectionate heart, and a strong desire of doing right; and he
could perceive her to be farther entitled to attention, by great sensibility of her situation
and great timidity” (17). At this early point in the novel, Fanny is revealed to Edmund as
she is revealed to herself.

In a discussion of land improvement among Mr. Rushworth, Mary, Maria,
Edmund and Fanny, Fanny takes a romantic posture concerning the tearing out of trees
and modernizing of property, just as she did in responding to the character of the chapel.
She says, “Cut down an avenue! What a pity! Does not it make you think of Cowper?
‘Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited’” (56). Her position, while
similar to Edmund’s, is the lone voice of disapproval of the improvement plan. Fanny
sees more in the natural world than property value and updating make apparent. Her link
is spiritual.

During this same visit to Sotherton, the young people are all out walking the
grounds, when Fanny stops to rest in the wood and is subsequently left alone. Edmund
and Mary walk away. “Edmund urged her remaining where she was with an earnestness
which she could not resist, and she was left on the bench to think with pleasure of her
cousin’s care, but with great regret that she was not stronger. She watched them till they
had turned the comer, and listened till all sound of them had ceased” (96). Fanny is left
alone for more than twenty minutes, after which time other members of the party join her,
at intervals. Fanny spends more than an hour alone in this situation. This hour is
important to Fanny’s awakening understanding of the complex nature of human
relationships. She reaches conclusions concerning the behavior of all of the other party

members. All of them fall short of behaving with propriety and with regard for each

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other’s feelings. Edmund and Mary have forsaken her; Maria and Julia fight over Henry,
and Henry leads them all in disregarding Mr. Rushworth. Fanny, alone, recognizes and
censures their inappropriate and thoughtless behavior. During these moments of solitude
in the woods, she understands her own position among these people; socially she is
excluded while morally she struggles to maintain her own virtue.

Fanny's greatest trial and her most important insights come late in the novel.
First, she must challenge Edmund's behavior and, second, reject Henry’s marriage
proposal. Readers have watched her build the necessary skills for coping with this crisis
in less important arenas. First, Fanny's deep concern over the propriety of producing a
play sets her apart from her cousins and friends. Edmund's acquiescing to participate
with Mary Crawford represents a challenge to Fanny's constancy and judgment. If
Edmund finds it acceptable to participate, why should she hesitate? But she does. Fanny
stands firm on her principles, knowing that Sir Thomas would not approve of this
behavior and that participation compromises the virtue of each of the young people. She
sees the world differently and articulates what she sees, beginning the naming stage of
her spiritual quest. In taking this stand against Edmund, Fanny goes beyond his teaching
and launches into a moral adulthood which is of her own construction. This experience,
for which Fanny is ostracized, serves as a test run for the second, more difficult stand she
must take against Henry Crawford and the wishes of her family.

Fanny's rejection of Crawford’s proposal shows her greatest strength. Readers
watch this moral character in action; Fanny self-consciously debates. She reasons. She
chooses. Sir Thomas admonishes Fanny:

. . . he shortly afterwards, and in a voice of authority, said, 'Have you any
reason, child, to think ill of Mr. Crawford's temper?’

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'No, sir.’ She longed to add, 'but of his principles I have;' but her heart
sunk under the appalling prospect of discussion, explanation, and probably
non-conviction. (317)

With Sir Thomas, Fanny is hesitant to name what most concerns her about Henry or to
implicate Edmund's behavior in any way. She withstands Sir Thomas' continued
berating. He says,

I will, therefore, only add, as thinking it my duty to mark my opinion of
your conduct—that you have disappointed every expectation I had formed,
and proved yourself of a character the very reverse of what I had
supposed. For I had, Fanny, as I think my behaviour must have shewn,
formed a very favourable opinion of you from the period of my return to
England. I had thought you peculiarly free from wilfulnness of temper,
self-conceit, and every tendency to that independence of spirit, which
prevails so much in modern days, even in young women, and which in
young women is offensive and disgusting beyond all common offence.
But you have now shewn me that you can be wilful and perverse, that you
can and will decide for yourself, without any consideration or deference
for those who have surely some right to guide you. . . . (318)

1‘

Despite this attack from Sir Thomas, Fanny maintains her position. She knows that she is
not acting in a “self-willed, obstinate, selfish, and ungrateful” way (319), but she is
rejecting the conduct model of behavior which Sir Thomas is expecting from her. In an
effort to help her clear her mind of obstacles to this marriage, Sir Thomas advises Fanny
“to go out, the air will do you good; go out for an hour on the gravel, you will have the
shrubbery to yourself, and will be the better for air and exercise” (322). This finding of
solace in physical action and the out-of-doors is important. Fanny regains her composure
and returns determined in her action but softened towards her uncle. She remains firm
and is later proven right and vindicated.

When Edmund seeks to persuade Fanny to marry Henry, he finds her “walking
alone in the shrubbery” at Mansfield Park and says, “‘I am come to walk with you,

Fanny.’ . . . She assented to it all rather by look than word. Her spirits were low” (346).

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For a moment, Fanny has escaped from the turmoil of the house and the pressure being
brought to bear upon her to accept Henry’s proposal. She seeks comfort in nature.
Fanny’s attachment to the natural world is made more explicit late in the novel when she
returns to Mansfield Park from Portsmouth:

Visions of good and ill breeding, of old vulgarisms and new gentilities were

before her. . . . Fanny had been every where awake to the difference of the

country since February; but, when they entered the Park, her perceptions and

her pleasures were of the keenest sort. It was three months, full three months,

since her quitting it; and the change was from winter to summer. Her eye fell

every where on lawns and plantations of the freshest green; and the trees,

though not fully clothed, were in that delightful state, when farther beauty is

known to be at hand, and when, while much is actually given to the sight,

more yet remains for the imagination. Her enjoyment, however, was for

herself alone. . . . [ Edmund’s distress] made her melancholy again. (446-447)
Fanny finds emotional and spiritual comfort, now, in returning to Mansfield Park,
realizing its beauty and knowing it as home. Fanny has awakened to the scandals in
which her relatives and friends are involved, knows her place as niece and comforter of
her aunt and equally knows that she will not be Edmund’s wife. While these awakenings
are not mystical, they are vital to Fanny’s spiritual and social quests. She would be
unable to move into a new naming of her world and her place without this knowledge.

Christ says that as a woman moves through her spiritual and social quest she “. . .
begins a new naming of self and world. Each rejects negative body images and names
her body’s power anew” (Diving 120). As Fanny has come to recognize the nothingness
of her world and to awaken to its realities, she has also asserted and confirmed her own
virtue and worth. The new naming which she experiences includes a rejection of her old
body and her old self-image just as a caterpillar rejects its old form when it

metamorphoses into a butterfly. As she has aged, she has become more attractive.

Edmund says to her,

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Your uncle thinks you very pretty, dear Fanny. . . . Anybody but myself
would have made something more of it, and any body but you would resent
that you had not been thought very pretty before. . . .
Your complexion is so improved!—and you have gained so much
countenance!-——and your figure—Nay, Fanny, do not turn away about it—it is
but an uncle. If you cannot bear an uncle’s admiration what is to become of
you? You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth
looking at.—You must try not to mind growing up into a pretty woman.
(197-198)
Fanny has grown from a sickly, inarticulate child to an attractive young woman. While
she hears these compliments with some distress, Fanny explains her hesitation to
continue a conversation with her uncle: “I thought it would appear as if I wanted to set
myself off at their [her cousins’] expense, by shewing a curiosity and pleasure in his
information which he must wish his own daughters to feel” (198). While she might be
fully aware of her distinction, Fanny does not wish for attention whether it concerns her
body or her temperament. Her physical attractiveness does not seem to last, however. In
Portsmouth, she fades, “beginning to feel the effect of being debarred from her usual,
regular exercise; she had lost ground as to health since her being in Portsmouth. . .”
(409). After returning to Mansfield Park, Fanny’s physical attractiveness gets no
mention. Her moral character takes precedence. Fanny is comfortable in herself, in her
body but, more importantly, she is comfortable with her spiritual self and with her place
in the world.

When it is time to return to Mansfield Park, Fanny names her own place:

Her eagerness, her impatience, her longings to be with them [the Bertrams],

were such as to bring a line or two of Cowper’s Tirocinium for ever before

her. ‘With what intense desire she wants her home,’ was continually on her

tongue. . . .

When she had been coming to Portsmouth, she had loved to call it her

home, had been fond of saying that she was going home; the word had been
very dear to her; and so it still was, but it must be applied to Mansfield. That

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was now the home. Portsmouth was Portsmouth; Mansfield was home.
(431, Austen’s emphasis)

Fanny has a duty to perform at Mansfield Park, and this duty lends purpose to her life.
She can comfort her family, and she can help her sister Susan. This multiple purpose
guides her, while her recognition of Mansfield Park as home reassures her. Fanny is
prepared to live with unrequited love. Her goal is not marriage at any cost but a life of
value in giving to others. She will live and be useful to her aunt and uncle and comfort
them through the distress of the scandal.

Despite her seeming penultimate happiness, before her marriage and
independently of Edmund, Fanny's life flowers. She returns to Mansfield Park, realizing
that it is now her home, understanding that she has value to others and purpose in life.
Her attachment to Sir Thomas grows mutually; her affection for Lady Bertram takes on a
consciousness of the woman's faults but acceptance of her. Is Fanny a perfect,
conservative religious woman? No. Too many shades and shadows are thrown over her
to encourage such a reading. Fanny hopes to win Edmund, delights in her triumphs, and
fights to overcome jealousy and pettiness. She hates feeling envy (413) but does feel and
acknowledge it. She explodes with resentment over Edmund's desire to marry Mary:
“Such sensations, however, were too near a kin to resentment to be long guiding Fanny's
soliloquies. She was soon more softened and sorrowful” (424-425). Fanny is not
perfect. She suffers through her dark night of the soul in Portsmouth and then enters into
a new life at Mansfield Park, before Edmund turns to her.

In her social and spiritual quests, Fanny has moved through the stages of

nothingness, awakening and insight into naming. She has come to understand the flaws

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of her family and the injustices of the social order and has integrated this knowledge into
her own search for fulfillment and place.
Conclusions

Out of this past of poverty, neglect and ridicule grows a young woman constant to
her values regardless of pressure from the people around her. Fanny will not succumb to
overt pressures to conform even when they come from Edmund. She relies on her own
developed judgment of situations and character and stands quietly but firmly against what
she believes to be wrong.

Fanny, ultimately, is rewarded for her virtue. Sir Thomas recognizes her first for
her beauty and more slowly for her virtue. Later the other characters come to the same
realizations. She achieves Austen's great and final reward, a good marriage to a good
man, Edmund.

With so much true merit and true love, and no want of fortune or friends,

the happiness of the married cousins must appear as secure as earthly

happiness can be. —Equally formed for domestic life, and attached to

country pleasures, their home was the home of affection and comfort. . . .

(473)

Another heroine receives her just reward. As Christ writes, “The drive for wholeness and
for the integration of spiritual and social quests is part of the new naming. . . [a woman]
seeks to integrate her newfound spirituality and sensuality; she wants the whole life of a
free woman, including sexuality and creativity” (Dfliarg 120). Thus, Fanny’s journey, so
far, has been both social and spiritual; spiritual in the fact that it grounds experience “in

something larger than individual or even collective achievements” (Diving 1 1). For

Fanny, this grounding is in moral behavior and in the prevailing value of love. The quest

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is evident when larger experience gives life meaning and takes women beyond
themselves. Her spiritual quest will continue after her marriage.

Fanny is taken beyond herself as she focuses on caring for her younger sister
Susan. In Susan lies a second young woman who will stand stronger and firmer and who
will perhaps accomplish more in her life quest than Fanny. Austen ends the novel with
this description of Susan:

Her more fearless disposition and happier nerves made every thing easy to
her there—With quickness in understanding the tempers of those she had to
deal with, and no natural timidity to restrain any consequent wishes, she was
soon welcome, and useful to all; and after Fanny's removal, succeeded so
naturally to her influence over the hourly comfort of her aunt, as gradually to
become, perhaps, the most beloved of the two. (472-473)

Susan's quest may take her farther because she has strengths to Fanny's weaknesses.
Fanny's growth has been phenomenal but takes her only so far in life. Susan might
accomplish much more because she begins with fewer barriers and fewer personal
weaknesses.

In Mansfield I_’a_r_l_<, Austen does not agonize over these great weaknesses or
Fanny's lack of formal education as writers of the conduct books might. She shows
through a series of events how much Fanny’s quest brings to her life. She has grown
through a series of realizations about the condition of her life, from her removal from her
birth family, through her primary education with the governess and her education under
Edmund's tutelage, and finally through her own efforts to develop her intellectual and
moral tastes and a personal sense of right and wrong.

By the novel's conclusion, Fanny has outgrown the patronizing direction of
Edmund and has become a true companion and moral example to him, a mature woman
with a sense of herself as a social and spiritual being. Austen has shown Fanny's comfort
with solitude and with her own morality when she isolates Fanny in the forest and allows

her to judge the other characters. Fanny comes to be content with and to trust her own

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judgment. She knows her own constancy and recognizes, through her life quest, that the

education and virtue she is still acquiring make it possible.

Common to all stories with this 'sacred' dimension is the importance given to
the story by teller or hearer. It might seem that all sacred stories would have
to be realistic and serious, but this is not so. The story might be of adventure
if the teller thinks adventure is what life is all about, a love story if love
makes life meaningful, a fantasy if fantasy is the only way to achieve
transcendence. (Diving 4)

Austen tells this story of love and virtue offering to her readers a new sacred dimension

for which to quest.

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Chapter Five
Emma:
Acquainted with the Heart

Saving Emma Woodhouse from herself is Austen's primary goal in m.
Contemporary feminist debate focuses, however, on who is responsible for Emma's
salvation and from what she is rescued. In her article, “Identifying with Emma: Some
Problems for the Feminist Reader,” Wendy Moffat explains that feminist critics have
identified several problems in this novel. The novel’s “inherent tensions” (45) center on
Austen's seeming approval of upper class values, her leanings toward patriarchal
salvation rendered upon her heroines, the role of men in educating the heroines and the
writer’s efforts to reform her characters before they are ready for marriage. Moffat
discusses contemporary readings of E_n_r_m_a, focusing her attention on the demands of the
genre itself:

To be sure, Em tests the literary conventions of the novel of instruction

by discouraging the reader's wholehearted identification with its

protagonist—whom Austen designed to be at times irritating and unlikable

(Austen-Leigh 157). By placing a protagonist whom readers must resist at

the center of a novel of moral instruction, Austen points up the tension

inherent in the relation between such novels and their audience. (47)

According to Moffat, the tension felt by feminist readers concerning how to read E_m_rpa
exists for all but the most inexperienced readers.

Austen's novel of instruction might be better read not for its possible patriarchal
overtones but for its potential as a model for the spiritual grth of the original readers.
A carefirl reading of EM shows that Austen focuses on the weaknesses of a character

with unlimited potential, takes an undeveloped, immature girl (albeit one of a much

higher social class than Elinor Dashwood or Fanny Price), follows her through a series of

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mistakes and delivers her into womanhood. The end product—a spiritually and socially
mature woman ready for marriage—is possible only because the character possesses
specific virtues and experiences specific growth. Emma’s quest, unrecognized and
unrealized by the character through most of the novel, is to come to this full womanhood
and to find meaning in her life beyond the silliness of her childish melodramas. Emma's
dormant virtues are activated when she confronts her fallible nature, “making her
acquainted with her own heart” (Emma 407).

Feminist critics sometimes balk at Knightley’s role in Emma's development.l Is it
necessary for a man to lead Emma into maturity? Is this simply another case of a mentor-
husband leading an inexperienced young girl to a marriageable state, just as the conduct
books teach? These critics misread Emma. Knightley does not cause Emma to examine
her head and heart, although he continuously tries to persuade her to do so. Haniet does.
After her confrontation with Harriet when the young woman states her claim for Mr.
Knightley, Emma deliberates:

She saw that there never had been a time when she did not consider Mr.

Knightley as infinitely the superior, or when his regard for her had not

been infinitely the most dear. . . . This was the conclusion of the first

series of reflections. This was the knowledge of herself, on the first

question of inquiry, which she reached; and without being long in

reaching it.—She was most sorrowfully indignant; ashamed of every

sensation but the one revealed to her—her affection for Mr. Knightley.—

Every other part of her mind was disgusting. (412)

Her struggle is internal. Emma must come to know her own heart before she can reach
full womanhood. She does this before she steps to the threshold of a deeper spirituality
and before she marries George Knightley. While Knightley, her elder by sixteen years,

often serves as Emma's conscience when she seems not to hear her own, it is not through

her marriage to him that she grows. Both partners prepare themselves for the union,

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bringing strengths which will guide and mold the other throughout the marriage. Early in
the novel, neither Knightley nor Emma is ready for marriage. 2 Where Knightley is
sometimes sullen and jealous, Emma is open and charming. Where she is capricious, he is
careful. The reader does not see events after the marriage. Emma's change of perspective
and her more mature understanding develop before she enters into marriage. Emma’s
growth and consciousness of that growth are the more important issues.

The heart of the novel is not found in the dilemmas of who might marry whom,
although Emma's interference in Harriet's life nearly leads to disaster. Its importance lies
in Emma's growth, in her recognition of her errors, and her acceptance that she must
continue to develop her own sense of judgment. Were this tragedy, a different outcome
would result from Emma's flaws. Austen writes comedy, however, so the flaws are
recognized but overcome, allowing for the true marriage of kindred minds, or as the
novel concludes, in acknowledgment of “the perfect happiness of the union” (484).

Denise Kohn argues in “Reading Emma as a Lesson on ‘Ladyhood’: A Study in
the Domestic Bildungsroman” that this novel of instruction analyzes ladyhood and
creates a new understanding of women’s quests. “One of Austen's greatest achievements
in E_mm_a is that she writes a novel of education —a bildungsroman— that instructs her
readers to deconstruct the pervasive images of ‘ladyhood' created by her period's
conduct-book writers” (45). Kohn investigates three important points in this essay:
what a bildungsroman for young women would look like, what the conduct-book writers
indicated as appropriate behavioral goals for women, and, specifically, how Austen
deconstructs the assumptions behind both issues.

Austen resists the view of a “lady” as passive and selfless and redefines the
highest ideals of “ladyhood” as self-assurance, strength, and compassion

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through the depiction of her heroine, Emma Such a reading of the novel,
however, not only shows how Emma redefines female ideals but also how
the novel redefines the bildungsroman within the context of early nineteenth-
century domestic values. (45-46)

 

Indeed, Emma does all this; the discussion, however, need not be limited to
achieving “ladyhood,” although ladyhood is Emma's defined role in her community.
Austen refutes the kind of flat spirituality depicted for women which involves no
active quest and no struggle. The conduct books teach young women how to
achieve a gendered spirituality in which a woman's spiritual success is measured in
passive terms and exemplified by silence, obedience and demurral to the guidance of
man-as-mentor.

Austen makes numerous references to E_mma in her letters, often comparing her

heroines to one another. In a letter to James Stanier Clarke, she writes:

My greatest anxiety at present is that this 4th work shd not disgrace what was
good in the others. But on this point I will do myself the justice to declare
that whatever may be my wishes for its' [sic] success, I am very strongly
haunted by the idea that to those Readers who have preferred P&P. it will
appear inferior in Wit, & to those who have preferred MP. very inferior in
good Sense. (Letters 11 December 1815)
While Austen’s concern for Emma’s success might have been needless, she
continues to feel these anxieties partly, perhaps, because she continues to think of
her heroines as her children. She writes to Anna Lefroy shortly after the birth of
Anna’s daughter, Jemima: “As I wish very much to see your Jemima, I am sure you
will like to see my Emma, & have therefore great pleasure in sending it for your

perusal. Keep it as long as you chuse; it has been read by all here—” (Letters ?

December 1815-January 1816, her emphasis). These comments emphasize Austen’s

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attachment to her heroines while showing her concern for the response of her
readers. Her fictional children have a task to perform.

As the novel begins, Austen’s Emma stands on the brink of womanhood. She
already possesses the “self-assurance, strength, and compassion” which Kohn identifies
as the heroine’s uncharacteristically androgynous strengths. Emma’s spiritual quest must
go beyond these traits, however. Emma finds herself in a precarious spiritual position;
she might continue to behave as she always has, stubbornly refusing direction and advice
from those who might guide her, or she might develop self-awareness, heed her own
conscience, come to understand her own limitations, and learn to accept the guidance of
others. Austen has already outlined a variety of possible character models. If Emma
chooses the former option, she could be like Mansfield Park's Mary Crawford, frivolous,
self-indulged and shallow, or, worse, like Samd Sen_sibility's Mrs. John Dashwood,
greedy, unfeeling, and narrow. But Emma comes to distrust her own judgment and to
understand that her perceptions might be faulty. By making this transition, Emma
becomes a truly moral woman, assessing people and situations and making careful
judgments. She grows into womanhood and into a fuller spiritual personhood when she
learns to read herself and to understand and recognize her own motives and flaws. She
achieves the state defined by both Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant, as moral: she can
choose and she can will “good.” Because Emma has these qualities innately and because
she is capable of making moral choices, she is eligible to participate in a spiritual quest.
Her coming to terms with yourself, learning who she is and who she wants to be in her

community are some of the aspects of Emma’s spiritual and social quest.

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As the discussion of Sense and Sensibility shows, Austen connects a heroine’s
moral code with her ability to participate in a spiritual quest. Are Emma’s virtues strong
enough and of the appropriate nature to support her through a quest, and how does her
value system represent her spirituality? To uncover answers to these questions, readers
must analyze Emma’s moral code, her possession or lack of virtues and the telos which
guides her life.

The conduct-book writers would not approve of Emma, as Kohn has pointed out.
While they assert the value of constancy and the observance of duty, they offer little
advice on knowing one's own head and heart. Obedience to fathers or husbands and an
oveniding attention to propriety are much more highly touted as the appropriate virtues
for young women. Young women need not ponder the great mysteries of psychological
truth; a pleasing young woman is more concerned with the appearance of virtue than with
her philosophical understanding of virtue’s definition. Austen refutes this attitude. Emma
is outspoken, self-assured and self-directed.

Several passages in Eur—ma clarify Austen's perceptions of the virtues of
amiability, constancy, sense of duty and self-knowledge and their role in a heroine’s
spiritual quest. These moments reveal a compelling sense of duty, distinguish amiability
from mere agreeableness and acknowledge a character's constancy or inconstancy. These
virtues are also vital in both partners who wish to enter a socially and spiritually fulfilling
marriage. How do these virtues complement the joining of personalities in marriage?
Emma's realizations and subsequent behavior emphasize the importance of self-command
and self-knowledge and make clear Austen's concept of the virtues and of the spiritual

growth which occurs when they are practiced. A heroine in whom these virtues are not

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developed is not only excluded from any spiritual questing but also shows no sign of
having an active spiritual life. Importantly, quite unlike the heavy emphasis on gender-
specific virtues discussed in the conduct books, Austen expects these virtues in both men
and women. She consequently judges men and women with equal strictness, cataloguing
their failures and achievements throughout this novel. This chapter will explore some of
the passages which emphasize the importance of these virtues before considering the
specific stages of Emma’s spiritual quest.

Compared to the earlier characters of Elinor Dashwood and Fanny Price, Emma's
flaws are more apparent. Readers will not mistake Emma as too good to be real. Besides
being under-educated, self-satisfied and self-deceived, Emma manipulates and is too
quick to judge others. In short, she is an immature, self-important child spoiled by a
doting and insensible father. Much like Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, however,
Emma is also pretty, lively, and generally likable. But unlike Elizabeth, Emma is fi'om a
wealthy and titled family and has experienced so little restraint and correction in her life
that she stubbomly does as she pleases and always believes that she is right.

While Emma’s self-assurance and self-direction are sometimes misplaced, she has
developed them without supportive role models to help her find her way in life. In Ema,
Austen presents fathers in unflattering terms: Mr. Woodhouse is a doddering old man
concerned with gruel, and Mr. Weston is a moderately concerned but uninvolved father.
Woodhouse's response to Miss Taylor's marriage to Mr. Weston shows the depth of his
silliness:

His spirits required support. He was a nervous man, easily depressed; fond

of every body that he was used to, and hating to part with them; hating

change of every kind. Matrimony, as the origin of change, was always
disagreeable; and he was by no means yet reconciled to his own daughter's

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marrying, nor could ever speak of her but with compassion, though it had

been entirely a match of affection, when he was now obliged to part with

Miss Taylor too; and from his habits of gentle selfishness and of being never

able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself, he was

very much disposed to think Miss Taylor had done as sad a thing for herself

as for them, and would have been a great deal happier if she had spent all the

rest of her life at Hartfield. (7-8)

Had his heart been less good, Mr. Woodhouse might have become a parent like Mrs.
Ferrars in Sense and Senaibility, or a model for Dickensian villains, always manipulating
family members to achieve his own desires. Emma says of him, “It is tenderness of heart
which makes my dear father so generally beloved” (269). These are not the guiding
father-figures assumed by the conduct book writers.

Emma's devotion and kindness toward her father, however, reveal her strong
sense of filial duty. Surely a reasonable young woman could do better than obediently
follow such a father's advice. Emma, though, is a perfect balance in this regard. She
honors her father by genuinely caring for him, by exhibiting the true amiability of her
nature, but not by following his explicit direction. Emma is an intelligent young woman
who happens to need guidance and a chance to mature. Austen provides both for her.

In Emma as in the earlier novels, amiability plays a central role. As Maclntyre
defined it, amiability with its Christian bent is the fundamental and sincere caring for
people and is the foundation for the other virtues important to Austen. Without this,
agreeableness is little more than manipulation of others for one's own gain and, as Chapter
Three explains in the case of Willoughby, immoral behavior. In Emma, Knightley
criticizes Frank Churchill's failure to visit his father. “No, Emma, your amiable young

man can be amiable only in French, not in English. He may be very 'aimable,' have very

good manners, and be very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the

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feelings of other people: nothing really amiable about him” (149). Knightley refuses to
recognize Churchill as sincere in his behavior towards others. Charm and good manners,
as demonstrated by Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility, often disguise self-
aggrandizement.

Other characters in this novel are also measured on this scale of agreeableness-
arniability. Austen offers a strong negative example in Mr. Elton who is also found to be
agreeable without possessing true amiability. John Knightley says, “I never in my life
saw a man more intent on being agreeable than Mr. Elton. It is downright labour to him
where ladies are concerned. With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he
has ladies to please every feature works” (111). He implies that Elton's behavior toward
women is somehow false and, therefore, lacking in amiability. Also in this passage, John
tells Emma that Mr. Elton might be in love with her, but she rejects this idea. “Mr. Elton
in love with mel—What an idea!’ 'I do not say it is so; but you will do well to consider
whether it is so or not, and to regulate your behavior accordingly. I think your manners
to him encouraging. I speak as a friend, Emma. You had better look about you, and
ascertain what you do, and what you mean to do” (112). In this passage, John comes
close to accusing Emma herself of a lack of true amiability. As Emma comments later,
both Knightley brothers are extraordinarily insightfitl.

The impulse to please is good, even in Mr. Elton, but must spring from a deeper
affection for people, not simply from a desire to be liked or to win a wife. John
Knightley himself is not a model of amiability and is not the most pleasing of characters:
he often complains and seems to detract from otherwise pleasant situations. The narrator

says of him,

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Mr. John Knightley was a tall, gentleman-like, and very clever man;

rising in his profession, domestic, and respectable in his private character;

but with reserved manners which prevented his being generally pleasing; r

and capable of being sometimes out of humour. He was not an ill-

tempered man, not so often unreasonably cross as to deserve such a

reproach; but his temper was not his great perfection; and, indeed, with

such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects in

it should not be increased. (92-93) '
Despite these flaws, he is presented as a generally good character. He is a good father
and a caring husband and brother, qualities showing that he possesses amiability while
sometimes falling short of being agreeable. Men who possess true amiability know its
value and condemn its absence in other men. For example, George Knightley acts out of
a platonic desire to be helpful when he sends his carriage for Jane when she is not feeling
well. He has nothing to gain from assisting her. It is important that Austen has men
criticizing other men in both of these examples, as it reveals the writer’s impulse to
remove the gendered basis of virtue and to assert that amiability should be a human
virtue, not a 'woman's' virtue.

In women, the contrast of agreeableness and amiability is most evident between
Emma and Jane Fairfax. Both women are 'good.' Jane is better educated and is a truly
gifted musician. Emma has been lazy with her education and is only competent with her
music; both inadequacies she later regrets. Emma repeatedly criticizes Jane's reserve,
not unlike John Knightley's, and perceives it as a major character flaw and representative
of Jane's less than amiable nature. Again it is Knightley who remarks, “Jane Fairfax is a
very charming young woman—but not even Jane Fairfax is perfect. She has a fault. She
has not the open temper which a man would wish for in a wife” (288). Obviously

Knightley has always hoped to marry Emma which partly explains his preference for an

open temper. But, while the cause of Jane's restraint is later revealed as her concern over

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the secret engagement, her temper remains quiet, unlike Emma's which is truly open.
Jane's apology to Emma acknowledges this fault: “You are very kind, but I know what
my manners were to you—So cold and artificiall—I had always a part to act.——It was a
life of deceitl—I know that I must have disgusted you”(459). This mirrors the discussion
between Elinor and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility where the former is too reserved
and the latter has no restraint.

The secret engagement of Jane and Frank is important to the plot of the novel and
valuable in establishing the virtues at work in it. An amiable person is open, artless and
honest in dealing with others. On reading Churchill's letter to the Westons, Knightley
responds to Emma:

Fancying you to have fathomed his secret. Natural enough!—his own

mind full of intrigue, that he should suspect it in others—Mystery;

F inesse—how they pervert the understanding! My Emma, does not every

thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all

our dealings with each other? (445-6)

Emma admits the truth. She knows that he is right and knows equally that she has fallen
short. Not only has she been unfair in her dealings with Jane and Frank, but she has
entered into secret intrigues with Churchill against Jane Fairfax and, by extension, against
Knightley.

In Emma’s code, one who is amiable must also be constant. Honesty and
directness require constancy to give them substance. After all, capricious honesty is

hardly a virtue. Austen asserts the constancy or inconstancy of her characters in all of her

novels, and Persuasion of course, is an entire novel devoted to the subject. Emma

 

considers the presence of this virtue in Frank Churchill: “To complete every other

recommendation, he had almost told her that he loved her. What strength, or what

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constancy of affection he might be subject to, was another point. . . (262). Emma’s
immaturity shows in her own definition of constancy. She believes that she is being
constant in her friendship to Harriet, by continuing to teach her and by trying to find her a
husband. Emma learns later in the novel that constancy might take a different form.
“How improperly had she been acting by Harriet! How inconsiderate, how indelicate,
how irrational, how unfeeling had been her conduct! (408). It is a moment of extreme
self-recognition and regret.

To overcome these flaws and grow, Emma must first confront her own moments
of inconstancy. While she is constant in her friendship and respect for Knightley, she is
inconstant in her behavior to others. She does not yet know romantic or sexual love and
therefore has yet to learn of the constancy required between husband and wife. She
dabbles in match-making for others and for herself. Emma's concern with constancy
moves to the foreground when she discovers that Elton intends to propose to her. While
her misjudgrnent indicates the extent of her naiveté, her respect for the virtue of
constancy remains apparent. “[T]here was no putting an end to his extreme solicitude
about her. She was vexed. It did appear—there was no concealing it—exactly like the
pretence of being in love with her, instead of Harriet; an inconstancy, if real, the most
contemptible and abominable! and she had difficulty in behaving with temper” (125).
Of course, Elton is not inconstant in this instance; Emma has misread his intentions.
Later, she convinces herself that marriage with Churchill would be ideal and proceeds to
fall in love with him. As she later states, she escapes disaster by falling out of love with
him before he can damage her pride or her reputation. “[M]y manners gave such an

impression, I have as much reason to be ashamed of confessing that 1 never have been at

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all attached to the person we are speaking of, as it might be natural for a woman to feel in
confessing in exactly the reverse.— But I never have” (426-27). Despite her capacity to
misjudge the conduct of others, Emma's outbursts establish the importance of constancy.

Harriet's complete lack of constancy can be viewed as a comic foil to Emma's
more serious approach. As Knightley says to Emma, Harriet is an open, artless, beautifirl
young woman who is profiting from her relationship with Emma. Unfortunately,
Harriet's growing sense of judgment does not seem to aid her constancy in her
relationships with men. As Emma considers, “Mr. Knightley, always so kind, so feeling,
so truly considerate for every body, would never deserve to be less worshipped than now;
and it really was too much to hope even of Harriet, that she could be in love with more
than three men in one year “ (450).

Only through these moments of self-recognition can Emma learn constancy and
self-awareness. When she does not know her own mind or her own heart, she cannot
offer constancy in her relationships with anyone else. Austen shows Emma developing
through the novel, through numerous episodes of epiphany. In an early disagreement
with Knightley, she reflects:

Emma made no answer, and tried to look cheerfully unconcerned, but was

really feeling uncomfortable and wanting him very much to be gone. She

did not repent what she had done; she still thought herself a better judge of

such a point of female right and refinement than he could be; but yet she

had a sort of habitual respect for his judgment in general, which made her

dislike having it so loudly against her. (65)

At this point, Emma has not come to understand her own behavior. Later, readers see
this response: “Emma remained in a state of vexation too; but there was more

indistinctness in the causes of her’s, than in his. She did not always feel so absolutely

satisfied with herself, so entirely convinced that her opinions were right and her

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adversary's wrong. . . (67). Emma's unease and vexation with her own behavior continue
throughout the novel until they culminate in her final recognition of how she has wronged
Harriet, how she has not done her duty by her friends, and how she realizes that she loves
Knightley.

Emma's strengths, even from the beginning of the novel, are apparent. She is
attractive but not vain, generous, dutiful and concerned with the well-being of the poor.
Emma's sense of duty, so strong in these areas, is not often misplaced or mistaken. As
the inheritor of £30,000 and the woman of a large estate, Emma knows her duty to the
people of Highbury. While she is sometimes mistaken in her feeble attempts to seem
democratic (as with Harriet), she maintains a good relationship with poor families in the
vicinity. There is no hint of irony in Austen's presentation of Emma visiting the poor.
The narrator says,

Emma was very compassionate and the distresses of the poor were as sure

of relief from her personal attention and kindness, her counsel and her

patience, as from her purse. She understood their ways, could allow for

their ignorance and their temptations, had no romantic expectations of

extraordinary virtue from those, for whom education had done so little;

entered into their troubles with ready sympathy, and always gave her

assistance with as much intelligence as good-will. (86)

Her general good sense allows her to help the poor without condescending to them or
making a show of her compassion. Emma, as the lady of the village must do a lady's
duty. Austen would not have Emma Shirk her duty in this sphere.

Emma's compassion also extends to more genteel underprivileged neighbors like
Miss Bates. In a discussion over supplying food to the Bates household, Emma replies to

her father, “'My dear papa, I sent the whole hind-quarter. I knew you would wish it

(172). She unselfishly shares the riches of her estate with her less fortunate neighbors.

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Despite her seemingly insurmountable faults, Emma is salvaged by her grth in
self-knowledge. The author’s affectionate touch is apparent; Austen has written into
Emma the set of virtues she most esteemed as appropriate and desirable for young
women to strive towards achieving. These primary virtues — amiability, constancy, a
sense of duty, and self-knowledge — must come to fi'uition for Emma to become socially
and spiritually actualized. Without these, a character cannot grow into full personhood.
As the novel begins, Emma contains the roots of these virtues, but they are undeveloped.
She must grow out of her childish self-importance and recognize the value of each of
these virtues. Then she must, with maturity and assurance, adopt them as guides for her
own behavior. Thus, Emma may become a heroine because she is made of suitable raw
material, i.e. she possesses the virtues of constancy, amiability, the ability to gain self-
knowledge and a sense of duty. Emma learns from her own mistakes and, ultimately,
quests for greater spiritual fulfillment.

The Stages of Emma’s Spiritual and Social Quests

Emma is an unusual character in Austen’s repertoire. No other wealthy, free-
spirited character possesses the requisite virtues for serving as an Austen heroine.
Wealthy, spoiled and meddling might describe Emma. How does Austen write a spiritual
quest into such a novel with such a heroine?

Again relying on Christ’s heuristic, readers begin by identifying any stages of
nothingness or recognition of nothingness in Emma’s life. On first glance, there may
seem to be none. This view, however, might be too shallow. What is Emma’s
nothingness? First, readers learn early in the novel that Emma is motherless. Knightley

says to Mrs. Weston, “Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. . . . And ever

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since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all. In her mother
she lost the only person able to cope with her. She inherits her mother’s talents, and must
have been under subjection to her” (37). With no mother to guide her, Emma grows up
with indulgence and pampering. She has no one to contain her excesses; no one to direct
her development. A great gap exists where Emma’s mother should be.

Emma’s greatest duty and the second most prominent factor in Emma’s
nothingness is her lack of freedom from her father. She has no real freedom from her
filial duty, and her sense of duty to her father is so great that she will sacrifice any
personal happiness for him. “Emma spared no exertions to maintain this happier flow of
ideas, and hoped . . . to get her father tolerably through the evening” (9), and her
“soothing attentions” (107) are always directed first toward her father. Emma refirses
Knightley’s first proposal of maniage by answering “While her dear father lived, any
change of condition must be impossible for her. She could never quit him” (448). Her
future belongs to Mr. Woodhouse, as long as he lives.

A third example of the nothingness in Emma’s life concerns her education.

Emma lives most of her girlhood ignoring the directions of her doting governess, Miss
Taylor. After Miss Taylor becomes Mrs. Weston, Emma is entirely on her own. From
the first page of the novel, the narrator asserts that Emma has had “rather too much her
own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself” (5). This fault and its
resulting emptiness follow her to the final moments of the novel. Emma has been guilty
of toying with other people's lives but sees her matchmaking as “the greatest amusement
in the world” (12). Other people seem to exist solely for her entertainment. In the same

way that she dabbles in the lives of her neighbors, she dabbles in art and study. Emma

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talks more about reading and steadiness of pursuits than she actually practices. Knightley
says that “Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. . . .
But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never
submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the
understanding” (37). Emma has only moderate accomplishments in art, intellect, and
music. With her advantages, her talents should be superior. They are not, and this lack
creates a center of nothingness in Emma’s life.

Emma describes herself as an “imaginist” (335), which Knightley interprets as all
“fancy and whim” (98). Emma's imagination, her romantic naivete, her “fancy” and her
lack of education, combine to form part of the negative experience of her life. Like
Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, she lives in a romantic world of her own
creation, little related to the reality in which other adults live. This fancy and this
arrogance, gentle as readers might want to make them, could be exceedingly damaging to
a young woman. Emma is a gossip. She is jealous of Jane Fairfax (166), childish at times
(336), and most importantly self-deceived. Emma does not know herself; she does not
know her own heart. Until she confronts her own motives and actions in greater depth,
she will not achieve a true spirituality. As an immature young woman, Emma does not
see the existence of the cage which holds her. She must awaken to the depths of the
nothingness in her life to begin her spiritual quest.

Seldom does Austen use traditional mystical conversion as the means of
awakening for her characters. More often, she uses an awakening such as Christ
describes wherein “the ability to see or to know is within the self. . . [and whose]

grounding in the powers of being often leads to newfound self-awareness and self-

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confidence” (Mg 18, 21). Emma, having her quest thrust upon her, awakens to see
her life situation. She recognizes the depths to which she has fallen or might fall; she
has gossiped about Jane Fairfax when she should have been her friend; she has
humiliated Miss Bates, an older woman living in poverty, and she has nearly ruined
Harriet’s chances of a decent marriage. Emma seeks to redress these situations, but she
must, on one hand, understand the social milieu in which she finds herself and, on the
other hand, she must repent in Austen’s Christian terms for her own lack of virtue or
insight.

As Emma awakens in her spiritual quest to the reality of the social order in which
she lives, she changes her own attitude about that social order. Her early comments
concerning social status and separation of classes show a support for boundaries which
exist. She says to Harriet while discussing the Martin family,

The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can

have nothing to do. A degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance

might interest me; I might hope to be useful to their families in some way

or other. But a farmer can need none of my help, and is therefore in one

sense as much above my notice as in every other he is below it. (29)

While Emma cannot remove the social structure which exists around her, she need not
support the snobbery which keeps it in operation. She awakens to her own failure when
she awakens to the inhumanity of her position. Through Mr. Knightley’s suggestion and
through her experience with Harriet, Emma comes to view this yeomanry in a different
light.

She had no doubt of Harriet’s happiness with any good tempered man;

but with him [Martin], and in the home he offered, there would be the

hope of more, of security, stability, and improvement. She would be

placed in the midst of those who loved her, and who had better sense than
herself; retired enough for safety, and occupied enough for cheerfulness.

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She would be never led into temptation nor left for it to find her out. She
would be respectable and happy. (482)

Emma’s experience with people in social classes lower than her own will continue to
improve, as will her attitude towards them, as she becomes mistress of the estates. She
learns to understand that all people are to be judged by the quality of their person.

Significantly, Emma asserts that she has fallen short in another area of her social
duty: her “woman by woman” duty to Jane Fairfax. Her self-criticism shows Emma's
capacity for self-knowledge. She is unable to acquit herself of this unfortunate behavior.

Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common; and there were two

points on which she was not quite easy. She doubted whether she had not

transgressed the duty of woman by woman, in betraying her suspicions of

Jane Fairfax's feelings to Frank Churchill. It was hardly right; but it had

been so strong an idea, that it would escape her, and his submission to all

that she told, was a compliment to her penetration which made it difficult

for her to be quite certain that she ought to have held her tongue. (231)

This moment of self-doubt, while still clouded with misconception, reveals Emma's
deeper sense of right. She has failed to keep her duty to Jane as a woman.

Similarly, as Knightley later points out to her, Emma’s ill-treatment of Miss Bates
is made fundamentally worse because of the woman's fallen social and economic
position, both of which will worsen as Miss Bates ages and her resources dwindle.
According to Austen, the wealthy must dutifully care for such women, and, perhaps not
ironically, obviously after her own father's death, Austen, her mother and her sister are
women like these who must be helped by wealthier relatives. Emma knows enough and
cares enough to minister, as a lady would, to the poor in her community and to women

less fortunate than herself. She acts out of kindness and necessity without being asked or

directed.

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Because she does not know her own heart, Emma continually makes poor
decisions or behaves in unseemly ways, as the picnic incident reveals. Emma insults
Miss Bates in banter: “Miss Bates, deceived by the mock ceremony of her [Emma's]
manner, did not immediately catch her meaning; but when it burst on her, it could not
anger, though a slight blush showed that it could pain her” (371). Knightley rebukes
Emma for her behavior. “Were she your equal in situation—but, Emma, consider how
far this is from being the case. She is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born
to; and, if she live to old age, must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your
compassion. It was badly done, indeed!” (375). Emma, of course, immediately
recognizes her mistakes in propriety and with shame attempts to correct her errors. She
visits Miss Bates to apologize for her harsh, biting words and begins the process of
creating a relationship with Jane Fairfax, which jealousy has prevented for years. She
wants to heal the wounds she inflicted in ignorance and restore her position of good grace
with her friends.

Another of Emma’s awakenings concerns the quests of people around her. Most
people quest for earthly, physical rewards — money, position, power, and prestige. As
much as any woman of her day, Emma already has these. Through the example of Mr.
and Mrs. Elton, Austen shows how this earthly quest takes practical shape. Emma
responds to the patronizing attitude taken by Mrs. Elton. Mrs. Elton elevates herself in
conversation by offering to introduce Emma socially to other friends: “It was as much as
Emma could bear, without being impolite. . . . She restrained herself, however, from any
of the reproofs she could have given, and only thanked Mrs. Elton coolly. . . (275-276).

Emma separates herself from the crassness of such people and through the development

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of her own self-awareness, she awakens to the fi'uitful potential of her own life. For
what, then, does Emma quest, and how are her gains made apparent?

Only through brief moments of self-awareness and self-examination in which her
awakenings mingle with the final stage of spiritual questing, naming, do readers see that
Emma learns to critique her own behavior and to understand her failure to grow
spiritually. Without these moments of questioning, self-doubt and self-reflection, Emma
could not achieve greater meaning in her life. While her outward behaviors seem to
suggest that she does not listen to or heed advice, Emma often questions herself after
being prompted. Her brother-in-law suggests to Emma that Mr. Elton’s attentions are
being directed at her and not at Harriet. “Instead of forgetting him [Mr. Elton], his
behaviour was such that she could not avoid the internal suggestions of 'Can it really be
as my brother [in-law] imagined? can it be possible for this man to be beginning to
transfer his affections from Harriet to me?—Absurd and insufferable!'“ (118). Her
questioning is apparent, but at this point in the novel, her discomfort is rejected. Emma
believes that she cannot possibly misjudge the emotions or the motives of others. Only a
very young woman could feel so certain of her own insight.

In each of the instances of her mistakes, Emma serves as an example for the
young women reading Austen’s novel. The mistake does not define Emma; her response
to the mistake, her willingness to accept responsibility and her awakening to its true
meaning do. She cannot grow if she does not make mistakes and learn from them.
Throughout the novel, readers find descriptions of Emma's regret. After “quiet
reflection” her “perturbation” is lessened (133). She feels shame, she desires to be

humble and discreet (142). She is uncomfortable with herself (I 79) and recognizes the

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sting of her own conscience: “something in it which her own heart could not approve”
(185). Fortunately and significantly, Emma criticizes herself, showing that she has right
intention in her heart even when she does not manage to achieve it in her conduct.

Significantly, many of Emma’s moments of insight or awakening occur in nature.
Christ discusses the role of nature in women’s spiritual awakening and identifies “. . .
women’s exclusions from culture as one reason for their mystical experiences with nature
. . . . Whether or not women really are closer to nature than men, cultural attitudes and
cultural roles have encouraged women to develop a sense of their own affinity with
nature” (22). In brief comments, Austen shows Emma’s movements and reflections.
“Every moment had brought a fresh surprise; and every surprise must be matter of
humiliation to her. . . she sat still, she walked about, she tried her own room, she tried the
shrubbery—in every place, every posture, she perceived that she had acted most weakly
. . .” (411-412). She awakens slowly and torturously to the errors of her own behavior.
“To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart, was the first endeavour. To that
point went every leisure moment which her father's claims on her allowed, and every
moment of involuntary absence of mind” (412). In natural settings, Emma’s mind opens
to her own mistakes.

She also finds tranquility in nature.

The weather continued much the same all the following morning; and the

same loneliness, and the same melancholy, seemed to reign at Hartfield—

but in the afternoon it cleared; the wind changed into a softer quarter; the

clouds were carried off; the sun appeared; it was summer again. With all

the eagerness which such a transition gives, Emma resolved to be out of

doors as soon as possible. Never had the exquisite sight, smell, sensation of

nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after a storm, been more attractive to
her. She longed for the serenity they might gradually introduce. . . . (424)

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Emma has awakened to her heart’s inner workings. She knows that she is in love with
Knightley. She finds comfort in the natural world, where Austen matches the scene to
her heroine’s emotions. Emma seeks to name her recognitions to all involved:
Knightley, Harriet, the Bates women and Jane Fairfax.

Coming to terms with her practiced misjudgment, Emma finds what she should
have known all along: she will marry Knightley. But, it is not the discovery that is most
important here. It is Emma's struggle, the outcome of which helps her understand that
one cannot see into another's heart and that finding the truth of one's own heart is a
livelong task. To achieve a life consisting of meaning beyond physical behavior, one
must know oneself. Until this point, Emma has not known herself. Emma’s spiritual
quest has taken her from arrogance and misjudgment to insight and identification. She
comes to know who she is, what her world is like, and what the guiding principle of her
life should be. Emma’s telos becomes recognizable; she quests to deserve the blessings
of her life, to join a peer in a loving, respectful marriage and to grow to fulfill her social
responsibilities to the larger community.

Conclusions

The process of becoming rational is the process of becoming adult and the process
of becoming moral. Knightley outlines Churchill's faults in failing to reach this maturity.
It is this same, ordinarily gender-driven process which Emma undertakes in this novel.
Her growing awareness is compared to similar processes in several of the other characters
and is not defined or limited by gender. Knightley is already a man, but he is not always

right. Churchill has much growing to do which he will do under the guidance of Jane

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Fairfax. Emma is launched on this road to rational adulthood, and readers observe her
progress.

Emma's social growth is expected and usual. She ultimately marries a man of
greater wealth and higher position than herself who improves the circumstances of a
young woman who already has a high standard of living. Had Austen hoped to launch a
frontal attack on the class structure of her time, she indeed might have had Knightley
marry the unpolished, illegitimate Harriet. This does not seem to be the writer's goal.
Austen shows Emma's personal and spiritual growth through a number of painful and
embarrassing experiences, so that the young woman comes to deserve (or nearly deserve)
the fate which is ultimately hers.

Self-knowledge cannot be over-valued. Without it, one cannot act wisely or
virtuously, as the scene with Miss Bates shows. Without understanding, the virtues of
amiability and constancy are useless, hence Austen's concern with the psychology of her
characters. Emma believes that she has a well-developed understanding and a clear
knowledge of herself. She faces the truth through a painful process of self-recognition
and gains self-command in the process.

Throughout the novel, there is a balance between Emma's blundering and her
sense of regret at her actions. Repeatedly, Knightley chastises Emma, sometimes gently
and sometimes harshly, and she responds confidently that she is right while secretly
doubting her own judgment. As children will do, Emma makes herself more comfortable
by casting doubt on to others, but like Anne Elliot, Emma seeks a time and place for quiet
reflection and contemplates her errors. “But her mind had never been in such

perturbation, and it needed a very strong effort to appear attentive and cheerful till the

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usual hour of separating allowed her the relief of quiet reflection” (133). In these
moments, Emma finds herself. She discovers the deep principles instilled by Anne
Weston and confronts her mistakes:

Every part of it brought pain and humiliation, of some sort or other; but,
compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light; and she would gladly
have submitted to feel yet more mistaken—more in error—more disgraced
by mis-judgment, than she actually was, could the effects of her blunders
have been confined to herself. (134)

And again,

The first error and the worst lay at her door. It was foolish, it was wrong,
to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was
adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be
serious, a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite concerned and
ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more. (136-137)

Such self-reproach prevents the reader from condemning Emma too harshly. As she
continually blunders, she continually seeks redress and, through these trials and errors,
grows into that rational adult described by Knightley.

When it comes to love, Emma's naiveté is most apparent, and her errors most
numerous. She has no experience with romance or marriage but believes that she can see
into the hearts of others. She imagines what she believes love to be and then fancies
herself, and everyone else, in it.

Emma's eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating, in

a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for

making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like her's, once

opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched—she admitted—
she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that

Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley, than with Frank Churchill?

Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet's having some hope

of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr.
Knightley must marry no one but herselfl (407-8)

 

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Emma has had little occasion to suspect her own heart, but her intelligence and
understanding are acute; once she begins to doubt, she sees the full range of her mistake.
She awakens, has insight into her life and names her errors and her hopes to others. What
remains is to seek to correct her mistakes and to change her conduct to avoid these errors
in the future.

Her own conduct, as well as her own heart, was before her in the same few

minutes. She saw it all with a cleamess which had never blessed her before.

How improperly had she been acting by Harriet! How inconsiderate, how

indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been her conduct! What

blindness, what madness, had led her on! It struck her with dreadful force,

and she was ready to give it every bad name in the world. (408)

Only a strong measure of self-doubt and self-examination will ensure this.

With this novel, Austen shows that amiability, constancy, duty and self-awareness
are necessary for spiritual growth. She establishes a scale to measure her characters'
goodness, while stepping away from the gendered virtues proclaimed by the conduct
books. She launches into her own explanation, not unlike Wollstonecraft's, on why and
how men and women must go beyond the constraints of traditional definitions of virtue.
They must stand as partners under one set of regulations and behaviors, rooted in
spirituality, requiring women as well as men to develop these virtues and to educate
themselves to their fullest potential. Emma's quest has taken her from arrogance to
humility, from childishness to maturity, and from self-deceit to understanding. Only after

achieving these might she join Knightley as an equal partner, with social as well as

spiritual support, in marriage.

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Notes

lSee Laura Mooneyham White, “Jane Austen and the Marriage Plot: Questions of
Persistence,” 71-86.

28cc Margaret Kirkham’s discussion “Emma” in Jane Austen: Feminism and
Fiction in which she says, “This has led to the belief that Emma is a novel of education in
which all the learning is done by the heroine, all the instruction provided by the hero. . .,”
[but she goes on to argue that] “Mr. Knightly is as ignorant as Emma about the state of
his own feelings. . .” (133). Also see James Boyd White, “Conversation, Rational and
Playful: The Language of Friendship in Jane Austen’s Emma.”

 

 

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Chapter Six
w:
The Story and the Quest

Austen's novels show that a woman's struggle for place in society is a struggle for
recognition of her spirituality, that as a spiritual as well as a physical entity, she has
value. Each heroine's story establishes new patterns of behavior for women and, in the
process, offers new means to achieve a more fulfilling social and spiritual life. In the
articulation of experience that is Anne Elliot's story, Persuasion reveals Anne's quest for
social and spiritual actualization. Considered as an example of Carol Christ's definition
of social and spiritual questing, Anne Elliot exemplifies the nature of a woman's life
quest where “whole thinking looks forward to the realization of spiritual insight in social
reality” and where,

[i]n a supportive community, women will be eager to point out the false

naming of power and value within patriarchy and to begin to name self,

power, and value anew based on their experiences. They will be eager to

create new ways of being in a new social world. (Mg 130-131)
Anne Elliot has no supportive community. Persuasion is the story of her life, eight years
after rejecting a maniage proposal. Her rejection, based on the well-meant advice of her
surrogate mother, Lady Russell, has colored her life and shaped her values over the time
since its occurrence. Anne suffers from a lack of place in her family and a lack of value
as an unmarried woman in her society, until her lost fiance, Capt. Wentworth, returns as a
.wealthy, successful man. The novel’s conclusion leaves readers with a glimpse into

Anne’s new naming of self and power and value and into her future, where she finds this

supportive community among Capt. Wentworth’s family and friends.

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The tension in this story lies in Anne's silent suffering of her fate and in her
inability to speak frankly with Capt. Wentworth to reveal her feelings and to know his.
Austen uses this story of found love, lost love, and love recovered to examine the
efficacy of a woman's living by the virtues and spiritual and social rules outlined in the
conduct books of the time, and in the general societal acceptance of a woman's role as a
passive one. Anne struggles with what she believes to be appropriate and right behavior,
then suffers terrible consequences because of her decisions. Her conscience, however,
remains her greatest ally and support. Although she is deeply unhappy with the
circumstances of her life, she comes to terms with her own decision-making processes
and blames the cultural rules for shackling women.

Persuasion is Austen’s last finished novel, and Anne Elliot is her last heroine.
Unlike Elinor Dashwood and Fanny Price but much like Emma Woodhouse, Anne has a
family whose title and position give her an element of personal freedom which the earlier
heroines do not possess. Anne's family, however, has lost financial security because of
her father's inept financial management and insistence on living beyond the family
means. The Elliots can no longer afford a lifestyle of casual wealth. Unlike Emma,
Anne has a soberness grown from disappointment and loss and a self-awareness which
the girl, Emma, does not yet possess. Austen writes about Anne in a letter to her niece,
Fanny Knight: “ . . . of Novels and Heroines;—pictures of perfection as you know make
me sick & wicked. . . . You may perhaps like the heroine, as she is almost too good for
me” Letters 23 —25 March 1817). Anne Elliot is not unlike Fanny Price in Mansfield

Park. While both characters seek to be good, Fanny’s path follows a more explicitly

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Christian philosophy than Anne’s does, but in her moments of reflection Anne’s spiritual
quest becomes apparent.

Anne harbors a system of beliefs and values based on a rational consideration of
virtue. Like most members of the eighteenth-century Church of England (and perhaps

even the contemporary one), the evidence of Anne's spirituality is found in the decidedly

social nature of her concern for other human beings.1 An active spirituality is apparent in
an individual's life choices: behaviors, values, choice of partner, parenting style, or in
Austen’s value system — amiability, constancy, duty and self-knowledge. Austen’s
character tries to live her life guided by these virtues. The working-out of her behavior,
however, shows how too strict an adherence to the conduct book definitions of these
virtues nearly destroys her. Anne Elliot must find a new way to live by these values.

In “Rhetoric and Gender in Jane Austen's Persuasion,” Arthur E. Walzer argues
that our understanding of eighteenth-century rhetorical theory might be enhanced by a
close reading of Austen's novel (688). Walzer explores the rhetorical matter of Austen's
novel while examining the works of Francis Bacon, George Campbell and Hugh Blair.
“Austen's treatment of persuasion in the novel contributes to our understanding of
eighteenth-century rhetorical theory. The result is a reading that sees Persuasion as
endorsing Anne's conventionally feminine values, her receptivity and sociality, over
Wentworth's stereotypical masculine firmness and autonomy” (689). In this discussion,
Walzer's description of conventionality, receptivity and sociality might be subsumed
under Austen's heading of amiability — a genuine openness to and caring for others.

Walzer says that Blair, Campbell and other rhetoricians “distinguish persuasion as

intended to lead to action, therefore as directed toward the will and requiring emotional

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appeal” (690). Because the rhetorician can potentially control this, “Susceptibility to
persuasion is associated with a weak will, a character flaw. The only weapon the listener
has to resist. . . is critical reason” (693). Thus the gender stereotypes are again upheld in
rhetorical theory. Women are assumed to have weaker wills and are less capable of
resisting persuasion than men because their abilities to reason are weaker. Walzer asserts
that Austen rejects this stereotyping and argues that “the morality of a choice is at least as
much a question of feeling, of being open to the concerns of others, of recognizing others'
needs, as it is of reason and self-control. . . “ (696) and “a persuadable temper might
indicate an affectionate heart, rather than a weak will, and a mind characterized by a
discriminating moral sensibility rather than by a timid suasibility” (697). Although
Walzer's discussion of a “discriminating moral sensibility” makes up a small portion of
his essay, it is the heart of this dissertation. The conduct books teach a dichotomy of
good and evil, apparent in gender-based virtues. Women were stereotyped as having
weak wills and requiring guidance. Obedience to more knowing individuals, then, was
taught as one of the preeminent feminine virtues. Austen shows that Anne's new
consideration of these virtues actually represents a feminist approach to spiritual
behavior.

According to a computer search of this novel, Austen uses various forms of the
word parsuade thirty-two times. Her usage includes noun and verb forms and shows
examples of nearly every character being persuaded by someone into doing or believing
something. There are characters whose internal persuasions set their value systems,
characters who are persuaded by others to behave well or badly, persuasions made on the

side of safety, and characters remaining unpersuadable. Austen does not use one

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definition for this term or even one viewpoint. She explores the variety of rhetorical uses
of the word and, in Anne Elliot’s case, examines how persuadability may represent good
or ill in a character’s makeup. In Austen’s new story for young women’s lives,
persuadability cannot be assumed as a positive quality in a young woman’s character.

In Persuasion Austen considers virtue and its consequences as she addresses the
conduct book virtues of duty, obedience, and propriety. Austen imbues her heroine with
the feminine virtues important in eighteenth-century culture and allows her heroine to
follow the rules of obedience and passivity and then shows the consequences. In
Persuasion, Austen shows that strict obedience to the conduct book guidelines does not
lead to success in life, to happiness, or to any kind of spiritual or social fulfillment. Anne
realizes, in repeated moments in the novel, that her following of the traditional guidelines
has prevented her growth and fulfillment, and only when she steps beyond these
boundaries does she really begin to grow.

As noted earlier, for Austen, appropriate behavior goes beyond obedience, beyond
manners and beyond propriety to encompass a moral code founded on amiability,
constancy, duty and self-knowledge. Not only does the strict acting-out of the conduct
book virtues not lead to happiness, it also does not make a woman virtuous; it does not
make a woman's life a spiritual journey. Strict adherence represses choice, represses
reason, and cannot, even in eighteenth-century terms, lead to behavior which might be
considered moral. Austen shows that a woman must find the quest in her own life, make
rational decisions about her own behavior and work to achieve her own growth. In a
delicate balancing of all of these virtues and by tempering each with reasonable

consideration of situations, Austen carries Anne into a life of self-respect and humility,

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with a strong sense of feminist justice. The author refutes the theories of eighteenth-
century rhetoricians, undermines the narrow definition of virtue espoused by the conduct
books and gives Anne Elliot's life that element missing in the standard conduct book
definitions: the adventure of a spiritual quest.

Like all of Austen's heroines, Anne is proper, good and, in many ways, isolated
from the people closest to her. She is neither foolhardy and highly visible like Emma
Woodhouse nor overly timid and retiring like Fanny Price. Anne Elliot is a complex and
intelligent woman with a strong sense of morality. Her strong reliance on reason is a
testament to her will to good. She is “in her temper, manners, mind, a model of female
excellence” (159) as Mr. Elliot and Lady Russell agree. Although by this point in the
novel readers know to question these characters' honesty and judgment, respectively, this
description holds true for Anne from the beginning. While Anne's actions might be
misinterpreted, her will to do her duty and to will good for others is always apparent. An
early example shows her concern. In breaking her engagement with Wentworth at Lady
Russell's behest, Anne makes her decision on the basis of both obedience to Lady Russell
and of benefiting Wentworth in the long run:

Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her

own, she could hardly have given him up.—The belief of being prudent,

and self-denying principally for his advantage, was her chief consolation

. . . . (28)

By establishing Anne's intentions for Wentworth's good above her own happiness,
Austen approaches the Kantian value system in which virtue is its own end and acts are

good only as they reflect one’s will to do good. Anne's real happiness exists in making

others happy, not in achieving her own happiness.

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Austen gives the reader ample opportunity for observing the development of
Anne's strong moral code. A few examples point up the relationship between the choices
Anne makes and the guidelines established by the conduct books. More often than not,
Austen uses Anne to undermine the conduct books' oversimplification of morality and
often shallow depiction of women's moral and intellectual abilities. In Persuasion,
Austen focuses on the actions and inactions of her characters, which in turn often reflect
on the conduct books’ insistence on the separation of women’s private sphere from men’s
public one. The primary virtues extolled in Persuasion are lifted straight from the
Christian language of the conduct books. Austen focuses on obedience, duty, propriety,
self-knowledge, amiability, and constancy but redefines how these virtues work in a
woman's life, often upholding them in ways not outlined in the conduct books. In the
first of these, for example, strict obedience to parents is emphasized in most conduct
books. The writers fail to address the problems which might arise if a young woman has
an unscrupulous or shallow father, like Sir Walter. Thomas Gisbome, in Epgpia'y, states
that education should seem useful to the child or the child should demure to the wisdom
of the parent or teacher giving it (73). Richard Allestree says in The Ladies Ca_lli_ng that a
“daughter is neither to anticipate, nor contradict the will of her Parent” (177).
Unquestioning obedience, which these writers support, does not develop a woman's
critical reasoning ability or allow her to make choices of moral consequence. She must
learn this on her own, as Austen shows through Anne Elliot's behavior, as she first obeys
and as she later asserts her own positions. Anne’s initial obedience comes close to

ruining her life, but through the experience, she comes to understand that while

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obedience may not always be the best choice, in this case, Anne’s sense of duty to Lady
Russell outweighs the value of her own choice.

Her caring, amiable nature is strengthened by her sense of duty, but Austen tests
the limits of a woman's duty when she has Anne adhere to a strict obedience. For
example, Anne's sense of duty to her guardian, Lady Russell, is clear and understandable
but is nevertheless drawn into question over Lady Russell's misguided advice. Despite
Austen’s own disclaimer, Anne's amiable nature does not make her inhumanly good. She
considers her own perceptions and motives before taking action, but she makes mistakes.
Had her initial obedience to Lady Russell been a mistake? When Anne’s mistakes are
made obvious, they embarrass her and cause her to withdraw and consider how her
motives might complicate and obscure her perceptions, as they do when she and Lady
Russell spot Wentworth on the street. Anne attributes deliberate snubbing to Lady
Russell and is later embarrassed by her own assumptions (179). Regardless of these
perceptions and motives, Anne maintains an appropriate sense of duty to others to the
extent that her own morality supports it. Lady Russell’s advice was mistaken; Anne
would not give such advice to someone in a similar situation. Anne’s obedience and
sense of duty to Lady Russell was not a mistake. Hence, Anne says that, given the
situation again, she would respond in the same way. She would obey.

Anne’s sense of duty is more tempered toward her father. He is a man of no
moral consequence. As a father he deserves no such respectful attention, but Anne gives
to him what is proper to give, while recognizing that he is deficient and feeling sorry that
this is the case. None of Austen's fictional parents give sound advice to their children;

Anne's father frequently shows poor judgment, but Anne refrains from admonishing him:

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Mrs. Clay, who had been present while all this passed, now thought it
advisable to leave the room, and Anne could have said much and did long
to say a little, in defence [sic] of her friend's not very dissimilar claims to
theirs, but her sense of personal respect to her father prevented her. She
made no reply. (158)
Anne's personal integrity is more important to her than a moment's pleasure in setting
straight a family in which she is unloved, disrespected, and ignored. Anne's duty to her
father is to respect his authority and refrain from admonishing him; her obedience is to

the good in which he should, but does not, instruct her.

Anne's example contrasts strongly with Sir Walter's definition of propriety. On

 

this same issue of Anne's visits to Mrs. Smith, Sir Walter says:

“Westgate-buildings!” said he; “and who is Miss Anne Elliot to be visiting

in Westgate-buildings?—A Mrs. Smith. A widow Mrs. Smith,—and who

was her husband? One of the five thousand Mr. Smiths whose names are to

be met with every where. And what is her attraction? That she is old and

sickly. —Upon my word, Miss Anne Elliot, you have the most

extraordinary taste! Every thing that revolts other people, low company,

paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations are inviting to you.” (157)
As this scene shows, Sir Walter measures a person's worth by name, connection and
wealth. Mrs. Smith has none of these, and Sir Walter is appalled by Anne's continued
friendship with her. He does not understand that Mrs. Smith may be more than the sum
of these three parts. The only issues of propriety important to Sir Walter concern
appearances. How does it look to others that a woman of Anne's social stature descends
to the level of poorer friends and visits unfashionable, unsavory neighborhoods? Sir
Walter has no charitable feelings for the poor; they offer no entertainment and no social
status to draw his attention. Not only does he show his own lack of charity in this

passage, he gives no value to Anne's caring nature. Anne judges her father rightly when

she tries to warn Elizabeth of the possible detrimental effects of a relationship between

 

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Mrs. Clay and Sir Walter: “With a great deal of quiet observation, and knowledge, which
she often wished less, of her father's character, she was sensible that results the most
serious to his family from the intimacy, were more than possible” (34). In this particular
instance, Anne ascertains the possibility of marriage in this relationship and the negative
effects of such a marriage on her family. Austen establishes Anne’s pattern of behavior,
the combination of observation, thought, and subsequent action, early in the novel.
Encouragement of such logical behavior seldom appears in the conduct books, where

evaluation or decision-making is often eschewed in the tautology of obedience. With

 

such a family lacking in moral consequence, Anne must redefine obedience and redefine
duty and satisfy her own moral sense. She must decide what is reasonably owed to them
and to herself.

The most important virtues of Austen's characters, however, do not arise from
duty or obedience or even propriety. Persuasion focuses primarily on constancy, and, in
all of Austen's novels, constancy and amiability are the cornerstones of virtuous women;
Anne Elliot possesses both virtues abundantly. In this novel, Austen directly considers
the strengths and weaknesses attributed to women: their weakness of mind requiring
obedience to others; the expectation of attention to Christian duty, especially the caring
for husband, children and home; and the expectation of amiability, seen as a particularly
feminine attribute. Constancy, however, has a different history. The debate is outlined
by Captain Harville and Anne late in the novel:

We [women] certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is,

perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live

at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on

exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or

other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual
occupation and change soon weaken impressions. (232)

 

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Anne argues that by cultural design women have fewer distractions to move their
attentions from their own feelings. Once in love, she says, it is harder for women to
forget. Capt. Harville responds: “I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy
between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest,

so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the

heaviest weather” (233).

Anne refutes his position by pointing out that women are more long-lived than men,
showing the feminine strength of body. Their discussion continues, each debating the
given theories on which sex is more constant and why, until Harville says, “I do not think
I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's
inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will
say, these were all written by men” (234). Anne affirms his statement: “Men have had
every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much
higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove any
thing” (234).

As a plot device, Anne's debate with Harville verges on dea ex machina; it serves
the purpose, however, of showing Anne's continued feeling to Wentworth who overhears
them. As a discussion of Austen's position on constancy and her belief in women's ability
to sustain this virtue, it is a fine piece. Too often the male writer gives an inaccurate
account of woman's constancy, in much the same way that Wentworth has misinterpreted
Anne's sense of duty. So, while speaking for her author, Anne asserts that the stories
which have been told to women and about women have shortchanged them. Women’s

lives, virtues, weaknesses and life directions have had no fair representation. Austen

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seeks to change that by offering her novels as the new stories of women’s lives, offering
truer pictures of women’s spiritual and social struggles.

Austen uses Anne to subvert traditional female behavior through a variety of
narrative devices, in just the way that Walzer argues. Austen inverts standard gender
roles and allows Anne to take on the “manly” behavior of relying on reason to guide her.
Austen goes so far as to offer a replacement for the meek, waiting woman: a
contemplative woman who knows her own mind and understands and accepts her
personal responsibilities. She does not accept, however, the typical masculine versions of
reason and reasoned behavior. Austen adds a spiritual dimension by blending reason
with the character’s desire to achieve spiritual goals, to live virtuously exhibiting amiable
and constant behavior. Readers understand Anne's acknowledgment of her fate, to live
alone and without love, as an outgrowth of her virtuous constancy. She is not fickle or
quick to change her mind or shallow in her affections or too swift to change her
allegiances. All of these traits are cause for celebration in Austen's view. Anne Elliot
contemplates, makes moral decisions, upholds her beliefs through appropriate actions,
and is constant in her vigilance to virtue and to love. Anne's place in her universe, then,
reflects the changing circumstances of her life, her growing awareness of those
circumstances, and the effects of her actions on those changes. Her spiritual quest takes
precedence over her social quest throughout the novel. Until the novel’s conclusion, it
seems that Anne Elliot’s status in the social world cannot change.

Stages of Anne’s Spiritual and Social Quests
The stages of Anne Elliot’s quest are quite clear. There are recursive moments of

nothingness, awakening, insight and naming throughout the novel. Anne quests for

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wisdom and for comfort from her dedication to virtue. She foresees only more
nothingness in her social position in the world but seeks spiritual comfort to support her.

The nothingness of Anne’s life is clear. Like Elinor, Emma and Fanny, Anne has
struggled through adolescence without support. Anne is literally motherless, just as
Emma is. “[S]he had never, since the age of fourteen, never since the loss of her dear
mother, known the happiness of being listened to, or encouraged by any just appreciation
or real taste” (47). Lady Russell, while imperfect, is the only mother Anne has had for
years. Again, like these three earlier heroines, Anne’s father is also useless as a spiritual
guide or comfort. Her father is even less of a father than the doting, foolish father in
Ema; Sir Walter Elliot, more than being simply shallow and vain, shows active
animosity towards Anne.

Anne struggles with this animosity and with the change in her person since she
rejected Wentworth’s marriage proposal. The great cost in this circumstance seems
irredeemable, that rejection, occurring years before the novel begins, has left her physically
depleted and lonely.

A few years before, Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom

had vanished early; and as even in its height, her father had found little to

admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark

eyes from his own); there could be nothing in them now that she was faded

and thin, to excite his esteem. (6)

This passage from the narrator's perspective confirms Anne's loss of beauty, but also
shows Sir Elliot's harsh behavior towards his daughter. Later in the novel, Wentworth's
own words are reported back to Anne through her sister, Mary: “You were so altered he

should not have known you again” (60). The physical and emotional losses seem

irrecoverable.

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Her sister, Elizabeth, also has little feeling for or respect for Anne. On the
family’s relocating to Bath, Mary and Elizabeth discuss Anne’s potential moving with the
family: “’I cannot possibly do without Anne,’ was Mary’s reasoning; and Elizabeth’s
reply was, ‘Then I am sure Anne had better stay, for nobody will want her in Ba ”’ (3 3).
Anne’s thoughts are revealed:

To be claimed as a good, though in an improper style, is at least better that

being rejected as no good at all; and Anne, glad to be thought of some use,

glad to have any thing marked out as a duty, and certainly not sorry to have

:131:)scene of it in the country, and her own dear country, readily agreed to stay.
She feels the slight of her family’s rejection of her and seeks only to have some purpose
in life, to serve some need.

Anne's acknowledgment of her place in the world, of the nothingness of her life,
is only the start of her spiritual journey. While a necessary component, knowing who she
is and what she represents is only the beginning. Having these, Anne moves through a
series of events which make up, in essence, the stages of her spiritual grth or the
trigger moments which allow this grth to occur. In Persuasion, as in most of Austen's
novels, the heroine seeks solitude to examine the events, the characters, and the choices
which make up her life and, in many of these solitary, quiet moments, makes important
decisions.

Anne is a deeply self-reflective woman. She regularly seeks physical solitude and
time to understand herself and to awaken to forces which determine the direction of her
life. She draws back from social situations and evaluates her own performance and

possible mistakes. In one of several important passages, the heroine is

uncharacteristically “... .at liberty. In her own room, she tried to comprehend it” (166).

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Whatever the situation, Austen often shows her heroine resolving emotional and ethical
questions privately. Besides critiquing situations, Anne applies this reasoning equally to
personal behavior. On learning of Mr. Wentworth's marriage, and mistaking it to be that
of Capt. Wentworth, she responds:

She could now answer as she ought; and was happy to feel, when Mrs.

Croft's next words explained it to be Mr. Wentworth of whom she spoke,

that she had said nothing which might not do for either brother. She

immediately felt how reasonable it was, that Mrs. Croft should be thinking

and speaking of Edward, and not of Frederick; and with shame at her own

forgetfulness, applied herself to the knowledge of their former neighbour's

present state, with proper interest. (49)

Whatever Anne's personal reaction to news or people, she attempts to control that
response and behave appropriately, much as Elinor does in .S_ease and Sensibility when
she preserves the social front while Marianne sulks. Despite their personal suffering,
both heroines maintain personal dignity and the propriety of the situation, as their value
systems dictate. For example, “Anne suppressed a smile, and listened kindly” (64), or
“Anne's shudderings were to herself, alone: but the Miss Musgroves could be as open as
they were sincere, in their exclamations of pity and horror” (66). Both examples show
Anne's attention to others' feelings (her genuine amiability), the propriety of her own
actions, and her genuine insight into the nature of other people and her world.

During a quiet evening alone, Anne rationally re-evaluates her past and assesses
her own responsibility for her situation, gaining insight into the realities of her life
through contemplation. Anne names the problem and criticizes the situation. Her
behavior has been limited by the cultural mandates on women's behavior. She has not

been free to speak her mind or her devotion to Wentworth or to her family. Austen

makes clear that destruction has fallen on Anne because she has followed these mandates.

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In her critique, Anne makes an important observation on the abilities of men and women
to act publicly.
She would have liked to know how he felt as to a meeting. . . . Had he

wished ever to see her again, he need not have waited till this time; he

would have done what she could not but believe that in his place she

should have done long ago, when events had been early giving him the

independence which alone had been wanting. (58)
Had Anne been in Wentworth's position, she would have acted, but, as a woman she felt
bound by propriety to wait. She obeyed Lady Russell; she obeyed the dictates of
propriety while condemning them. While she cannot seek Wentworth, she does not
understand his inaction and sees it only as anger and rejection. Anne recognizes the
flaws in the patriarchal system of power. She recognizes that her own access to
happiness and fulfillment has been thwarted by this system which expects women to be
passive in their actions and in their spirituality. She condemns Wentworth for failing to
act, a mistake she would not have made had she the freedom of more direct action.

On seeing Wentworth for the first time in eight years, Anne is nearly overcome.
She escapes from the room saying, “'It is over! it is over!' . . . Mary talked, but she could
not attend. She had seen him. They had met. They had been once more in the same
room! Soon, however, she began to reason with herself, and try to be feeling less.” The
narrator continues: “Alas! with all her reasonings, she found, that to retentive feelings
eight years may be little more than nothing” (60). This scene emphasizes Anne's battle
with her feelings, her duty, and the situation in which she lives, and in almost every
instance, Anne matures spiritually and emotionally through observation of others and

through evaluation of her own actions and motives. “She hoped to be wise and reasonable

in time; but alas! alas! she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet” (178). It

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is very late in the novel before Emma Woodhouse can make such a statement of self-
awareness. Anne is much more mature than Emma from the start, and her will to good
survives even these crises of family. Anne has not achieved a state of perfection,
however; she won't, she can't, but she is capable of keeping vigilant watch over her own
faults and weaknesses. She can continue to grow, and the trials she faces allow her to do
so.

In “The Look, the Body, and the Heroine: A Feminist-Narratological Reading of
Persuasion,” Robyn Warhol discusses another instance of Anne's growth over time, citing
a maturing of her attitude toward Mrs. Musgrove, from matrophobic to understanding:

After Louisa's injury, Mrs. Musgrove is lightly satirized for her

preoccupation with young people's danger of being bumped on the head, but

the tenderness of her concern for her daughter is treated with perfect

seriousness. The shift in narrative attitude toward the emotional mother's

body suggests a development in Anne's own increasing comfort with female

bodily experience, and indicates that maternity, tenderness, and physicality

can come together in Anne's own experience of marriage in the end. (18)

This change might also reflect both Anne's spiritual and social maturity; she continues to
grow, simultaneously developing a more mature and womanly view of motherhood and
marriage and learning to extend more compassion to others because she understands
more clearly all human weaknesses. She moves closer to her own new naming of her
body and her future role as mother and wife.

The outcomes of Anne's continuous inner questing also upset the normal gender
boundaries of conduct. Readers see moments of Anne’s spiritual growth and evidence of
the new territory into which Austen takes her heroine. Anne remarks to Mrs. Smith on

the nature of virtue and negatively defines her own spiritual, in this case Christian, values

in the process:

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There is always something offensive in the details of cunning. The

manoevers of selfishness and duplicity must ever be revolting, but I have

heard nothing which really surprises me. . . . I have always wanted some

other motive for his [Mr. Elliot’s] conduct than appeared. (207)

Christian virtues do not include cunning, selfishness, and duplicity. Anne's remarks are
especially important because they apply the virtues to both men and women. In this case,
Mr. Elliot falls short of being a true Christian, but as the earlier discussion of Emma
shows, women can fall prey to these weaknesses as well. Both Emma and Jane Fairfax
suffer the consequences of their own deceits. Stated in positive terms, unselfishness,
artlessness, and honesty are virtues to be practiced actively by men as well as women.
Anne seems always conscious of trying to live by this value system and of holding
other’s behavior up to its measure.

The final three chapters also contain numerous references to Anne's insights and
awakenings into the nature of herself and her world. Her need for quiet contemplation
reflects her desire to understand and see more. In the last pages, comments such as these
abound: “Anne went home to think over all that she had heard” (212) and “[His potential
response] was left to Anne's imagination to ponder over in a calmer hour” (225). Anne
desires solitude to sort out her feelings and thoughts and to balance these feelings with
appropriate behavior.

Half an hour's solitude and reflection might have tranquillized her; but the

ten minutes only, which now passed before she was interrupted, with all

the restraints of her situation, could do nothing towards tranquillity. Every

moment rather brought fresh agitation. (238)

Anne frnds it impossible to settle her thoughts and feelings when she is surrounded by

others. The cultural mandate of always supervising or chaperoning women stands in the

way of Anne’s reasoning process.

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The absolute necessity of seeming like herself produced then an

immediate struggle. . . . Would they only have gone away, and left her in

the quiet possession of that room, it would have been her cure; but to have

them all standing or waiting around her was distracting, and, in

desperation, she said she would go home. (238)
In such a moment of extreme emotion, Anne wants nothing more than to have privacy to
consider her feelings and to experience them without the restraints of propriety, without
an audience. She cannot awaken to the deepest meaning of a situation while the demands
of polite society keep her attention focused outward. Anne needs to escape to solitude to
gain understanding, to reason through her feelings.

Part of Anne’s struggle for purpose in life becomes apparent in moments when
she must deal with more public situations. Readers see this when Anne evaluates Mrs.
Smith's character: “Anne had reason to believe that she [Mrs. Smith] had moments only
of languor and depression, to hours of occupation and enjoyment. How could it be?—
She watched—observed—reflected—and finally determined that this was not a case of
fortitude or of resignation only” (154). The scene serves several purposes; it gives
credibility to Mrs. Smith's character so that we might believe her later explanation of Mr.
Elliot's true self, but primarily, it testifies to Anne's thoughtful life. While Anne goes on
with her life, paying attention to propriety and duty, she contemplates and makes
decisions actively. She is not a blank cipher waiting to be filled by a father's or a
husband's wisdom. She determines to make herself useful to others, to find meaning in
giving to those who might value the gift.

Anne's perceptions, sometimes accurate, sometimes flawed, are used to reveal,

among other things, the status of her own questing. Often, her perceptions are the only

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clues to other people’s feelings. In one example, readers see Anne’s inaccurate
assumptions. Anne delineates Wentworth’s thoughts and actions:

He had thought her wretchedly altered, and in the first moment of appeal,

had spoken as he felt. He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him

ill; deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a

feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident

temper could not endure. She had given him up to oblige others. It had

been the effect of over-persuasion. It had been weakness and timidity.

(61)
This speculation elevates his character and undermines hers. Anne seems to be
speculating about what has happened inside Wentworth's head. The reader does not
understand Wentworth’s true motives until he reveals these, finally, to Anne. At that
time, late in the novel, Anne's desire to see attachment in his behavior is vindicated. As
Robyn R. Warhol explains, Austen's literary feminism is apparent in this novel in the
author's management of focalization: “her use of Anne Elliot as the central
consciousness through which the story gets transmitted” (Novel 6). Warhol argues:

At the simplest level, it means that the novel's heroine must be almost

obsessed with the act of looking, an activity which . . . was not associated

with female characters in the novels of Austen's predecessors. This heroine

has to look, for the conditions of narration depend entirely on her observing

everything that ought to be told. (6)
Austen combines two tasks. First, narratively, Anne supplies the eyes and consciousness
for seeing, reporting and evaluating all of the events of the novel. This, in itself,
represents a strong feminist bent in Austen’s story-telling. The second purpose achieved
through this technique is to show Anne's spiritual and social grth over the period of the
story and to show how her spiritual and social quests carry her through these events.

During the long walk to Anne's home when she and Wentworth are at last alone,

they explain their motivations and perceptions. Later, Anne says, “I have been thinking

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over the past, and trying impartially to judge of the right and wrong, I mean with regard
to myself. . .”(246). Wentworth admits his own stubbornness when he answers, “But I
was proud, too proud to ask again. I did not understand you. I shut my eyes, and would
not understand you, or do you justice. This is a recollection which ought to make me
forgive every one sooner than myself” (247). Together, they assert that each bears guilt
in maintaining their separation. Had Wentworth acted six years before, the couple would
not have suffered so. Had Anne been more direct in her explanations or stronger in
taking a stand, he might have understood her acquiescing to Lady Russell's persuasion.
In the shadow of his misinterpretation, Anne's succumbing to persuasion seems to
represent a fundamental lack of character. When Austen finishes her story, readers are
convinced that the fundamental lack of character is Wentworth's. Had his code included
Anne's devotion to constancy, their separation would have been short-lived.

In subtle ways, Anne's behavior represents a subversion of the gender code of
behavior and morality. Anne's attempts at reasoned contemplation and subsequent action
show the physical and emotional restrictions normally placed on women. Anne’s
dilemma is to renegotiate her life decisions and move closer to spiritual fulfillment. She
has identified the nothingness of her life; she has awakened to the restricted nature of her
own happiness. She has insight into the cultural boundaries which prevent her acting
openly as she might desire, and she names her own value, her own potential sexuality and
motherhood and aligns herself with a new supportive community. Anne Elliot

maneuvers through this spiritual quest, keeping her personal value system intact.

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Conclusions

Out of the near tragedy of Anne's life, her greatest spiritual blossoming occurs.
She recognizes the restricted nature of the life she has led and establishes herself outside
of those boundaries. She looks forward to a supportive community among the relatives
and friends of Capt. Wentworth as she leaves her father's home and creates with her
husband the new territory of her life, a territory in which friends and family appreciate
the fineness of her spirit and intellect, a decided shift from her life with her actively
hostile father and sisters. As Devoney Looser writes in “Jane Austen ‘Responds’ to the
Men’s Movement,” “Austen’s women would seem to offer even skeptics of feminism a
palatable cultural compromise between door-mat and feminazi; Elinor, Emma, and
Elizabeth (not to mention Catherine, Anne, and Fanny) are women who can say ‘no’ and
mean it but who will —it can be counted on—at one time or another say ‘yes’ (159).
Anne gains personal power as she redraws, in physical and emotional terms, the
boundaries of her life. She acknowledges the weakness of the patriarchy in which she
lives, particularly the “false naming of power” as Christ terms it; she condemns that life
by leaving it and looking forward to growth, potential and power in her own, new world.

Despite her adversity, Anne maintains a strong sense of virtue and allows nothing,
not even her own potential happiness, to destroy what she alone has built — an almost
Kantian code of conduct following the Christian ideals of the time. In this respect, Anne
is much like Darcy in Pride and Preiudice or Knightley in m; each knows his place
and performs his duty and works for good in spite of personal complications. Eighteenth-
century manly virtue flows from contemplation into the action of proper behavior, and

Austen shows in Anne that it should spring freely in both men and women. Alistair

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Maclntyre states in After Virtue, “Hence a rational morality will lay down principles
which both can and ought to be held by all men, independent of circumstances and
conditions, and which could consistently be obeyed by every rational agent on every
occasion” (45, his emphasis). Austen applies the universality of this statement by making
the masculine pronoun generic and assuming that “every rational agent” includes all
thinking women as well.

By performing her duty to Lady Russell and obeying her direction to reject
Wentworth, Anne Elliot asserts her firm belief in the importance of duty and remains
constant to her own standard for virtuous behavior. Ultimately, Anne accepts Wentworth
on her own terms and finally persuades others that her standard of behavior shows
amiable virtue, not stereotypical feminine weakness of will, not suasability.

Anne and Wentworth celebrate by professing their continued attachment to each
other: “There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their
re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a
knowledge of each other's character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more
justified in acting” (240-41). Anne's social quest, unacknowledged but eventually
achieved, is a reunion with her chosen love in an equal partnership in which both parties
are equal to act and more justified in acting. In this union, Anne will find status,
economic and emotional independence (from her birth family) and the appreciation of
those new family and friends mentioned earlier. How is this union also the culmination
of Anne's spiritual quest?

The narrator steps in and explains the responses of others to the second

engagement of Anne and Wentworth. In this case, as Anne says to Wentworth:

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. . . I was perfectly right in being guided by the fiiend whom you will love

better than you do now. To me, she was in the place of a parent. Do not

mistake me, however. I am not saying that she did not err in her advice. It

was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as

the event decides; and for myself, I certainly never should, in any

circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice. But I mean, that I

was right in submitting to her, and that if I had done otherwise, I should

have suffered more in continuing the engagement than I did even in giving

it up, because I should have suffered in my conscience. I have now, as far

as such a sentiment is allowable in human nature, nothing to reproach

myself with; and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a

woman's portion. (246)

She justifies her past actions to him by explaining in detail her obligation to Lady Russell
and to her own value system. Any other behavior would have undermined her sense of
her own virtue. In the discussion of Anne's constancy, the differences between her
understanding of the term and Wentworth's masculine perspective become apparent. He
would have persuaded her to reject this advice and her own sense of duty to accept him.
In Austen's scheme, he would have been equally wrong, as Walzer's essay argues.

Anne's decision to obey Lady Russell and reject Wentworth has been the heart of
her greatest struggle and the impetus for her greatest growth. She has come to terms with
her earlier decision and maintains that it was the correct and proper one for her to make.
Anne has succeeded, however, in overcoming the harshest consequences of that decision
and has grown in the process. She is a stronger, more assured woman when she agrees to
marry Wentworth. Her spirituality is intact.

Understanding Austen's use of Kantian philosophy makes Anne's true strength
undeniable. Anne and Wentworth survive the ordeal with a clearer appreciation of each
other and with a personal sense of humility. Their marriage should serve as an even

stronger example than those of the Crofts and Harvilles of the value of dedication to

virtue and to continued spiritual growth. Their mutual dedication to good should also, in

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this case, make them both happy, as Anne has said earlier, “however oddly constructed
such happiness might seem” (58). Readers know that Austen's last great heroine
blossoms spiritually and socially just as she does physically; her bloom returns, but in a

maturer form, and Anne becomes a stronger spiritual beauty.

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Notes

1 See Ernest Campbell Mossner's Bishop Butler and the Age of Reaaon: A Study
in the History of Thorgllt, J. S. Reynolds' The Evangeligrls at Oxford 1735 — 1871 and
Alfred Plummer's The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century for discussions of
the changes in the role of the church and for explanations of the important theological

debates of the period.

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Epilogue

Jane Austen’s novels served her nineteenth-century female readership in a variety
of ways. A primary goal of this dissertation has been to demonstrate, through an
examination of four of Austen’s heroines’ spiritual and social quests, the extent to which
Austen’s novels portray a new narrative of questing for her nineteenth-century readers.
Clearly Austen avoids flagrant, external displays of spirituality and seems to avoid (and
lampoon) those who do. Neither the writer nor her heroines mistake spiritual pretension
for spiritual substance. Each of Austen’s heroines shows creativity and grth through
questing and trial, ultimately achieving a more active spirituality. Each story explores the
many avenues of women’s spiritual and social questing, and in sharing these avenues
with her readers, Austen meets one of Carol Christ’s measures of a spiritual quest; she
“brings women’s experiences and visions out into the open and through sharing
transforms them from private into public reality” (Div—mg 128).

In Rhetoric Retold: Regenderingthe Tradition from Antiquity Through the
Renaissance (1997), Cheryl Glenn writes about women’s place in the history of rhetoric,
their place in developing western culture since the time of the Greeks, and the differences
between their actual lives and the portrayal of those lives in the public reality of
literature. She says,

For the past twenty-five hundred years in Western culture, the ideal woman

has been disciplined by cultural codes that require a closed mouth (silence), a

closed body (chastity), and an enclosed life (domestic confinement). Little

wonder, then, that women have been closed out of the rhetorical tradition, a
tradition of vocal, virile, public—and therefore privileged—men. (1)

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This state of being silent, chaste and confined applies equally to women’s role in spiritual
affairs. As she discusses historiography, in which “the real and the discourse” are
connected as one, Glenn questions: “As we resist the paternal narrative of rhetorical
history, we are all working as if the real and the discourse were actually being joined in
our texts, on our maps. We have no choice, for how can we know the world except
through the words, ideas, beliefs it constructs?” (6). Austen’s literature offers the
remapping which Glenn describes by examining beliefs and sharing new definitions of
words and new ideas with her readers. Her readers might, then, re-construct their worlds
by using the examples of Austen’s heroines as new maps for guiding the reality of their
lives. Historically, the majority of narrative possibility was limited to that described by
men for women. With men as the primary writers of literature, even literary versions of
female voices were unreal. Glenn explains some of this rhetorical history of male writers
writing in female voices: “That same male-written literature did little to transform
women’s apparently private and passive virtues into the public, active attributes that were
so valuable to the conduct of the commonwealth and to participation in civic life.
Women’s literary voices, then, were dubbed. Men were doing the actual speaking” (136).
This dubbing, according to Glenn, continued from the Renaissance through the conduct
book and novel writing of the late eighteenth century. In her novels, Austen creates
heroines speaking in authentic situations in authentic female voices giving her readers
new, female models to follow.

How does Austen present this new territory? Readers can see the pattern of
Christ’s quest paradigm in Austen’s novels. Her heroines identify the nothingness of their

lives and positions in society, awaken to truth, gain insight into themselves and others and

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find new ways to experience spirituality in the world. Austen offers the experiences of her
heroines as role models for her readers. She awakens her readers to the silences in
women’s experiences which her heroines live. She names the pain which women might
suffer and uses emptiness as an occasion for insight where the ability to face darkness is a
strength, not a weakness. Austen criticizes the restrictive nature of her own culture which
victimized women. She shows that women’s problems are often sociological not personal
and individual and that the circumstances creating these problems are often patriarchally
supported.

In Sense and Sensibility, Austen shows that Elinor evaluates her own ability to act
morally, to preserve her personal integrity and constancy. She shows the strength and
reward in virtue and self-command. Austen contrasts Elinor with the conduct book
heroines who are guided away from decision-making and directed toward obedience.
Elinor quests for spiritual fulfillment when her chances for social fulfillment seem
destroyed. She recognizes the emptiness of her life and the external forces which have
created this emptiness; yet, Elinor struggles spiritually and socially to find herself and to
find her place in the world. Austen’s readers might identify with these struggles and find
their own strengths to persevere.

Fanny Price in Mansfield Park shows Austen’s readers that women might be
constant and might determine their own codes of conduct. Readers see in Fanny a woman
who might also be more moral and more constant than men. Austen shows that real
women need not succumb to the stereotype of female inconstancy which other literature

perpetuated. As the novel suggests, women in the early nineteenth-century were expected

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to be docile, domestic and malleable. Fanny Price asserts herself and her values and,
through her spiritual struggle, achieves both happiness and social success.

Emma Woodhouse shows that even women who have position, wealth and power
might still find ways to grow both spiritually and socially. E_mm_a also explores the
nothingness which exists in women’s lives despite the position, wealth and power which
they might have achieved. Emma refutes the accepted definition of ladyhood concomitant
with this success. She is not a meek, demure, obedient Lady. She shows that real women
are strong, passionate and self-assured. They are not selfless, passive, silent, obedient or
demure. A woman’s true spirituality expresses itself actively.

Persuasion reinforces this active expression of spirituality. Anne Elliot’s
obedience and passivity nearly destroy her, physically and spiritually. She comes alive
spiritually when she leaves timid suasibiligy behind and asserts her own new consideration
of virtue. She represents a new feminine approach to spiritual behavior, one in which she
guides herself and accepts her own value system and decision-making processes. Anne
does this while maintaining a deep sense of obligation and consideration for the feelings
of others.

Austen’s heroines stand in particular contrast to the models which adherence to the
conduct books would create. In both the actions and moral codes of Austen’s heroines
and the gaps that exist between them and the conduct book heroines, readers see the new
territory Austen is creating for women’s spiritual lives. In Poisoning the Minda of the
Lower Orders, Don Herzog, in his discussion of women, conduct book writers and
reading, says that, “Instructing women on their duties, Thomas Gisbome trembled at the

thought of those circulating library texts, ‘devoured with indiscriminate and insatiable

209

avidity. Hence the mind is secretly corrupted’” (66). Gisbome worried about the
corrupting influence of fiction on the spiritual lives of young women. Herzog uses an
irreverent quote from The Life of J ohnapp to exemplify typical attitudes towards women’s
spiritual behavior: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs.

It is not done well; but you are surprized[sic] to find it done at all.” Herzog adds a more
serious response from The Con_stitution and Order of the Congr_egation_al Church:

One Congregationalist church permitted men to discuss any matters of

. policy that came up; “the sisters have the liberty of silently expressing

their consent or dissent” (no mean feat), “but it seems plain from scripture

they have no right of deliberation and reasoning.” (424)

Austen’s fiction teaches her readers to participate more fully in spiritual quests by
becoming better readers of good fiction, forsaking this silence and taking on the
responsibilities of deliberation and reason. The eighteenth and nineteenth-century codes
for women’s spiritual and social behavior constrained their personal development.
Austen’s fiction works to remove some of these constraints.

James Boyd White writes about such a shift in When Words Lose Their Meaning:
Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Langu_age, Character. and Community. He includes
Austen in his discussion of the reconstitution of language, the effect of this reconstitution
on fictional character and community, its translation into the real world of the readers.
When he writes about Emma, he says,

One hears Jane Austen’s voice in new ways, asking new questions, making

new comments, and in the process one moves into an increasingly confident

and intimate understanding of the text and its author. . . . [T]his is an ethical

literature that includes among its central concerns the character of the reader

. . . . This text teaches its reader to value himself [sic], and in doing this it

teaches him the seriousness of the questions: who he is, who he becomes.
(186)

210

Austen’s fiction serves to move her readers to introspection. The heroines are of use
particularly to nineteenth-century readers, serving as examples of the new ways in which
women might experience their own spirituality. In writing about Austen’s novels, White
says, “At the end, if the book has done its work and we have done ours [as readers], we
have become better readers, and for Jane Austen this means better people as well. This is
a moral fiction, not because it teaches us that vice is punished. . . but by virtue of the
capacities for perception and being that it realizes in its reader” (1 6). White explains that
the value of a text is found in the community it establishes between the author and the
reader. “It is here that the author offers his reader a place to stand, a place from which he
can observe and judge the characters and events of the world he creates, indeed the world
itself” (17). Austen stands in judgment of her world, and she teaches her readers to do
the same.

In his introduction to Myth and Literature: Contemmm Theogy and Practice,
John B. Vickery writes that “the real function of literature in human affairs is to continue
myth’s ancient and basic endeavor to create a meaningful place for man in a world
oblivious to his presence” (ix). Carol Christ’s paradigm of a woman’s spiritual and social
quest takes this search into female and specifically spiritual territory. Jane Austen’s
fiction explores the nature of the spiritual realm and connects it concretely to the social
worlds of her heroines and her readers, both of whom search for meaningful places in
worlds often oblivious to them. The spiritual journey is within, but it propels the physical

body along in the not-so-numinous world.

211

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