Jane Austen, the Christian
Since their publication in the early nineteenth century, Jane Austen’s brilliant novels have been read and enjoyed. They are often viewed as the ultimate examples of romantic literature. Though they certainly model true love and good marriage, Austen has much more to say to her readers, particularly in regards to faith and good living.
Since Jane Austen’s death in 1817, scholars and critics have shown great interest in the religious persuasions of both her life and her work.[1] Alistair M. Duckworth writes, “Ultimately, I believe that Jane Austen’s morality is based in religious principle, and religious responses are not uncommon in her fiction.”[2] Indeed, understanding Austen’s personal religious background helps readers better recognize both the religious overtones of her work and her Christian worldview, which included, interestingly enough, a growing acceptance of the Evangelical movement.
Austen’s Faith and Response to the Evangelical Movement
Henry Austen, Jane’s brother, frequently emphasized her Christian faith in his “Biographical Notice of the Author,” which was attached to later editions of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. It stated, “She was thoroughly religious and devout; fearful of giving offence to God, and incapable of feeling it towards any fellow creature.” Henry’s account of her final days indicates that she wished to receive the sacrament (the Lord’s Supper) before the ravages of her disease weakened her ability to be fully aware of its significance. Indeed, despite her great physical suffering, “neither her love for God, nor of her fellow creatures flagged for a moment.”[3]
Jane Austen was the daughter of Anglican clergyman George Austen, and, because he and two of Austen’s brothers were Anglican clergymen, “she had both a familial and personal commitment to the established Church.” Her family confirmed that she “practiced an unostentatious yet consistent and mainstream Anglican faith,” which was “a compromise between Roman Catholicism and non-Calvinist Protestantism.” Anglicans rejected the Calvinist interpretation of predestination, instead adopting the view that salvation came “by a combination of true faith and good works, free will and divine grace.”[4]
In fact, Austen’s confidence in the Church of England was such that she believed England would be victorious in the American Revolutionary war. In a letter she wrote, “I place my hope of better things on a claim to the protection of Heaven, as a Religious Nation, a Nation in spite of much evil improving in Religion, which I cannot believe the Americans to possess [sic].”[5]
Peter Knox-Shaw believes that the “improving of religion” Austen speaks of in this letter is “a clear reference to the religious revival [Evangelicalism] that gathered momentum throughout the century, particularly in 1807-11. Though critical of the movement (and never strictly an Evangelical herself), Jane Austen witnessed its huge impact on Anglicanism, and was herself touched by the new energies that galvanized a wide range of belief.”[6] When her niece questioned her on the prudence of accepting a potential Evangelical suitor, Austen wrote, “And as there being any objection from his Goodness, from the danger of his becoming even Evangelical, I cannot admit that. I am by no means convinced that we ought not all to be Evangelicals, & am at least persuaded that they who are so for Reason and Feeling, must be happiest & safest.”[7]
It seems certain that Jane Austen believed that the Evangelical movement was effective and that she had a “general respect for the revival.” Still, it must not be inferred from these positive responses to the Evangelical movement that Austen ever fully “came round to the sect,” as two members of her family had done. Though she read much of the moderate Evangelical literature, her ultimate position toward Evangelicalism is still a source of great debate among Austen scholars.[8]
Christian Faith in Austen’s Works
Austen’s personal religious views are indeed present in her acclaimed novels, though it is correct to point out that “such a tone, genuine enough when it is sounded, is never of course dominant in Jane Austen’s fiction; her religion . . . is not obtrusive.”[9] She almost never quoted Scripture in her works, perhaps because quoting the Holy Bible in popular fiction seemed very inappropriate to her.[10] Nonetheless, religious themes are “intertwined” throughout her work, just as they were in the works of her contemporaries. Indeed, though she “left no direct comment” on these weighty matters, her Anglican beliefs are still discernible. Gary Kelley correctly observes, “Paucity of direct comment does not necessarily mean indifference to the issues of religion . . . and their representation in the novel[s], and it is likely that she saw these issues and representations as a woman of her religion and class.”[11]
While some of Austen’s critics believe that her works are totally secular because they lack direct comment on matters of religion, many other critics see definite Christian themes in her works. In fact, they contend that the absence of overt religious discourse in her novels serves her Christian purpose better.[12] For example, Richard Whately observes, “Miss Austen has the merit (in our judgment most essential) of being evidently a Christian writer: a merit which is much enhanced, both on the score of good taste, and of practical utility, by her religion being not at all obtrusive.”[13]
Austen’s beloved characters often display Christian qualities and traits. Consider Anne Eliot, Fanny Price, and Elinor Dashwood who all display “a kind of Christian heroism which recognizes that, whatever the distresses of the moment, this world is not after all the place of ultimate reward.” Many characters that endure hardship also demonstrate “a Christian stoicism, and inner resilience in the face of adversity.”[14] Furthermore, “all the honourable characters in Jane Austen’s fiction place Christian values above ‘the distinction of rank,’ and points of etiquette.”[15] Emma Woodhouse, for example, though mistaken in several of her behaviors at the beginning of Emma, is commend for her charitable visits to the poor.[16]
Mansfield Park, though, is perhaps Austen’s most religious work, and some critics even claim that this novel shows that she “became an Evangelical or at least a fellow traveler . . . [because of] Edmund Bertram and Fanny Price’s clear revivalist tendencies and her apparent sympathies with them.” Knox-Shaw writes, “The Choice of an evangelically inclined central couple for Mansfield Park offered the chance not only to move beyond the sphere of the relatively light, bright, and sparkling, but to engage in a direct way with what was crucial to the new age.”[17] Whether or not Austen intended for Fanny and Edmund to be Evangelicals, they certainly possess a moral compass rooted in Christian principles.
The moral concerns of Edmund and Fanny are first seen in their objection to their relations and friends’ private performance of the scandalous play Lovers’ Vows. However, Edmund’s emphasis on the sinfulness of his sister Maria’s adultery with Henry Crawford best demonstrates Christian ideology. In fact, Edmund ends his romantic pursuit of Henry’s sister Mary when she sees the affair as merely foolish and not truly sinful and insists that Edmund use his influence to reestablish Maria’s place in society. Clearly, his refusal to comply illustrates Edmund’s concern for holy living and for resisting personal religious compromise, an attitude which the author surely shared.
Sense and Sensibility also presents a thoroughly Christian conversion. Throughout the majority of the novel, Marianne Dashwood, a character wholly given to romantic passions and emotional expression at the expense of propriety and self-control, sees the folly of her ways after surviving a deadly illness. She says, “Had I died,—it would have been self destruction. I did not know my danger until my danger was removed. . . I wonder at my recovery,—wonder that the very eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for atonement to my God [emphasis added], and to you all, did not kill me at once.”[18] C. S. Lewis wrote that this heart-felt confession “makes explicit, for once, the religious background of the author’s position.”[19] Indeed, Marianne’s confession shows the marks of a genuine salvation experience: reflection on one’s sins and their dire consequences, repentance from those sins, and atonement with God.
Conclusion
“Ultimately,” writes Jospehine Ross, “Jane Austen’s moral attitudes were dictated not by political ideology, but by her conscience as a committed, practising Christian.”[20] Indeed, the testimony of Christian devotion she left and her clear Christian worldview that is so often present in her works indicate that faith was not something that Miss Austen practiced solely out of duty. However, perhaps her brother Henry’s praise speaks most eloquently of Austen’s faith: “Jane Austen was buried on the 24th of July, 1817, in cathedral church of Winchester, which, in the whole catalogue of its mighty dead does not contain the ashes of a brighter genius or a sincerer Christian.”[21]
To read another article on the HSF about Jane Austen, see here.
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[1] Gary Kelly, “Religion and Politics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster, eds. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 153.
[2] Alistair M. Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen’s Novels (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944). 26.
[3] Henry Austen, “Biographical Notice of the Author,” in Persuasion by Jane Austen, ed. D.W. Harding (London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1965), 30.
[4] Kelly, 149.
[5] Jane Austen to Martha Lloyd, Hans Place, September 2, 1814, in Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. R. W. Chapman (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 508.
[6] Peter Know-Shaw, Jane Austen and the Enlightenment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 160.
[7] Jane Austen to Fanny Knight, Chawton, November 18, 1814, in Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. R. W. Chapman (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 410.
[8] Knox-Shaw, 169, 160, 167.
[9] Duckworth, 8.
[10] Josephine Ross, Jane Austen: A Companion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 105.
[11] Kelly, 149, 152-53.
[12] Ibid., 155.
[13] Richard Whately in Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, ed. Brian C. Southam (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul: New York, Barnes and Noble, 1968), 95; cited in Gary Kelly, “Religion and Politics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster, eds. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 154-155.; Modern Christian authors would do well to follow Miss Austen’s example.
[14] Duckworth, 8.
[15] Ross, 215.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Knox-Shaw, 164, 161.
[18] Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 262.
[19] C. S. Lewis, “A Note on Jane Austen,” in Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Ian Watt
[20] Ross, 240.
[21] Henry Austen, 31.
January 13, 2017
Excellent article. Thank you
January 13, 2017
Thank you!
May 12, 2023
One comment… Anglicans of Jane Austen’s time would not have considered Anglicanism a halfway house between Roman Catholicism and non-Calvinist Protestantism. Anglicans self-identified as ‘Protestants’ at the time, and the theology of the Church of England was large defined in Reformed categories. For example, the 18th century theologian Daniel Waterland, who was considered normative enough to be reprinted by the High Church Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, William Van Mildert, referred to the ‘Covenant of Grace’ – a commonplace of Calvinist theology – when discussing ‘Fundamentals.’ The theology of the Church of England on the Eucharist was that of John Calvin, whilst its view of Baptism was influenced by Bullinger, and also by Pietist Lutherans. The 18th century ‘Via Media Anglicana’ was between Wittenberg and Geneva, not Rome and Geneva!