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CMP#9  Decorum in Religious Matters

10/26/2020

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Clutching My Pearls is my ongoing blog series about my take on Jane Austen’s beliefs and ideas, as based on her novels. When I say "my take," I very much doubt that I could find anything new or different to say about Austen, not after her admirers have written so much. But I am not trying to be new, rather I am pushing back at post-modern portrayals of Austen as a radical feminist. Click here for the first in the series.
Implicit Values in Austen: Decorum in Religious Matters
PictureThe Thirty-Nine Articles
   Students of Austen's life are not very pleased with her first two biographers--her brother Henry and her nephew James Austen-Leigh. Along with Austen's sister Cassandra, they stand accused of obscuring the real Jane Austen. Cassandra destroyed most of Austen's letters, and Henry and Austen-Leigh portrayed her as a retiring spinster who did not live a "life of event."  Her gravestone proclaims "the sweetness of her temper." Really?  Jane Austen, who wrote with a quill dipped in vinegar?
   The family biographers and the gravestone also emphasize her Christian faith.  Henry, who became a clergyman himself, wrote that “her opinions accorded strictly with those of our Established Church." 
   Dr. Helena Kelly, however, knows better. In Jane Austen: The Secret Radical, she writes: "What we can say, with confidence, is that [Austen]'s opinion didn't really accord anything like as strictly 'with those of our Established Church,' as Henry claims." For one thing, Austen is "scornful" of the clergy. (Kelly includes Edward Ferrars and Edmund Bertram along with Mr. Collins and Mr. Elton in her list of bad clergymen.)
  As it happens, Edmund Bertram and Mary Crawford actually discuss whether clergyman are good people in 
Mansfield Park. I explore that discussion in the next post. For now, consider the fact that showing unquestioning reverence to clergymen is not required in the Church of England. The 39 Articles, a list of official church doctrines, includes article 26, which acknowledges that some clergymen are unworthy of their calling, but this does not affect the truth of the sacraments.   
     If Henry Austen is correct, if his sister's beliefs accorded "strictly with those of our Established Church," then she subscribed to the 39 articles. For example, article 19 states that "the Church of England is the one true Church, and its teachings are necessary for salvation," which has implications when we come to talk about savages and heathens down the line. 
      I think Paula Byrne's biography 
Jane Austen, a Life in Small Things, makes a convincing case that Austen was a devout Anglican because it draws on examples from her private correspondence. Byrne mentions a letter Austen wrote to her sister, concerning a local woman who had run away with a lover. Austen comments that the Sunday before the woman eloped, she "staid the Sacrament," that is, she took Holy Communion at church.
   This looks like a reference to Article 29: "The Wicked who Partake of the Last Supper Do Not Eat the Body of Christ." Mrs. Powlett was unfaithful to her husband and was planning to leave him when she took her wafer and wine.
   Austen distinguishes between actually calling upon one's Creator ("Oh God, her father and mother!")  and profane cursing. When Fanny Price's father says, "by God," Austen spells it "by G—!"
    Article 39 of the 39 Articles specifies no "rash swearing." 

PictureMrs. Musgrove weeps for poor Dick
        But if Austen was devout, why is she so reticent about her Christian faith in her writing? In my first readings of Austen, I came to notice that nobody seems to be very religious. Not even the clergymen, especially not Henry Tilney.  Austen's characters sometimes mention God, but she doesn't use the words "Jesus," "Messiah," or "Redeemer" in any of her novels. And as someone (I forget who) pointed out, when her heroines are facing a crisis, they retire to their bedchambers to think, they don't go consult their clergyman or go to a chapel to pray.  And apart from references to "Christian names," Austen seldom mentions Christianity. ​
​   Austen's characters refer to divine intervention in human affairs by using using the terms "Providence" and "providential" or "Heaven." (This is by no 
means unique to Austen, however, many people did the same.)
  When Edmund Bertram finally (!) realizes what a cad Henry Crawford is, he is relieved to know that Fanny Price did not fall for him. “Thank God,” said he. “We were all disposed to wonder, but it seems to have been the merciful appointment of Providence that the heart which knew no guile should not suffer."
   Mrs. Musgrove sighs, "Ah! Miss Anne, if it had pleased Heaven to spare my poor son, I dare say he would have been just such another [as Captain Wentworth] by this time."

    When Mary Musgrove discovers that the stranger who just left the inn at Lyme is her cousin, Captain Wentworth flippantly says: "Putting all these very extraordinary circumstances together, we must consider it to be the arrangement of Providence, that you should not be introduced to your cousin."
    When Louisa Musgrove survives the fall from the Cobb, "the rejoicing, deep and silent, after a few fervent ejaculations of gratitude to Heaven had been offered, may be conceived."
   God (usually as in "Thank God" and "Oh, God!") 
is mentioned nine times in Persuasion, five times in Pride & Prejudice, three times in Mansfield Park, and so forth. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia are apt to exclaim, "Good Lord!" and "O, Lord!" while Mrs. Jennings exclaims "Lord bless me!"
   Outside of Mansfield Park, there are few mentions of church services and sermons. So is there a reason why Austen seldom mentions things that would have been a prominent feature of her inner life and her weekly routine?

PictureDr. Johnson (1709 -- 1784)
    Austen's favourite moral essayist was Dr. Samuel Johnson, a figure so well known in English literature that he is referred to as "the Doctor." Johnson was a devout Anglican who took a rational approach to religion. That is, he believed there was abundant evidence for the truth of the Gospels and that Christianity appealed to logic as well as emotion.
   Scholar Lance Wilcox says of Johnson: "
He presents the Church of England as a bulwark against 'infidelity, superstition, and enthusiasm': eighteenth-century code words for deism, Catholicism, and dissenting Protestantism, respectively."   
    So Austen's favourite moral author was opposed to dissenters, those who worshipped independently of the official state church. He was not alone. In The Club, a joint biography of Dr. Johnson, Boswell, and other men in their circle in 18th century London, historian Leo Damrosch explains, "Throughout the seventeenth century it was taken for granted that religious commitment depended upon faith, an interior conviction of divinely revealed truth. But in the eighteenth century that premise seemed increasingly suspect to many people, because it smacked of the 'enthusiasm' --from a Greek word meaning 'possessed by a god' -- that had energized the Puritan revolution and turned Britain upside down.'

  The Puritans, we remember, executed King Charles the First and established a Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. Life in Britain under Cromwell was rather like living under the Taliban. People must have wondered if no music, no fashion, no sports, no Christmas, no theatre, no pubs, was really what God wanted for His people.
  The Republic was overthrown and the Monarchy was restored in 1660, but civil wars are not easily forgotten and people remained suspicious of religious zeal.
PictureDetail of "A Clerical Alphabet" (1795) with a Methodist Parson "stark mad!" and a Non-conformist Minister, "nearly as bad"
   A new evangelical movement arose in Austen's lifetime, one which appeared to threaten the absolute authority of the Church of England. Some famous evangelicals include William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, and Hannah More, a very successful writer, (although Wilberforce and More were Anglicans).
   Then there were the dissenting ministers, such as the raving Methodist minister and the non-conformist minister in the "Clerical Alphabet." [Click on the picture to see the entire alphabet which makes fun of Anglican clergymen of all ranks as well.] 

PictureHannah More 1745 - 1833
    Hannah More saw nothing wrong with displaying religious zeal: "I am at a loss to know why a young female is instructed to exhibit… her skill in music, her singing, dancing, [and her] taste in dress… while her piety is to be anxiously concealed and her knowledge affectedly disavowed, lest the former should draw on her the appellation of an enthusiast, or the latter that of a pedant.”
      In respect of female knowledge, at least, we know that More and Austen saw eye to eye! But recall the explanation about the meaning of "enthusiasm."  Hannah More is saying that openly pious women were thought of as enthusiasts, and enthusiasts were thought of as dissenters. 
   
Jane Austen wasn’t comfortable with the Evangelical movement, a dislike that appears be more about modes of worship than doctrinal disputes. One gets the feeling that Austen (and probably her father and her family) thought overt, emotional displays were vulgar, or perhaps that those who protested their religious faith the loudest, were the least to be trusted. 

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  However, Dr. Kelly argues that Austen was a dissenter. She thinks the words "humble Christian" in Austen's obituary are "problematic" and revealing. She points out that the "words 'humble Christian' had been strongly associated with writers who questioned Church of England orthodoxy," such as Methodists and Evangelicals.       Dr. Kelly thinks that Jane Austen arranged to be buried in Winchester Cathedral as a final act of defiance, not piety.
​   Kelly believes that Mansfield Park is so anti- Church of England that mentioning Mansfield Park on her gravestone would have been Austen's way of thumbing her nose at the Anglican church for so long as her gravestone and the Cathedral exists. 
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In other words, she wanted to be buried there out of spite, as a private joke. But it was "a joke that failed" because her relatives did not mention her radical novels on her gravestone inscription. 
   Frankly, I cannot roll my eyes hard enough at this assertion, which has to do with Kelly's contention that Mansfield Park has symbolic references to the sugar plantations in the West Indies owned by the Church of England.  These are references which I think Kelly has projected into the book.
  It is interesting, and possibly significant, that Austen's gravestone does not mention her novels, but an obituary sent to the newspapers reveals her authorship. I might return to that later. 

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     I think Austen's strongest expression of religiosity comes from Marianne in Sense & Sensibility, when she apologizes to Elinor for over-indulging in grief when Willoughby abandoned her, which led to her illness and nearly her death. 
​   "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."
   Here, "wonder" means she is surprised that her passionate desire to live didn't kill her. She wants to atone, a more serious and profound word than mere apology. Marianne's love for Willoughby can never be overcome but vows it will be "regulated, it shall be checked by religion, by reason, by constant employment."  Religion goes hand-in-hand with reason, as it did for Dr. Johnson.

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   And a striking mention of Christianity comes when Henry Tilney realizes that Catherine Morland suspects his father murdered his mother. The usually flippant Tilney says: ​“If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians..." 
   Finally, Austen was not the only person to criticize the clergy. It was not illegal to criticize the clergy. It was not even socially unacceptable to criticize the clergy. We know this because Mary Crawford, a sophisticated Londoner, shows open disdain for the profession. In Mansfield Park, Edmund Bertram tells Mary Crawford that her criticisms of the clergy were "commonplace." If criticizing the clergy was commonplace, then it was hardly radical for Jane Austen to do so. I will expand on the topic of these commonplace censures in the next post.


 Next post:  The clergy.
We think of the previous age as being one in which religion played a larger role in daily life and in social and government institutions than it does today. For example, you could not attend Oxford or Cambridge unless you were a member of the Church of England and proclaimed your belief in the 39 Articles.  I refer to this requirement in my novel A Marriage of Attachment when Lord Lynnon talks about his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet in support of atheism. Click here for more about my novels.
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CMP#8  "Mr. Elton is so good to the poor!"

10/23/2020

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​Clutching My Pearls is my ongoing blog series about my take on Jane Austen’s beliefs and ideas, as based on her novels. Click here for the first in the series.
Implicit Values in Austen:  A Duty to the Poor
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      Poverty was a fact of life in Georgian and Regency England. The standard of living for most people was at a subsistence level. Apart from a roof over their head, the average family had very few possessions. Austen and her family did not think of themselves as wealthy, but they bought books and were able to travel, and this alone put them in a different class from about 90% of their fellow Britons. It is estimated that one in seven people in Britain turned to public welfare at one time or another for food and money to survive, and yet, England was regarded as more prosperous than other nations -- that is, you had a better chance of not living in abject misery if you were British, as opposed to being French or Italian.
    In Jane Austen's day, there were strict distinctions made between the “deserving poor” and those who brought misfortune upon themselves through laziness and idleness.  When catastrophe befell a family, if the mother died in childbirth or the father was injured at work, stricken families relied upon their local parish authorities for relief. 
   
Charity was given out at the parish level, not as part of a national welfare plan. That’s because everybody in your village knew you, and knew your habits, and they knew if you were hardworking and therefore deserving, or if you were improvident, shiftless and dissolute. (And yes, as today, rich people could live recklessly without facing the consequences that poor people face.) It also meant that the parish was not obliged to look after strangers. Too many poor people would drive up the poor rates.
   In The Two Cousins, (1794) the virtuous Mrs. Leyster finds a woman and her baby unconscious in the snow. She summons her servants to carry them to her home and when the women recovers, Mrs. Leyster learns that she is the widow of a carpenter who broke his arm and then succumbed to consumption (tuberculosis). The widow left her parish to take up a promised job, which fell through. Destitute and starving, she and her child would have died but for their rescue. Mrs.  Leyster sets her up in a small cottage business -- but only after first confirming the truth of her story and the respectability of her character. 

  It was feared that over-generous, over-abundant charity would invite more idleness and vice.

Picture"The Rake's Progress," W. Hogarth
   "It is not my way to find fault with People because they are poor, for I always think that they are more to be despised and pitied than blamed for it, especially if they cannot help it," says a titled lady in one of Austen's lively sketches written in her youth.
   It's true enough, though. Back then, nobody would describe an alcoholic living on the street with the non-judgmental term "experiencing homelessness." They might reach out to help such a person, as an act of Christian charity, but they would also warn against the vice of drunkenness. 
    Georgian and Regency attitudes toward the poor can be summed up in Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper and the ants. Below is a poem from 1809, in which Sir Brooke Boothby uses the dialect word “emmet” for ant.  The grasshopper is thoughtless for not preparing for the winter, but the ant is also criticized for not helping the grasshopper.    
   ("Niggardly” has a completely separate etymological derivation from that other word you are thinking of. “Niggardly” is from Old Norse, presumably from the Vikings.
 )

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   It was the moral duty of rich families to dispense charity in their respective parishes, as we see Emma and Harriet doing in Emma, and Lady Catherine deBourgh doing in Pride & Prejudice. We know that they dispense advice along with the alms. 
   When Austen breaks the fourth wall and directly editorializes to her readers, we must assume that the topic she is talking about, the point she is making, is important to her, otherwise she would not break the fourth wall.
   So she bestows some rare praise on Emma and while doing so, shares her opinions about poor people. She says approvingly that 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.”   


PictureEmma is kind to the poor but on this occasion she has another motive, so she brings Harriet along.
     We are told in Persuasion that Admiral Croft and his wife gave “the poor... the best attention and relief” after they rented Kellynch Hall from the feckless Sir Walter Elliot. No doubt the Admiral and his wife are kinder and more generous to Sir Walter's tenants than Sir Walter himself.
​   When Marianne marries Colonel Brandon, she becomes “the patroness of a village,” in other words, she willingly takes on the duty of looking after the well-being of the local people. Perhaps she will be like Austen's much-beloved older friend, Mrs. Anne LeFroy, who lived in the neighbouring parish. As described in Paula Byrne's biography of Austen, LeFroy, a clergyman's wife, personally inoculated the poor in her parish against the smallpox. She started a cottage industry for the women and girls to raise straw for straw plaiting, used in hats and baskets. She opened a school for the village children and taught reading herself.
   Even the miserable Mrs. Norris superintends the "poor basket" at Mansfield Park. The ladies of the park make clothing for poor people when they are not embroidering footstools or making fringe. It is a given, a routine activity for genteel women.
   Mr. Darcy's housekeeper at Pemberley, Mrs. Reynolds, mentions Mr. Darcy's charity before any other virtue in response to Mrs. Gardiner's 
“His father was an excellent man." 
     
“Yes, ma’am, that he was indeed; and his son will be just like him—just as affable to the poor.”

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   These charitable impulses, however, were not extended to Gypsies. In Austen's England, they were regarded as a race of parasites,  people who followed a vagabond lifestyle and survived by begging and stealing. Rumours persisted that the gypsies stole little children. They were permanent outsiders from society. 
    They are exotic and unexpected in the quiet village of Highbury,  "Nothing of the sort had ever occurred before to any young ladies in the place," and they are not welcome.
   Harriet was soon assailed by half a dozen children, headed by a stout woman and a great boy, all clamorous, and impertinent in look, though not absolutely in word.—More and more frightened, she immediately promised them money, and taking out her purse, gave them a shilling, and begged them not to want more, or to use her ill.—She was then able to walk, though but slowly, and was moving away—but her terror and her purse were too tempting, and she was followed, or rather surrounded, by the whole gang, demanding more.
   In this state Frank Churchill had found her, she trembling and conditioning, they loud and insolent. 

      Harriet is shown here as acting like a silly goose, but there is also nothing sympathetic in Austen's portrayal of the gypsies. They are described as impertinent and insolent, and they respond to Harriet's "terror" by surrounding her and demanding more money.
     Austen says the gypsies "
did not wait for the operations of justice; they took themselves off in a hurry," that is, before Knightley or anyone can get up a posse to drive them out. (Recall that bylaw officers and police do not exist at this period in history.)  Austen does not explain or justify the response of the village. She would not have expected her readers to disagree with the response. In a later post, when we get to the topic of Emma and land enclosure, we'll see how this scene is interpreted to make the gypsies into the victims.

     Austen’s view of the poor was a paternalistic one, or to use the term she would use, a condescending one. Helping the poor -- at least, the deserving poor--is one of her implicit values, it is something a good person does, even without explicit reference to religion.
   Which is a bit of an odd thing -- Austen was undoubtedly a Christian and a member of the Church of England, but she seldom mentions religion directly. Why is this?
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​​   Next post: Decorum in Religion​
 In my novel, A Marriage of Attachment, Fanny Price works for a charitable society, teaching sewing skills to poor girls.  The "Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor" was a real society, patronized by William Wilberforce. The Society looked for practical ways to educate and help the lowest ranks of society. Click here for more info about my books.
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    I'm a writer and a teacher of English as a Second Language.  "Laowai" means foreigner. Check further down for tags for specific subjects. My earlier posts (prior to June 2017) are about my time in China, more recent posts focus on my writing. Welcome!


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