 Hello fellow followers of Christ and welcome to the show that introduces you to the men and women behind history's greatest works of literature. Come along every week as we explore these renowned authors, the times and genre in which they wrote, why scholars praise their writing and how we as Catholics should read and understand their works. I'm Joseph Pierce and this is The Authority. Hello, I'm Joseph Pierce and welcome to this episode of The Authority where today we'll be talking about one of the giants of history as regards to literature, not so much a giant, but a giantess, a giantess among giants. This is the great Jane Austen, one of the truly great novelists of all time. So she was born in 1775 into an age of revolutions. Of course, the American Revolution would take place the following year in 1776 and in 1789 would be the French Revolution when Jane Austen is still only a teenager and she was evidently influenced by a book that's published about the French Revolution by Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France and we see the influence actually of Edmund Burke in the character of Edmund Bertram in Mansfield Park and we see how Edmund Bertram is the mentor to the heroine of that novel Fanny Price and I think we can realistically project that as being a reflection of the fact that Edmund Burke was a mentor for Jane Austen herself. So this tells us something about who she was. She was, for want of a better word, a conservative in politics. She was certainly anti-revolutionary as regards the Revolution in France, the French Revolution and we see something of her position as a 15-year-old and a very precocious and I think very charming history of England that she wrote, a history of the kings and queens of England and I read about this actually for the imaginative conservative in an essay called Jane Austen and the Tudor Terror and I'm going to not read the whole of it but I'm going to read some of her comments because it places her in a very pro-Catholic light. We will understand Jane Austen, the novelist, much better when we understand where she's coming from in terms of understanding things such as history and theology. So here we have her on Henry VIII. She says, Henry VIII's only merit was his not being quite so bad as his daughter Elizabeth which must rate as one of the greatest backhanded compliments ever written. She continues, the crimes and cruelties of this prince were too numerous to be mentioned and nothing can be said in his vindication but that his abolishing religious houses and leaving them to the ruinous depredation of time has been of infinite use to the landscape of England in general which probably was a principal motivation for his doing it since otherwise why should a man who was of no religion himself be at so much trouble to abolish one which had for ages been established in the kingdom. There's a how when Miss Austen stands on the dissolution of the monasteries very much on the side of the church. The indomitable Jane has no love for Bloody Mary, Mary Tudor but it's intriguing and amusing that she sees her in the light or should we say the shadow of Bloody Bess who would be her successor Elizabeth I. As she, Mary, died without children she would be succeeded by that disgrace to humanity, that pest of society Elizabeth. She died without issue and then the dreadful moment came in which the destroyer of all comfort, the deceitful betrayer of trust reposed in her and the murderous of her cousin succeeded to the throne. So Elizabeth I as the deceitful betrayer and the murderess of her cousin and this is she referred of course to Mary Stuart Queen of Scots, Mary Queen of Scots. So the cousin to whom Miss Austen refers is of course Mary Stuart Queen of Scots who Miss Austen champions with unabashed verve and vigor. She vilifies not only Bloody Bess as being Mary's murderess but also the Queen's malicious and malevolent advisors for being her partners in crime. Here's the quote. It was the peculiar misfortune of this woman to have had bad ministers. Since wicked as she herself was she could not have committed such extensive mischief had not these vile and abandoned men connived at and encouraged her in her crimes. Lord Burley, Sophrasis Walsingham and other chief officers of Elizabeth State were quote such scandals to their country and their sex as to allow and assist their queen in confining for the space of 19 years a woman who if the claims of relationship a merit were of no avail yet as a queen and as one who condescended to place confidence in her had every reason to expect assistance and protection and at length in allowing Elizabeth to bring this amiable woman to an untimely unmerited and scandalous death. Can anyone if he reflects but for a moment on this blot this everlasting blot upon their understanding and their character allow any praise to Lord Burley or Sophrasis Walsingham. And again this is this is the precocious young 15-year-old Jane Austen taking basically the Catholic position as regards English history. There's a little doubt that the unfortunate Queen of Scots has found in the irrepressible Miss Austen a worthy champion of her cause. This is evident still further in the manner in which Miss Austen imagines the heroism of the Queen's final moments. This of course is Mary Queen of Scots and this is Jane Austen on Mary Queen of Scots final moments. Abandoned by her son, confined by her cousin, abused, reproached and vilified by all, what must not her most noble mind have suffered when informed that Elizabeth had given order for her death. Yet she bore it with a most unshaken fortitude, firm in her mind, constant in her religion and prepared herself to meet the cruel fate to which she was doomed with a magnanimity that could alone proceed from conscious innocence. And yet could you reader have believed it possible that some hardened and zealous Protestants have even abused her for that steadfastness in the Catholic religion which reflected on her so much credit. But this is a striking proof of their narrow souls and prejudice judgments who accuse her. She was executed in the Great Hall Fatheringay Castle, sacred place on Wednesday the 8th of February 1586 to the everlasting reproach of Elizabeth, her ministers and of England in general. That is a fighting talk from the feisty teenage Jane Austen. Having seemingly canonized the Queen of Scots and seeing that the place of execution is a sacred place, a shrine, having seemingly canonized the Queen of Scots for the holiness of her death, Miss Austen addresses the sins and crimes of which the Queen had been accused during her tumultuous and turbulent life. She does so with the nuanced subtlety with which she addressed the sins and crimes of the fictional heroines of her novels. The Queen of Scots had, quote, never been guilty of anything more than imprudencies into which she was betrayed by the openness of her heart, her youth, and her education, end quote. It is telling that Miss Austen should conclude her discussion of the Tudor Traterra with a eulogy to the Earl of Essex. This nobut and gallant Earl, as she says, who, like the Queen of Scots, would be beheaded on Elizabeth's orders. Such praise indicates Miss Austen's sympathy with the cause of the Essex Rebellion, a sympathy which she shares with Shakespeare and Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of Southampton. As the Earl of Southampton languished in prison for his role in the rebellion, Shakespeare exposed the something rotten in Elizabethan England in his depiction of Hamnett's anger at the wickedness of a Machiavellian monarch and his self-serving and duplicitous ministers. And so we see that England's greatest writer, William Shakespeare, speaks as one with Jane Austen, arguably England's greatest novelist. In this, as in so much else, we can trust the incomparable Will and the indomitable Jane, whose wit and wisdom is a witness to the truth in the darkest of days. Okay, I've set the scene there with that essay on purpose because it allows us to see and understand who Jane Austen is and where she's coming from. We actually see it in an early novel of hers, Northanger Abbey, which was actually known also as the female Quixote. And that tells us a great deal, actually, because what she's doing in that novel, Northanger Abbey, of course, is a ruined abbey in itself. We already had the scene set here. She's lampooning and satirizing the anti-Catholicism of the Gothic novels of the late 18th century. And with, again, with great wit and wisdom. So let's look at Jane Austen now at some of her probably her best two known novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. She has a storytelling genius, the power of storytelling, mythopoeia, the making of stories, the telling of stories. She's a genius with very few other novelists in the history of civilization can match. But she couples this, this storytelling, this weaving of plot with a perspicacious understanding of the human condition of human nature. She's a very wise observer of the follies of humanity and as a good profoundly deep Aristotelian philosopher and Anglican Christian, she brings her Christian faith into the morality of these. We should mention as well that in Sense and Sensibility, throws itself into the controversy surrounding the rise of romanticism as a reaction against the Enlightenment. And we should say something about this because Jane Austen is born into the 18th century. And that is really the age of the Enlightenment or the age of reason as its rather arrogantly and superciliously calls itself, which basically looked down its nose at the past, looked down its nose at the whole previous history of philosophy and theology and the arts. Basically, the past was inferior to the present. The present was a coming of age where we turn our back on the old truths of religion and start trusting new ideas in philosophy. So this was what we might call the rise of things such as empiricism, philosophical materialism, laying the foundations for atheism, that this was the spirit of the age, if you like, in which Jane Austen was born. And then there was a reaction against that with the age of romanticism in England that these English romanticism began with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798, when Jane Austen is in her early 20s. So in sense and sensibility, we see her response to romanticism and to the Enlightenment. One, if you like, worships the head to the exclusion of the heart. The other tends to trust the heart too much and abandon the head. And what Jane Austen does as a realist in the philosophical understanding of the word, going back to Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine, and St Thomas Aquinas, is she brings the head and the heart back together in some sort of unified understanding of things. I'm going to just take up here my discussion of this where I've written about it before. At the time of the novel's publication in 1811, romanticism's reaction against the Enlightenment was all the rage. Heralded by the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 of Roddy and Repoetry co-authored by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English romanticism sought to respond to the empiricism and scientism of the so-called age of reason with an emotion-driven engagement with beauty. On the one side, the head ruled the heart. On the other, the heart ruled the head. Both sides are present in sense and sensibility. At one end of the spectrum are the characters who adhere to sense to such a degree that they banish sensibility. These are characters such as John and Fanny Dashwood and Lucy Steele who are cold and calculated in their relations with others, using their sense to serve their own materialistic and prideful purposes. At the other end of the spectrum are those who adhere to sensibility to such a degree that they ignore or denigrate the importance of sense. Characters on the sensibility end of the spectrum include Marianne Dashwood and the dashing John Willoughby, whose reckless emotion-driven romance ends in heartbreak. Those at either of these extremes are shown to be morally flawed. Those who employ sense to the exclusion of sensibility allow their heads to rule their hearts to such a degree that they become hard-hearted. Those who follow sensibility to the exclusion of sense allow their hearts to rule their heads to such a degree that they lose their heads and break their hearts. The characters who are truly virtuous are those who keep their sense and sensibility in healthy and harmonious balance, finding and then following the Aristotelian via media between the two extremes. Edward Ferres and Marianne Dashwood achieve this moral equanimity eventually, learning from their mistakes, whereas Colonel Brandon and Eleanor Dashwood seem always to possess such ethical poise and balance in spite of the great trials and tribulations that they face. One suspects that the latter, the indomitably decorous and yet temporarily passionate Miss Dashwood, bears a remarkable likeness to the indomitably decorous and beguiding the elusive Miss Austin. Indeed, this is Jane Austen's heroines that we perceive the virtue and brilliance of the author herself, who always allowed her own sense and sensibility to be governed by her deep Christian faith. So that is, say, understanding the deeper philosophical Christian elements of Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility. When we come to Pride and Prejudice, and these are, I think, without real doubt the two best known of Jane Austen's novel, the most popular, we talked about the Aristotelian via media between sense and sensibility, keeping them in balance as regards the theme of that novel. Pride and Prejudice, again, Jane Austen gives us the theme of the novel in the title, and the novel is about pride and prejudice, but whereas sense and sensibility are two things that need to be kept in balance, pride is always bad and always leads to prejudice. So the connection here is about one bad thing inescapably leading to another bad thing. And we talked about Jane Austen as an Aristotelian, as somebody who either explicitly or implicitly reflects the philosophy of that great Greek philosopher in her work. Well, the greatest Christian disciple of Aristotle, if you like, who baptises the philosophy of Aristotle is the great St. Thomas Aquinas. And we can also say insofar as Jane Austen is a Christian Aristotelian, she also is de facto a Thomist, and we do see in Pride and Prejudice a trimmistic understanding of the connection between Pride and Prejudice. So in the Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas basically roots the perception of reality with virtue, that virtue is necessary to perceive the real. And the reason for this is simple, that we have to have the virtue of humility in order to have a sense of gratitude. Humility, the fruit of humility is gratitude. And once we have that sense of gratitude, our eyes will be opened in wonder. And it's only when our eyes are opened in wonder that we can be moved to that contemplation that is necessary for the dilation of the mind into the fullness of reality itself. So that fivefold process, if you like, is humility, gratitude, wonder, contemplation and dilation. This is implicit in Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice and explicit in its absence. So what is the absence of humility? The actual technical definition of pride is the absence of humility. We need to remind ourselves that evil does not have any essential existence itself, has no being because God does not create evil things. So following an Augustinian understanding of evil, that evil is the absence of the good. So pride is the absence of humility. So if we do not have humility, if we have pride, we will not have a sense of gratitude. We will be animated actually by cynicism, the absence of gratitude. And if we don't have gratitude, our eyes will not be open in wonder. They'll be closed to the reality in front of us because of our prejudices towards it. And therefore our eyes are not open in wonder but closed shut in a blindness caused by pride and the ignorance caused by arrogance. Then we will not be moved to contemplation and therefore our minds and souls will not be dilated, will not open out into the fullness of reality but will shrink and shrivel into a mere parody and wreck and travesty of what we're meant to be and what we're meant to see. The character of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings is a perfect depiction of the caricature, if you like, of the souls shriveling and shrinking because of its addiction to sin. When we allow pride to take root in our soul, we gollumize ourselves. So the whole of pride and prejudice, if you like, is this connection between the absence of humility, pride, and the destructive consequences that follow on from the prejudice which is the bitter, cankered fruit of pride. So again, let's take those principles into the novel itself. It is this understanding of pride and its blindness which animates pride and prejudice. Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy are blinded by their pride into forming prejudiced presumptions about each other. It is only as they gain humility that each is able to see the other more perceptively. Elizabeth, for instance, is predisposed to believe Mr Wickham's lies about Mr Darcy because of her prejudiced appraisal of the latter's character. She is absolutely ashamed of herself, that's a quote, when she finally realizes she has been, quote, blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd. Look at the juxtaposition of those words here. Blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd. That is what pride leads to. Blindness, partiality, prejudice, and absurdity. The realization is a revelation, enabling her to see herself from a fresh perspective. Her pride having been humiliated, she attains the humility that is necessary to see herself more clearly. Indeed, she sees herself for the first time, quote, till this moment, I never knew myself. And there's nothing which talk about here's the connection between the absence of humility and humiliation, because humiliation is the hurting of our pride. If we have no pride, we cannot be humiliated. One who has pure humility does not feel humiliation. So although the, for instance, take the absolute archetype, archetype example, the passion of the Christ, although Christ's persecutors were endeavoring to humiliate him, he was not humiliated by them because of his pure humility. Mr. Darcy, on the other hand, needs to learn condescension in the humble and not the prideful sense of the word. He must cease looking down upon the comparatively lowborn Elizabeth, and needs to descend from his high horse, not merely in order to meet her eye to eye, but to descend further onto his knees, that he might look up to her in reverence and with a love that knows it is not worthy. Such a sense of unworthiness animates his confession to Elizabeth of his earlier ill treatment of her, quote, the recollection of what I then said of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it is now and has been many months inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, you know not, you can scarcely conceive how they have tortured me, though it was some time I confess before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice. Notice again, Jane Austen, brilliant Christian philosopher as well as being a brilliant Christian storyteller, connecting reason to justice and reason ultimately to humility, the absence of pride. It is only through learning to show reverence and respect for the other that we are able to love them and through such love know them as they are. It is in this way that Elizabeth and Darcy grow in virtue. They're sacrificing themselves in love and they was each to draw the other towards the humble demands of the undeserved gift of love conversion confession and forgiveness. It is therefore through the love of another that we are able to gain the maturity that comes through moral formation and growth and maturity that is necessary for the sustenance of loving relationships and the attainment of happiness. All right, so here we see and I hope I've shown the first of all the the Catholic friendly nature of Jane Austen's Christianity, although she was herself a practicing Anglican and also the her understanding of English history from a Catholic perspective and not buying into the propaganda of conventional histories of her time. Bearing in mind this is a very anti-Catholic culture in which she was growing up. So there's a element of courage as well as perspicacity in her understanding of these things. But I'm going to end with some words by the great G.K. Chesterton about Jane Austen, where he basically shows how she is much more superior than to the contemporary feminists of the day that look down their noses at the wisdom of her works. So I'll cherry pick some parts of this essay written by Chesterton, well published in the volume of Chesterton's essays come to think of it in 1930 on Jane Austen in the general election. I saw recently a remark about Jane Austen in connection with the general election. We have most of us seen a good many remarks about Jane Austen in connection with the flapper or the new woman or the modern view of marriage or some of those funny things. And those happy few of us who happen to have read Jane Austen have generally come to the conclusion that those who refer to her have not read her. Feminists are as their name implies opposed to anything feminine. But sometimes they disparage the earlier forms of the feminine even when they showed qualities commonly called masculine. They talk of sense and sensibility without knowing that the moral is on the side of sense. They talk about fainting. I do not remember any woman fainting the novel of Jane Austen. There may be an exception that I have forgotten. Jane Austen herself was certainly not of the fainting sort. Nor were her favorite heroines like Emma Woodhouse or Elizabeth Bennett. The heroine of many a modern novel writhes and reels her way through the story. Shoes and flings away 50 half-smoked cigarettes. It perpetually stifling a scream or else not stifling it. Howling for solitude or howling for society. Goading every mood to the verge of madness. Seeing red mists before her eyes. Seeing green flames dance in her brain. Dashing to the druggist and then collapsing on the doorstep of the psychoanalyst. And all the time congratulating herself for her rational superiority to the weak sensibility of Jane Austen. Just got to love GK Chesterton. And we'll carry on. He refers here to a writer in a leading daily paper who made the remark that a modern girl would see through the insincerity of Mr. Wickham in pride and prejudice in five minutes. Now this is a highly interesting instance of the sort of injustice done to Jane Austen. Jane Austen was a much more shrewd and solid psychologist than that. She did not make Elizabeth Bennett to be a person easily deceived. And she did not make her deceiver a vulgar imposter. Mr. Wickham was one of those very formidable people who tell lies by telling the truth. He did not merely swagger or sentimentalize or make attitudes or strike attitudes. He simply told the girl, as if reluctantly, that he had been promised a living in the church by old Mr. Darcy and that young Mr. Darcy had not carried out the schemes. This was true as far as it went. Anybody might have believed it. Most people would have believed it if it were told with modesty and restraint. Mr. Wickham could be trusted to tell it with modesty and restraint. What Mr. Wickham could not be trusted to do was to tell the rest of the story, which made it a very different story. He did not think it necessary to mention that he had misbehaved himself in so flagrant a fashion that no responsible squire could possibly make him a parson so that the squire had compensated him and he had become an officer in a fashionable regiment instead. It is a perfectly sound and realistic example of the way in which quite sensible people can be deceived by quite unreliable people and the novelist knew her business much too well to make the unreliable person obviously unreliable. That sort of quiet and plausible liar does exist. I certainly see no reason to think he has ceased to exist. I think Jane Austen was right in supposing that Elizabeth Bennet might have believed him. I think Jane Austen herself might have believed him and I am quite certain that the modern girl might believe him any day. But the rather queer application of all this to the case of the general election is not without a moral after all. For Mr. Wickham was or is exactly the sort of man who does make a success of political elections. But in the main he is made for parliamentary life and he owes his success to two qualities both exhibited in the novel in which he figures. First the talent for telling a lie by telling half of the truth and second the art of telling a lie not loudly and offensively but with an appearance of gentlemanly and graceful regret. Nothing tends more happily to this result than the shining qualities of Mr. Wickham. Good manners and good nature and a light touch. All sorts of answers are given by ministers to questions in parliament which could only be delivered in this way. So vividly do I see Mr. Wickham as a politician that I feel inclined to rewrite the whole of prejudice, pride and prejudice to suit the politics of today. It would be amusing to send the Bennett girls rushing round to canvas. Elizabeth with amusement and Jane with dignified reluctance. As for Lydia she would be a great success in modern politics. But her husband would be the greatest success of all. He might become a cabinet minister while poor old Darcy was soaking in the provinces a decent truthful honorable diehard cursing the taxes and swearing in the country was going to the dogs and especially to the puppies. And on that Chestertonian note we will conclude our discussion of the great Jane Austen. Thanks so much as always for joining me. Goodbye, God bless and good reading. This has been an episode of The Authority with Joseph Pierce brought to you by Tan. For updates on new episodes and to support The Authority and other great free content visit TheAuthorityPodcast.com to subscribe and use coupon code Authority25 to get 25% off your next order including books, audio books and video courses by Joseph Pierce on literary giants such as Tolkien, Chesterton, Lewis, Shakespeare and Bellach as well as Tan's extensive catalogue of content from the saints and great spiritual masters to strengthen your faith and interior life. 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