Jane Austen’s Enlightened Morality

In Chapter 24 of Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth Bennet discusses with her older sister Jane whether their eligible neighbour, Mr Bingley, is sincere in his attentions to Jane, and whether their silly mother's character is a serious handicap to her daughters' prospects in life. In the course of the conversation Elizabeth speaks her mind with some force: ‘There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense’.

This may not be not Jane Austen herself speaking, but Elizabeth's character is quite like her creator's. At this point in the novel Elizabeth is reacting with anger and disappointment after meeting Mr Bingley's grand friend Mr Darcy, whose pride and snobbishness have humiliated her. Jane Austen, herself unmarried, had observed how casually men could treat women like herself in this vitally important matter. 

So Jane Austen shares with Elizabeth a clear moral view. We find everywhere in Austen's novels her firm outlook on humanity and her confident judgment on the people around her. Her judgement infuses the whole atmosphere of the fictional world she created. It enables us to share her horror and amusement at the perennial follies of people. She develops plots so that her chief characters achieve a morally mature state of life, rewarded with marriages, offspring and lucrative parsonages to accompany them into a future (a Victorian one, we presume) which, alas, Jane Austen was never to see. The victims and the villains she leaves to the world as she celebrates their success. Austen wisely leaves it to other novelists to explore the murderous violence which the world inflicts on many whether they deserve it or not. 

Instead she concentrates on the theme of character growing out of imperfection. In Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth, inexperienced in spite of her wit and vivacity, learns to assess human complexity with more indulgence and kindness. In the same novel Darcy learns to unbend and conquer his reserve towards others. Both of them are capable of such growth despite earlier experiences which could have made them incapable. They become kinder and warmer and happier.

Her moral outlook was formed by the moral teaching of her Church. Nowadays we find Church of England sermons such as Jane Austen heard and digested all her life, and which her own father preached, dry stuff. But they reflected their enlightened age's self-confidence. Their sturdy moralism, which we probably find lacking in the darker tones of sacred mystery, paid little attention to the agonies of contemporary history. The best of them, written perhaps by Dr Johnson or Laurence Sterne ('Parson Yorick'), have wit, learning and elegance. It was a deeply religious age, and they had huge sales in their time. Although in Austen's novels we have now learnt to detect reverberations of the world's great issues (slavery, enclosures, class, war etc.), Austen chose not to confront them directly. The world which was central for her was one which had been partially delivered from ignorance, roughness and ugliness and her readers would now benefit from her novels to achieve earthly happiness and (implied) heavenly reward.  

She was a serious observer who missed nothing, a satirist and humorist whose discernment did not spare folly and wrong. She represents a Christian enlightenment, and that remained her outlook to the end of her short life. 

Keith Jones

Where to start with Jane Austen: 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/feb/20/where-to-start-with-jane-austen