The genial core of Jane Austen’s art
It is a truth universally recorded that no writer since Jane Austen has been in want of an opinion about her. “Of all great writers,” observed Virginia Woolf, “she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.”
As Austen fans start a year-long celebration of her birth on Dec. 16, 1775, society has not bored of the challenge. The novel “Pride and Prejudice” has been adapted to film at least 17 times. Oxford University launched a special course this summer called Love and Longevity: 250 Years of Jane Austen. Book clubs are planning a year of seminars in bodices and britches.
Part of Austen’s enduring appeal rests in her verbal swordplay of enamorment. As C.S. Lewis put it, she teases from human attraction a tangle of “good sense, courage, contentment, fortitude, ‘some duty neglected, some failing indulged’, impropriety, indelicacy, generous candour, blameable distrust, just humiliation, vanity, folly, ignorance, reason.” What’s not to enjoy?
Yet beneath all that runs a deeper current that springs from her childhood Bible lessons around the family hearth. “The hard core of morality and even of religion seems to me to be just what makes good comedy possible,” Lewis wrote. “‘Principles’ or ‘seriousness’ are essential to Jane Austen’s art.”
She wrote not just novels, but prayers beseeching God “to quicken our sense of Thy mercy in the redemption of the world,” as she put it. These behests, shared with family and friends, reveal a desire to express more gratitude, to be more conscious of the divine presence, and to “feel the importance of every day, and every hour as it passes, and earnestly strive to make a better use of what Thy goodness may yet bestow on us.”
That redemption, which is never far from love in her novels, may be more relevant than ever. Gen Zers are abandoning dating apps for the old-fashioned joys of chance encounters and make-it-up-as-you-go courtship. A recent study by the Springtide Research Institute found that 68% of this generation’s members consider themselves religious and 77% say they are spiritual, yet they “define spirituality as autonomous and faith unbundled ... inclusive of all faiths and practices.”
Those findings help explain why the TikTok channels of this emerging generation are abuzz with references to Austen and the many spinoffs inspired by her works. Unbundled faith, the Springtide study described, reveals a desire to ground identity in spiritual beliefs and community.
“Union of the masculine and feminine qualities constitutes completeness,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this newspaper. A writer’s greatness rests in the acts of observation and description. Like William Shakespeare long before her and Nora Ephron long after, Austen found in love a blending of the comedic with the spiritual. No wonder her works keep finding new audiences. Whenever two hearts flutter, sense and sensibility blend anew.
