Morality Play Pattern in Pride and Prejudice

Austen is particularly unusual among virtue ethicists past and present in according amiability so much importance, even though it is so obviously central to almost peoples lives working, if not living, in close confinement with others with whom one must and should get along. Austen presents these virtues as not only when a necessary accommodation to difficult circumstances, but as superior to the invidious vanity and superbia of the rich and titled, which she often mocks.So, inPride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet rejects Darcys haughty condescension out of hand the bright ending must wait until Darcy comes to see beyond her lowly connections and unaristocratic manners and fully recognise her professedly (bourgeois) virtue. That is a moral happy ending even more than it is a romantic one. Like both good virtue ethicist, Austen proceeds by giving illustrative examples. This is why her characters argon moral kind of than psychological constructs.Austens purpose is not to explore their inner lives, but to expose particular moral pathologies to the guardianship of the reader. Dont act equal this Dont cut off your relatives without a penny after promising your father you would cypher after them and justify it with self-serving casuistic rationalisations (as John Dashwood does inSense and Sensibility). Dont be like this virtuously incontinent like Mrs Bennet or struck through with a single huge flaw, like Mr Bennets selfish wish to live a private life while being the head of a family (Pride and Prejudice).But as well as excoriating such obvious though conventional moral failings of human nature, Austen attends carefully, and with a fine brush, to illustrating the fine detail, and fine-tuning, that true virtue requires. To show us what true amiability should be, she shows us what it isnt quite. back Price, the heroine ofMansfield Park, is so excessively amiable as to put her own dignity and interests at risk, so preceding(a) that her true love almost doesn t notice her (until events intervene).Mr Bingleys amiability inPride and Prejudiceis pitch perfect, but fails to discriminate betwixt the deserving and undeserving. Emma, meanwhile, is very discriminating, but she is a snob intimately it she is rather too conscious of her tender status and does not actuall(a)y respect others as she should (which, of course, gets her into trouble). Then there are the illustrations of what virtuous ask looks like. Here one sees why the plot is so firmly in the authors hands, not the characters.Austen is primarily concern with setting up particular scenes moral trials in which we can see how virtuous characters be ware in testing circumstances. These moral lessons to the reader are the parts she gave the most exacting attention to where her words are perfectly chosen and sparkling with intelligence and deep moral insight. These are the parts that she actually cared about the rest the rituals of the romantic prank genre and social realism is j ust background.We see Austens characters navigating the unpleasant attentions and comments of boors, fools and cads with decorousness and dignity Indeed, brother, your anxiety for our welfare and prosperity carries you too far, Elinor chastises John Dashwood, ever so politely inSense and Sensibility. In every novel we see Austens central characters working through moral problems of all kinds, weighing up and considering what propriety requires by talking it through to themselves or trusted friends.We see them breeding from their mistakes, as Elizabeth and Darcy both learn from their early mistakes about his character (Pride and Prejudice). We even see them engaging in explicit, almost technical, moral philosophy analysis, such as debating to what extent Frank Churchill should be considered morally liable for his failure to visit Highbury (Emma), to the evident boredom of the less morally developed characters stuck in the same mode as them.Austen carries out her mission of moral education with flair and brilliance, while charitably respecting the interests and capacities of her readers (which is why she is so much more readable than most moral theorists who, like Kant, seem often to write as if understanding is the readers problem). Yet there is one further striking feature that sets Austens novels apart hermoral gaze. The all-knowing author of her books sees right through people to their moral character and exposes and dissects their follies, flaws and self-deceptions.I cannot read one of her novels without thinking with a shiver about what that penetrating moral gaze would reveal if directed at myself. This is virtue moral philosophy at a different level about moral vision, not just moral content. Austen shows us how to look at ourselves and analyse and identify our own moral character, to meet Socratess challenge to Know thyself. We pass on all the information we need to look at ourselves this way, to see ourselves as we really are we have an aut hors omniscient access to the details of our own lives but we generally prefer not to open that box.Indeed, faculty member moral philosophers since the enlightenment have collaborated with this natural aversion by collectively turning their attention onward from uncomfortable self-examination and towards elaborating coherent systems of rules that any agent should follow. Yet reading Austen shows the ultimate ineffectiveness of this strategy. I do not believe that all the sophisticated Kantian and utilitarian theory in the terra firma could shield you for long from Austens moral gaze.We should read Austen today because she is wise as well as clever, and because she teaches us how to live well not just how to love well. We should read beyond thedelicious ritualsof her romantic comedy plots to her deeper interests and purposes in creating her morally complex characters and setting them on display for us. We should read beyond her undisputed literary genius, and her place in the his tory of literary innovations and influences, to her unrecognised philosophical genius in elaborating and advancing a moral philosophy for our bourgeois times.