the virtue of pride: jane austen as moralist

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245 The Journal of Value Inquiry 37: 245–257, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. The Virtue of Pride: Jane Austen as Moralist THEODORE M. BENDITT Department of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294- 1260, USA; e-mail: [email protected] Morality is a central element in Jane Austen’s novels, though not as a simple question of the moral rules that ought to guide people’s lives. It is not that Austen does not think that there are moral principles that ought to be followed, but that it is not a simple and straightforward matter, not the least because our judgment is often clouded or influenced by our desires. Many conduct books published in the late eighteenth century offered rules meant to govern con- duct. Some of them, such as Sermons to Young Women by James Fordyce, were aimed at women. The conduct books, along with much fiction of the period, suggested that women who follow the rules for manners and morals would be both good and rewarded. Some recent commentators have argued convincingly that Austen’s treatment of morality takes aim at the prevailing fictional treatments of virtue and reward. There are characters in Austen’s novels who do things that are wrong. But when they do, Austen’s approach is not, contrary to earlier novels of which she was critical, to show that bad things happen to the wicked, or to demon- strate that holding to sound precepts is the right strategy for a successful life. 1 Austen rejects the approach reflected in a closing paragraph of Ann Radcliffe’s Udolpho: O! useful it may be to have shewn, that, although the vicious can some- times pour afflictions upon the good, their power is transient and their pun- ishment certain; and that innocence, though oppressed by injustice, shall, supported by patience, finally triumph over misfortune. 2 The most noteworthy moral wrongs that occur in Austen’s novels are not, and are not meant to be, lessons from which the heroes and heroines learn. They are the plot elements that form the context in which characters make difficult choices. They are the centerpieces of the novels. Which characters do wrong in Austen’s novels, and what if anything hap- pens to them as a result? The clearest cases of wrongdoing are Mr. Wickham’s lies in Pride and Prejudice about his treatment by Mr. Darcy, his seduction of Lydia Bennett, Mr. Willoughby’s seductions in Sense and Sensibility, and the

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Page 1: The Virtue of Pride: Jane Austen as Moralist

245THE VIRTUE OF PRIDE: JANE AUSTEN AS MORALISTThe Journal of Value Inquiry 37: 245–257, 2003.© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

The Virtue of Pride: Jane Austen as Moralist

THEODORE M. BENDITTDepartment of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-1260, USA; e-mail: [email protected]

Morality is a central element in Jane Austen’s novels, though not as a simplequestion of the moral rules that ought to guide people’s lives. It is not thatAusten does not think that there are moral principles that ought to be followed,but that it is not a simple and straightforward matter, not the least because ourjudgment is often clouded or influenced by our desires. Many conduct bookspublished in the late eighteenth century offered rules meant to govern con-duct. Some of them, such as Sermons to Young Women by James Fordyce,were aimed at women. The conduct books, along with much fiction of theperiod, suggested that women who follow the rules for manners and moralswould be both good and rewarded. Some recent commentators have arguedconvincingly that Austen’s treatment of morality takes aim at the prevailingfictional treatments of virtue and reward.

There are characters in Austen’s novels who do things that are wrong. Butwhen they do, Austen’s approach is not, contrary to earlier novels of whichshe was critical, to show that bad things happen to the wicked, or to demon-strate that holding to sound precepts is the right strategy for a successful life.1

Austen rejects the approach reflected in a closing paragraph of Ann Radcliffe’sUdolpho:

O! useful it may be to have shewn, that, although the vicious can some-times pour afflictions upon the good, their power is transient and their pun-ishment certain; and that innocence, though oppressed by injustice, shall,supported by patience, finally triumph over misfortune.2

The most noteworthy moral wrongs that occur in Austen’s novels are not, andare not meant to be, lessons from which the heroes and heroines learn. Theyare the plot elements that form the context in which characters make difficultchoices. They are the centerpieces of the novels.

Which characters do wrong in Austen’s novels, and what if anything hap-pens to them as a result? The clearest cases of wrongdoing are Mr. Wickham’slies in Pride and Prejudice about his treatment by Mr. Darcy, his seduction ofLydia Bennett, Mr. Willoughby’s seductions in Sense and Sensibility, and the

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infidelity of Maria Rushworth with Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park.Wickham does not suffer for his lies. In fact, his situation ultimately improveswhen he gets bailed out of his debts and gains a new position in the army. Asa plot element, though, his wrong plays a central role in Elizabeth Bennettand Darcy finally getting together. The revelation of Wickham’s deception iswhat leads Elizabeth to see Darcy in a different light and thus to alter heropinion of him. Willoughby’s shabby and immoral behavior in Sense andSensibility only indirectly affects Marianne Dashwood; it leads to his beingcut off from his inheritance, which in turn induces him to give up Mariannein favor of a rich woman. Willoughby himself, we learn at the end of the novel,“lived to exert, and frequently to enjoy himself.”3 Though he did really loveMarianne, and has lost this owing to his moral failures, it hardly appears tobe Austen’s intention to sermonize on the wages of sin. Maria Rushworth ismore adversely affected by her own moral failure than others in Austen’snovels, as she is made to suffer social isolation in the company of the detest-able Aunt Norris.

We should remember too that not all of Austen’s characters regard prom-ises as inviolate. In Sense and Sensibility Elinor Dashwood, against her owninterests, keeps her promise to Lucy Steele not to disclose Lucy’s secret en-gagement to Edward Ferrars. Other characters, though, think there are occa-sions when promises can be broken, as when, in Pride and Prejudice, Mrs.Gardiner discloses to Elizabeth that Darcy has been responsible for resolvingthe Lydia-Wickham scandal. We should also remember that Lucy’s unrelent-ing self-interest in Sense and Sensibility is successful.

Austen’s moral concern is not really with instruction in rectitude. She isnot trying to illustrate the precepts we can rely on if we would sail success-fully through life. Indeed it is just the reverse. She is concerned with the dif-ficulty, in real life, of clearly understanding both ourselves and others, offiguring out the right thing to do, and trying to do it in the face of our desiresand life’s conflicts. Precepts are inadequate in the matter. People are all toofrequently in a moral muddle, a state either of blindness or of confusion. Thisis apparent even in Mansfield Park, in which Austen’s most correct heroinesuffers innumerable moral lapses on her way to gaining her heart’s desire. Itis not that she does much that is wrong, but that she often thinks ill of othersand frequently fails to think or act generously with respect to others. In somerespects Fanny Price is presented as better than Henry or Mary Crawford. Shehas stricter ideas of propriety than they do, even though she fails always toact in accordance with them. But that cannot be taken as a ringing endorse-ment of those standards and ideals, since, given her character’s lapses, Austenmight well be regarded as equivocal about the capacity of such standards tobe our guides in certain areas of life, particularly where our heart’s desiresare involved.

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The other novels offer their own instances of moral blindness and confu-sion. Pride and Prejudice is well known for Austen’s exploration of the waysin which a person’s self-concept and accompanying pride can color her orhis understanding of the motives and merit of others. Elizabeth, her vanityinjured by Darcy’s early opinion of her, fails to see that he has become inter-ested in her, whereas Darcy’s pride in his social position, and his opinionsabout the behavior that is suitable for someone in his position, lead him tomisjudge the merit and the motives of others. In Sense and Sensibility bothElinor, the sister who is in control of her emotions, and Marianne, the roman-tically impetuous one, fail in similar ways. Both of them, owing to desire andinsufficient evidence, have formed mistaken beliefs about the intentions of themen in their lives. Elinor reproves Marianne for her responses to Willoughby,though they are hardly different from her quieter responses to and thoughtsabout Edward. In Emma the heroine, Emma Woodhouse, though not withoutinsight on occasion, is greatly deluded about virtually all the relationshipsgoing on, or not going on, around her as well as about her feelings for Mr.Knightley. Knightley, for his part, is surprisingly inconsistent. His latent feel-ings for Emma lead him to say things that reflect his uncertainty and confu-sion. For example, in conversations with Emma he contradicts himself aboutRobert Martin and changes his mind about Jane Fairfax’s qualities, and hetakes an immediate dislike to Frank Churchill.

In her recent book, Mary Waldron argues that Austen blurs the moral fo-cus and challenges an approach to life that “present[s] the problems of livingas much too easily solved by the application of theory,” by which she meansthat Austen represents life, including the moral life, as too complicated forthe straightforward application of a set of principles of conduct.4 Furthermore,Austen often leaves us in doubt as to whether her characters are good or bad.In his article “Jane Austen and the Moralists,” Gilbert Ryle distinguishes twotypes of moralist, which he calls the Calvinist and the Aristotelian. The Cal-vinist sees people as either good or bad, saved or damned, virtuous or givento vice, saints or sinners. This is not Austen’s take on morality. In her view,people are seen as “differing from one another in degree and not in kind, anddiffering from one another in respect not just of a single generic Sunday at-tribute, Goodness, say, or else Wickedness, but in respect of a whole spec-trum of specific weekday attributes. A is a bit more irritable and ambitiousthan B, but less indolent and sentimental. C is meaner and quicker-wittedthan D, and D is greedier and more athletic than C.”5 Austen’s charactersare not stick-figures, nor are they caricatures. We cannot say, in an easy all-inclusive way, whether her characters are simply good or bad. Furthermore,her characters are sometimes inconsistent, not because Austen is inconsist-ent, as some of her critics have thought, but because life, as she representsit, is too difficult to be easily subsumed under a set of clear and firm guide-lines.

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In recent years some philosophers interested in ethics have rejected ap-proaches, such as utilitarianism and Kantianism, that emphasize moral rulesand principles. One writer puts it this way:

British and American ethical philosophers in this century have tended tofocus on choices such as whether to break a promise when it is especiallyinconvenient to keep it or whether to kill an innocent man so that twentyothers will be saved. The image is that the subject matter of ethics consistsof dramatic choices under pressure which, fortunately, most of us do nothave to make all that often. . . . The subject matter of ethics has been pre-sented . . . as consisting of cases in which something of importance is atstake and someone explicitly weighs alternatives and then decides to doone thing or another. Ethical theories have been designed with a view to-ward telling people how to make these decisions.6

But the reality, he goes on to say, is that

Many of the most crucial “choices” in our lives turn out to be clusters ofan indeterminate number of choices . . . which are such that many are notreflective or explicit. Any model of choice in human action must take ac-count of this. Ethical theories which focus on explicit choices in which al-ternatives are weighed leave this out.7

Ethical behavior is not limited to dramatic occasions when we can see in clearoutline the impact of one choice or another. Such an approach makes it seemas if ethical moments are, happily, relatively infrequent. Occasions for rescu-ing others, though important, are rare, and occasions for helping others, thoughmore frequent, are not nearly as frequent as our regular interactions with oth-ers. Yet it is in the regular interactions that our characters are revealed and inwhich we have relatively small but cumulative impact on others, and they onus. They too, Austen sees, are ethical moments. Thus she favors an ethicalapproach that emphasizes character and the virtues, emphasizing aspects ofcharacter, particularly self-knowledge, spirit within limits, proper pride, sym-pathy, and intelligence and education, that she believes will serve us, andothers, well.

Ryle sees Austen as an Aristotelian in ethics, though the virtues they honorare not the same. By calling her an Aristotelian, Ryle means, in part, that herethical outlook is secular rather than religious.

I am sure that she was personally not merely the dutiful daughter of a cler-gyman, but was genuinely pious. Yet hardly a whisper of piety enters intoeven the most serious and most anguished meditations of her heroines. Theynever pray and they never give thanks on their knees. Three of her heroes

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go into the Church, and Edmund has to defend his vocation against the cyni-cisms of the Crawfords. But not a hint is given that he regards his clericalduty as that of saving souls. Routine church-going on Sunday with the restof the family gets a passing mention three or four times, and Fanny is oncestated to be religious. But that is all. I am not suggesting that Jane Austen’sgirls are atheists, agnostics or Deists. I am only saying that when Jane Austenwrites about them, she draws the curtain between her Sunday thoughts,whatever they were, and her creative imagination. Her heroines face theirmoral difficulties and solve their moral problems without recourse to reli-gious faith or theological doctrines. Nor does it ever occur to them to seekthe counsels of a clergyman.8

Secondly, Ryle means that Austen’s ethic is not of a sort that he calls Calvin-istic. It does not have us see people as being on one or the other side of a neatdivision such as good and bad, virtue and vice, spirit and flesh, duty and pleas-ure, reason and passion, thought and desire. Instead, Austen evaluates peoplein terms of the degree or quality of their impulses, sentiments, feelings, af-fections, thoughts, principles, prejudices, sense of duty, self-knowledge,self-command, spirit, and discipline. Aristotle saw virtue as a mean be-tween extremes. Just as, he thought, health of the body is a balance betweenextremes, so too the health of the soul involves a balance. For example, wemust not allow too much or too little play for our natural impulses, and thevirtue of courage is a mean between timidity and foolhardiness. In this lightwe might think of Darcy’s remark that “There is … in every disposition atendency to some particular evil,” which is not only a psychological observa-tion but suggests that virtue lies in the avoidance of extremes.9 We might thinkalso of the following, from Persuasion:

Anne wondered whether it ever occurred to him [Wentworth] now, to ques-tion the justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal felicityand advantage of firmness of character; and whether it might not strike him,that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its proportions andlimits.10

Alasdair MacIntyre, in his book After Virtue, though agreeing that Austen’sethic owes much to Aristotle, believes that it is also “profoundly Christian,”though adapted to the social roles of her time.11 “Her heroines must, if theyare to survive, seek for economic security. But this is not just because of thethreat of the outside economic world; it is because the telos of her heroines isa life within both a particular kind of marriage and a particular kind of house-hold of which that marriage will be the focal point.”12 Over and above theeconomic issues, as MacIntyre interprets Austen, the good of a woman ofthe class Austen writes about is to be found in marriage. One of the virtues

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MacIntyre believes Austen finds central to successful fulfillment of this roleis humility. He says that she “praises practical intelligence in an Aristotelianway and humility in a Christian way,” though he does not explain or illustratethis with reference to the novels.13 Another is self-knowledge, “a Christianrather than a Socratic self-knowledge which can only be achieved through akind of repentance.”14 Indeed, MacIntyre interprets the important momentsof self-recognition in the novels as moments of repentance. A third virtue thatMacIntyre finds in Austen is what he calls constancy and sees as a crucialvirtue in Mansfield Park and Persuasion. In the case of Fanny Price, MacIntyremaintains, constancy is her protection: “In . . . refusing [marriage to HenryCrawford] she places the danger of losing her soul before the reward of gain-ing what for her would be a whole world. She pursues virtue for the sake ofa certain kind of happiness and not for its utility.”15

Is Austen to be understood as a Christian moralist? In one sense the an-swer must be yes. The Christian era brought with it ideas about human vir-tues that were unknown previously. Aristotle, for example, knew nothing offaith, hope, and love and regarded humility as a vice. Insofar as Austen rec-ognizes virtues that are part of the Christian heritage, she can be said to be aChristian moralist. At the same time, it hardly seems that thinking of Austenas a Christian moralist improves our understanding of her ethic, for most ofthe virtues emphasized in her novels have permeated the culture and are readilyunderstood and respected outside a specifically Christian context. Nowadays,and probably in Austen’s time as well, honoring these virtues does not dis-play an especially Christian understanding of or approach to life. MacIntyre’sclaims seem overblown. It is not easy to see a peculiarly Christian humilityor self-knowledge or repentance in Austen, nor is Fanny Price’s risk of los-ing her soul a distinctively Christian sort of loss.

In her novels, Austen focuses considerable attention on a number of traitsand dispositions: pride, vanity, self-knowledge, responsibility and the lack ofit, prudence, selfishness and self-centeredness, sympathy, kind- and cold-heartedness, self-esteem, insensitivity, love, liveliness, and being dutiful. Theremainder of this discussion will focus on pride, which is central to Pride andPrejudice and which is, for the most part, depicted as a bad thing, somethingto be avoided, a vice of sorts. Toward the end of that novel, however, we hearElizabeth say of Darcy that he has no improper pride, and though this doesnot yet say that some pride is good, it certainly says that it is not all bad. Whatis pride, and what is proper pride?

“Pride” is ambiguous, and it may be that there are really two sorts of pride.There is the sort in which a person is proud of, or takes pride in, something,or is proud in the sense of regarding himself as superior to others. Each ofthese, though, is different from the sort of pride that is involved when we saythat a person is too proud, for example, to go on welfare or to accept helpfrom others. What we must do, then, is examine the various sorts of pride.

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The first, which can be called merit-pride, typically has a feeling component,a sense of self-satisfaction or complacency. This is brought about by reflec-tion on some aspect of a person about which he makes a favorable judg-ment. A person can be proud, for example, of her success at something, orof her child’s success, or of her social standing, or of some general abilitysuch as intelligence or the ability to produce a beautiful garden or play hand-ball well.

People take pride in, or are proud of, particular achievements, such aswinning a race or getting a high grade in calculus. The favorable judgmentleading to the characteristic sense of satisfaction is about the person’s supe-rior skill or ability or effort, something about the person that makes him, ac-cording to his own lights, stand out in a favorable way. I am proud of winninga race, for example, because it reflects favorably on my talent and determina-tion. But if I win because a strong competitor falls or is hurt, I am less proudof the accomplishment, since I cannot evaluate my talent or effort so highly.

We can experience pride in the achievements of others as well as ourselves.We may take pride, for example, in our child winning a spelling bee. This isprobably the least potentially offensive kind of pride, because it does notusually project a very strong sense of a positive evaluation of self. But it mustnevertheless involve something about the self. The object of the pride mustbe connected to us in some way in order for us to feel pride in the accom-plishments, since we cannot take pride in the success of the winner of a con-test who has no connection to us at all. Even so, the connection can be fairlyremote. People do seem to take pride in the success of people from their hometown with whom they have no other connection, no doubt because it reflectsfavorably, however faintly, on everyone from that town.

The examples highlighted above, of pride in particular achievements, canshift to pride as a more pervasive sense of superiority. We may see our achieve-ments as evidence of a personal characteristic that is superior to similar char-acteristics in others. Instead of taking pride in a particular achievement, wetake pride in a trait that we have, such as insightfulness, intelligence, or busi-ness acumen. This sort of pride is exhibited by many of the characters in Prideand Prejudice, most importantly Elizabeth, who is proud of her quick andinsightful understanding of other people. Mary Bennett is proud of her intel-lectual prowess. In a wonderful irony, Mary, discoursing in bookish terms onthe nature of pride, is characterized by Austen as “piqu[ing] herself upon thesolidity of her reflections.”16 Bingley is proud of the rapid flow of his ideas inhis letters, even though they produce incoherence, and also the rapidity withwhich he makes decisions.

There are degrees of such pride. A person can think of himself, relative toothers, merely as good at something, such as putting together business deals,understanding other people, or solving problems, or as superior to others inthis respect. But whatever the degree of pride, the essential point is that it

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involves a favorable evaluation of how the person stands in some respect vis-à-vis others.

As a magnification of this, a person might take himself to be superior notin respect of certain personal attributes, but overall. He might think of him-self simply as better than others. This is the sort of pride attributed to Darcyas well as to the Bingley sisters, Lady Catherine, and Sir William Lucas.Darcy’s pride is a matter of his sense of the superiority associated with hisstatus or position. He thinks well of himself, and thinks himself superior toothers, owing to his ancestry and social rank. He thinks these are personal tohimself, that they make him better than others.17 At least, this is what othersthink he thinks about himself, and it is why they call him proud. Darcy is called,and criticized for being, proud because he projects the impression that hebelieves himself above his company. Two examples are his saying that it wouldbe a punishment to dance with any of the ladies at the Meryton assembly, andhis boast about his understanding.

The second sort of pride might be called self-concept-pride. Consider theperson who is said to be too proud to accept welfare, or, more generally, toaccept help from other people. This is the sort of person who has a strongself-concept defined by certain standards or ideals. Violating the standardsor ideals would be doing something she considers low, or unworthy, or be-neath her and thus would make her sink in her own estimation. Her pride istied up in her self-image, her idea of the sort of person she is. Consider, asanother example, a teacher who upholds certain academic standards and who,on account of them, refuses to crib his lecture notes or to give a passing gradeto a failing student. Importantly, this sort of pride, unlike merit-pride, doesnot involve comparison with others or a sense of superiority.

Consider another case. A person is offered a bribe and refuses it, becausehe is too proud to do that sort of thing. It is low, unworthy of him; it violateshis self-image. We should remember, though, that motives can be mixed. Aperson might not accept a bribe, because he thinks it wrong and for no otherreason. Pride need not be involved. But it might be involved, as a differentbut perhaps additional motive. To say that a person is too proud to take a bribeis to say more than that he thinks it wrong in some abstract or disinterestedmoral sense. It is to say that he refrains because he thinks that it is beneathhim; it diminishes him in his own eyes and that is why he refrains. It is not, ornot only, right and wrong that are at stake, but the person’s self-concept thatis at risk.

Consider yet another case. There are people who are too proud to admitthey are wrong. Unlike the first two cases, such a person does not defend hisbehavior by saying “I’ve got my pride.” He does not think his pride is involved,for he insists he is right about whatever is in dispute. But others who think heis clearly in the wrong are trying to account for what they regard as his stub-born refusal to admit it. As they see it, his sense of his own pride is at stake.

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He is stubborn, they think, because he believes he will be diminished in hisown eyes if he concedes the point.

Consider finally Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility, whose senseof honor requires him to fight a duel to punish a man who has violated a womanfor whom he is responsible. Acting honorably is an important part of Brandon’sidea of himself and thus implicates his pride, in the self-concept sense of pride.Elinor Dashwood too responds to demands of honor. In the critical scene inwhich Lucy Steele tells Elinor of her long-standing engagement to EdwardFerrars, in whom Elinor is interested, Lucy extracts a promise to tell no oneof the engagement. But beyond her promise, Austen tells us, Elinor “wasfirmly resolved to act by her as every principle of honour and honesty di-rected, to combat her own affection for Edward and to see him as little aspossible.”18 How are we to understand the sense of honor that motivatesElinor? Moreland Perkins maintains that Austen is determined to representwomen as not ceding anything to men when it comes to having a role in thefield of honor.

We need to be able to imagine that Austen . . . meant in this novel to makesure the motivational force of a sense of honor in women could be seen tobe quite as effective as it may be in men – and that the contexts in whichwomen might engage their honor matched in breadth of ethical interest themen’s field. . . . Quite as naturally as Colonel Brandon . . . Elinor Dashwoodis to be experienced . . . as having within her . . . self – partly in her per-sonal pride – the motivating force of her own sense of honor.19

Elinor’s self-concept, and hence her pride, are at stake. Elsewhere in thenovel she exhorts her sister Marianne, in pain as a result of her treatmentby Willoughby, to counter others’ ill will by demonstrating a “reasonable andlaudable pride.”20

What are the defects of pride? Consider first self-concept-pride. In gen-eral, standing for something, having standards and ideals and being determinedto live up to them, is good. This is part of the basis of dignity. We owe it toourselves not to be doormats, to stand for something. The question “Where isyour pride?” is asked when a person either fails according to his own stand-ards and ideals, or fails to act in accordance with even the minimal standardsthat everyone should recognize and act from, which are part of the notion ofhuman dignity. The question suggests that he is either being craven or allow-ing himself to be stepped on. Dignity is the touchstone. Pride of this sort isgood, though it is an alloyed good if the standards and ideals are deficient.Furthermore, it is possible to be excessively proud in upholding our self-im-age, for we can be too unbending when it makes sense to bend. The correc-tive is for a person to have an appropriate self-concept and to be prepared todepart from his principles on suitable occasions.

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Austen appears to explore self-concept pride in Sense and Sensibility. Butas morally valuable as self-concept pride can be, particularly for an ethics ofvirtue, it is not the kind of pride that is so prominent in Pride and Prejudice.There is an interesting passage in Pride and Prejudice in which Austen ac-knowledges that there can be value in pride:

“How strange!” cried Elizabeth. “How abominable! – I wonder that thevery pride of this Mr. Darcy has not made him just to you! – If from nobetter motive that he should not have been too proud to be dishonest. . . .”

“It is wonderful,” – replied Wickham, – “for almost all his actions can betraced to pride; – and pride has often been his best friend. It has connectedhim nearer with virtue than any other feeling. . . .”

“Can such abominable pride as his, ever have done him good?”

“Yes. It has often led him to be liberal and generous, – to give his moneyfreely, to display hospitality, to assist his tenants, and relieve the poor. Fam-ily pride, and filial pride, for he is very proud of what his father was, havedone this. Not to appear to disgrace his family, to degenerate from the popu-lar qualities, or lose the influence of the Pemberley House, is a powerfulmotive. He also has brotherly pride, which with some brotherly affection,makes him a very kind and careful guardian of his sister; and you will gen-erally hear him cried up as the most attentive and best of brothers.”21

The passage seems to turn on what we are calling merit-pride. Pride in hisfamily often leads Darcy, according to Wickham, to behave in proper ways,ways that accord with and promote the family’s good name. Pride thus pro-motes correct behavior. It is on this account that Elizabeth wonders whyDarcy’s family pride has not led him to deal honestly with Wickham.

If merit-pride can have value, where does it go wrong? It goes wrong whena person over-inflates the importance, the merit, the standing of himself andthose connected with him. It goes wrong when a person exaggerates the meriton which the feeling of pride is based. It is a defect to think too well of your-self, or even of those close to you in whose achievements you take pride; thisis excessive pride. Worse yet is the boastfulness, the flaunting of a person’ssense of superiority, that frequently accompanies pride. As a further conse-quence a person might, in overestimating the degree of his own merit relativeto others, depreciate the merit of others by rating them lower than they de-serve. Finally, pride can lead a person to make mistakes, such as thoseElizabeth makes about Darcy and Wickham. All of these defects of prideare exhibited in Pride and Prejudice, and Darcy himself is guilty of most ofthem. He fails to recognize the status of lower-ranking gentry; he mortifiesElizabeth’s pride; he thinks himself above his company and makes his atti-tude obvious to others.

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Is merit-pride inevitably bad? There are some moralists who believe thatall pride is bad because it is inherently boastful or betrays a lack of humility.However, it is clear that, even though lack of humility is much in evidence inPride and Prejudice, Austen does not endorse this idea. She is clear that thereis such a thing as proper pride, the discovery of which is one of the keys tothe moral understanding that is central to the story. Such pride is not bad. Whatthen is proper pride? It involves having merit, making a correct estimation ofthe degree of our merit, taking an appropriate level of satisfaction from ap-preciation of the merit, and not flaunting it. More succinctly, it means mak-ing just evaluations of your merit, taking an appropriate degree of satisfactionin it, and keeping it to yourself.

We can wrong others simply by what we think of them. We wrong others,for example, by thinking them lower in status, or accomplishment, or under-standing, or moral value than they deserve, and we can even wrong others byfailing to regard them at all, as opposed to giving them lower regard than theydeserve. One person’s thinking ill of another diminishes the ill-thought per-son, and if it is undeserved, it is a wrong to him. If we have a mistaken thoughtabout someone, and it comes to light that we do, we think it appropriate toapologize. For example, if I have been thinking unfavorably of you for hav-ing abused an employee, and learn that someone else actually did it, I oweyou an apology. I might not even be blameworthy for believing it of you, butnonetheless you have been wronged by the belief. Darcy, in Pride and Preju-dice, wrongs others by behaving in ways that suggest he thinks himself betterthan they, because some of them are in fact, at least in some ways, his equal.

On the basis of the foregoing observations, an argument for the moral ap-propriateness of certain instances of pride can be developed. We wrong oth-ers if we fail to recognize their merit. Hence we must make evaluations ofothers. In order to do this we must learn how to evaluate the worth of variouselements of merit. Part of understanding how much merit another has is toknow the standards, which means that an evaluation of a person is at the sametime an evaluation of how the person stands with respect to others, includingourselves. Therefore, in evaluating others we must make an evaluation of ourown merit. If we find a certain degree of merit in another to be good and worthyof respect and praise, and find that we have the same degree of merit, then wemust think ourselves worthy of respect and praise to the same degree. Hav-ing such beliefs about ourselves, including a suitable accompanying level ofsatisfaction, is pride. When these beliefs are correct it is proper pride. There-fore, proper pride is morally appropriate; it is a moral good.

The importance of self-knowledge is particularly prominent in Austen’swritings. Pride and Prejudice and Emma are concerned, at least in part, withself-knowledge and its value for those who have it. Both Elizabeth and Darcyin the one novel and Emma and Knightley in the other have moments of rev-elation in which they become aware of their own desires and misapprehen-

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sions. Since their lack of self-knowledge leads them to misunderstand thecharacter of others, getting clear about this allows them to acknowledge theirdesires and gain what will make them happy. There is an intimate connectionbetween pride and self-knowledge; indeed, the particular evil of excessivepride that concerns Austen is its implications for self-knowledge. ConsiderDarcy’s pride. Darcy rates his status as very high in comparison with every-one he meets in Hertfordshire. His ratings of himself and others are recipro-cally reinforcing, since in rating himself very high, he is led to rate others lowerthan many of them deserve, which in turn reinforces his estimation of his ownstatus. He thus lacks knowledge of himself, a consequence of which is that helacks accurate knowledge of others. The same is true of Elizabeth, who ratesvery highly her capacity to make rapid and accurate assessments of otherpeople. Her excessive pride in this ability leads her into error about others. Itleads her, for example, to overlook vital evidence of Wickham’s character andto be unwilling to recognize evidence that Darcy’s character may not be asshe first took it to be. As Austen represents it, self-knowledge, in both cases,is the corrective. Both Darcy and Elizabeth experience personal revelationsin which they become aware of their mistaken pride, based on their misun-derstandings of themselves, and of their consequent failures to understand oth-ers properly. Pride, when proper, can thus be called a virtue. It is a moral good,and, because it depends on self-knowledge, is also good for a person. It issomething not to be avoided, but to be cultivated.

Notes

1. See Mary Waldron, Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time (Cambridge, England:Cambridge University Press, 1999).

2. Ibid., p. 35.3. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, in R.W. Chapman, ed., The Novels of Jane Austen,

3rd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1933, reprinted 1978), vol. 1, p. 379.4. Waldron, op. cit., p. 63.5. Gilbert Ryle, “Jane Austen and the Moralists,” in B.C. Southam, ed., Critical Essays on

Jane Austen (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), p. 115.6. Joel J. Kupperman, Character (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 12, 69.7. Ibid., p. 70.8. Ryle, op. cit., p. 117.9. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, in R.W. Chapman, ed., The Novels of Jane Austen,

3rd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1933, reprinted 1976), vol. 2, p. 58.10. Jane Austen, Persuasion, in R.W. Chapman, ed., The Novels of Jane Austen, 3rd ed.

(London: Oxford University Press, 1933, reprinted 1975), vol. 5, p. 116.11. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,

1981), p. 172.12. Ibid., p. 222.13. Ibid., p. 224.14. Ibid.

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15. Ibid., p. 225.16. Austen, Pride and Prejudice, p. 20.17. See Gabriele Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 18.18. Austen, Sense and Sensibility, p. 142.19. Moreland Perkins, Reshaping the Sexes in Sense and Sensibility (Charlottesville, Va.:

University Press of Virginia, 1998), pp. 136–137, 140.20. Austen, Sense and Sensibility, p. 189.21. Austen, Pride and Prejudice, pp. 81–82.

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