What Austen Has To Tell Us About Faith
From Mr. Collins to Edmund Bertram, her clergymen are a testament to personal spirituality
Goggle eyed, I stared at the priests drinking wine by the bottle, loudly calling for more.
In society, we judge members of the clergy harshly if they commit moral transgressions. One reason church abuse scandals provoke so much outrage is because they bring to mind the dichotomy between what should be and what actually is. The word ‘priest’ stems from the Greek, meaning ‘elder’. What do we expect from our elders? Knowledge. Discernment. Wisdom. Sadly, none of these traits were on display that night.
It was a dinner hosted by one of my father’s colleagues, celebrating his son’s confirmation-a big deal in our religious minded Malayalee society. Forced to attend, I was annoyed from the get-go (what teenager lives for awkward small talk?), additionally irritated over having been made to change clothes before heading out. (Apparently, my dress was ‘inappropriate’ for an ‘Indian function’-it showed no cleavage and hit the knee, so your guess is as good as mine!) Right upon entering the Chinese restaurant, we ran into a girl my age, wearing a semi-sheer skirt, followed by the daughter of our host in a dress similar to the one I’d intended to wear. Sheepishly, my parents looked at me while I rolled my eyes, casting around for something to take the edge off my temper. And that’s when I saw the men with the tell-tale white collars.
Of course, priests are only human. They are free to drink and smoke, make their own YouTube videos and celebrate-as Pope Francis said, ‘who am I to judge?’ But before that night, I’d never considered the implications. Raised to place members of the clergy on a virtual pedestal and having grown up assisting a priest, it felt jarring to see men of this class behave like just about anybody else.
Over the years, I would continue to see things or hear gossip about clergymen that wouldn’t sit right with me. One instance would relate to a priest who pursued a relationship, married the woman in question, and yet refused to relinquish his (Catholic!) priesthood, essentially creating a schism in the community. But there’d also be amusing stories involving priests. Like the sermon given by a clergyman in a spirit of great confusion, elaborating on how a woman had cautioned him to consider Harry Potter a devilish influence on the youth. (It was bleakly funny because that woman turned out to be my mother.) Also the sermon I’d heard structured around why it is inappropriate for women to wear make-up or pluck their brows, something I would continue to spoof in family circles for years on end.
Now, when I try to put these memories into context, I’m reminded of Jane Austen. (Who knows? If I finally get around to reading Anthony Trollope, that might change.) Austen is not just escapist romance. Her books illustrate everything from the place of women in society to the ills of slavery. And, of course, the state of the church.
Though her vignettes of clergymen represent the vicars and rectors that peopled the Church of England during the 18th and 19th century, they still ring true today. The one clerical figure Austen made canon that could have taken a seat next to my bunch of merry priests is Mansfield Park’s Dr. Grant. An educated, dutiful clergyman who also treats his wife well (a rare feat in Austen’s already established, middle aged couples!), he is also sadly the type to be out of sorts when there is no roast pheasant for dinner. Reading about Dr. Grant reminds me of something a woman I once interviewed said: ‘There are two ways to keep a man happy-through his stomach and in bed’. A minor figure in the novel, Dr. Grant would ironically end up dying after attending and indulging himself at three large dinners, taking place in the same week.
For anyone doubting the veracity of the ‘good living’ some clergymen in Austen’s time got up to, I’d direct their attention to the diary of James Woodforde. A country priest resident in Norfolk from 1776 onwards, he would go on to record his experiences in that post for the following 45 years. The entries are notable in that they offer little in way of spiritual reflection, either of a personal nature or in the form of advice given to parishioners. Instead, Woodforde writes about his visitors, the weather and the minutiae of his duties. And, to give justice to the needs and desires of the fictional Dr. Grant, he also relates an account of a lavish dinner:
I gave them for dinner a dish of fine Tench which I caught out of my brother’s pond in Pond Close this morning, Ham, and 3 Fowls boiled, A Plum Pudding, a couple of Ducks rested, a roasted neck of Pork, a Plum Tart and an Apple Tart, Pears, Apples and Nuts after dinner, White Wine and Red. Beer and Cyder. Coffee and Tea in the evening at six o’clock. Hashed Fowl and Duck and Eggs and Potatoes etc for supper.
I suppose I am more lenient these days when it comes to excessive eating and/or drinking. Have you noticed how many guides on overcoming depression or enjoying simple pleasures mention indulging yourself with a cookie or a piece of cake? For those priests I saw, that was probably wine. Like Dr. Grant, they might have been excellent scholars, adept at giving poignant sermons. It is possible that they were even more conscientious than him in the discharge of their duties. After all, I’d taken behaviour exhibited during one drunk night as the sum total of their respective characters. A bit judgmental, considering we all have our little vices.
At an old job, enjoying an after-work drink with new colleagues, I was asked what my own guilty pleasures were. To my surprise, it had been noted that I never drank the free brand coffee available in the office, sticking to water and occasionally opting for tea. I’d excused myself early during a night out, so it was assumed that I didn’t care for drinking either. (I do drink when the mood hits me but I suppose I’d been forbidden from drinking so long that when I finally could, I’d lost much of the enthusiasm for it.) I told them that I didn’t smoke but had a decided sweet tooth. ‘That’s not a real vice-you’re too spotless. It’s hard to trust someone without a real vice’, they joked.
Indeed. Our failings are what render us human. Perfection-no matter what beauty ads and Hollywood would like us to believe-is not endearing. Rather than that, it’s the flaws we embrace as a part of ourselves that render us both unique as well as approachable. Austen understood that well. Having counted around 90 clergymen amongst her acquaintances, her father and two brothers being of the same profession, she managed to delineate the quirks and foibles of men of the cloth without rendering them utterly hateful or disgusting.
Her clergymen range from the absurdly self-absorbed and obsequious to the painfully shy as well as extravagantly witty sort.
Everybody’s favourite and probably her most well-known clerical figure is Mr.Collins. Bowing and scraping to Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the slavish manner he displays when talking about his patroness is a source of enduring amusement to readers. (My favourite line of his would be when he says that her daughter Anne was ‘born to be a Duchess’.) A strange mixture of self-satisfaction and humility, the kind to dispense his duties yet devaluing them by praising himself for doing so, Mr. Collins evokes pity and laughter. Especially the latter when we can’t help but snicker with Mr. Bennet when Elizabeth asks him during a family dinner if the ‘little compliments he coins for the pleasure of her Ladyship are the result of former deliberation or occur to him at the spur of the moment.’ Fancying himself in love with three different women in the same week, he reminds me of the kind of man who would advertise for ‘a (really, any!) fair, well-educated and god-fearing woman’ on an Indian matrimonial site.
Mr. Collins insistence on reading a female conduct book (a type of instruction manual for ladies which Austen disapproved of) to the Bennet girls in Pride and Prejudice is equally an occasion for mirth, given the overall absurdity of his behaviour and the fact that Lydia, one of Austen’s most subversive heroines, literally talks over him. Here, I can only think of the visiting priest from India I heard sermonize around the same age as Lydia, the one who called out women for plucking their eyebrows and wearing makeup.
Back then, I would laugh but also feel slightly resentful of Mr. Collins.
For all his self-assumed moral impeccability, the moment he decides on marrying, he goes for Jane, the most beautiful of the Bennet girls. Later, when he is told that she is practically engaged, he latches on to Elizabeth, ‘second in beauty and charm’ to her older sister. If he was looking for a true ‘helpmate’, one genuinely interested in his vocation, he should have considered Mary. Awkward as she seems, she is the only one of her sisters conscious about notions of morality, making a point of reading books with weighty subject matters. The idea that the school of life might have rendered her a heroine to rival Elizabeth is popular enough to have spawned a cottage industry of novels centred around her fate after the close of Pride and Prejudice. (If you have time, go for Mary B by Katherine Chen, The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow or Pride and Prometheus by John Kessel-they’ll make you rethink the words ‘boring, priggish spinster’.)
Mr. Collins slavish tendency to curry favour also infuriated me. It is that which prompts him to write to Mr. Bennet to the effect that he should ‘cast off his shame’ by forgetting and never acknowledging Lydia for bringing shame to his family. It is advice that runs contrary to his office, one that should be active in talking about forgiving love and the possibility of redemption. (I have heard enough real life stories of parents shunning their children over relationships they did not approve of to think lightly of this.)
I still don’t condone his behaviour but having read Pride and Prejudice again, years later, I find myself to be more understanding. Things I didn’t notice before appear striking now.
Were you aware of the fact that Mr. Collins came from nothing? His father was a miserly shopkeeper who only taught him to respect his betters. Somehow or other, he found his way to university. Anyone who is a first generation student will empathize, knowing what it feels like to be a fish out of the water, unable to relate to self-assured peers practically groomed into taking their place in society by supportive and understanding parents who are academics themselves.
In her essay ‘Stonehenge’ for The New Yorker, acclaimed writer Min Jin Lee of Pachinko fame talks about being the only Asian in her English Literature class and how she embarrassed herself one day by asking a fellow student to define the word ‘Stonehenge’ that he had used in a poem. As someone with an immigrant background who didn’t have parents that read me Oscar Wilde or took me to see Fidelio, reading this made me wince in heartfelt sympathy. The only reason it didn’t happen to me is because I read voraciously, jumping from literature to history to politics to art, as whim and curiosity struck me. Still, even when I took pride over being the only one in my undergraduate cohort who knew that ‘tabula rasa’ is Latin for blank slate, I lived with a hint of trepidation, believing that I’d be ‘found out’ one day and be met with pity, just like Lee had.
Given all this, it’s unsurprising that Mr. Collins, who only learned humility from an illiterate father, studies without real comprehension. Having no one to encourage him (that, I certainly did, in form of my parents!) and not gifted either with looks or a pre-possessing personality, he makes no friends who could better his mind and manners. In that situation, Lady Catherine de Bourgh appears like a saviour to him, at a time when personal connections were paramount for gaining a good living.
Remember Edward Ferrars near destitute situation in Sense and Sensibility when his mother casts him off. Bereft of wealth and social status, he finds himself indebted to Colonel Brandon for his living, one that technically isn’t perfectly suited to support a family but that he and Elinor ignore in favour of love and the youthful confidence that they can make ends meet somehow. Charles Hayter is nearly driven to despondency in Persuasion when he realises that the woman he loves has eyes for a gentleman with an independent fortune. His hope that ‘his bishop will do something for him’ is a pipedream, given how a living was usually passed down directly from father to son.
Considering all this, Mr. Collins non-stop praise of his patroness makes more sense. Let’s not forget that he is only 25. At that age, many young men and women may still be scrambling to make a career for themselves, accepting circumstances and espousing opinions less than ideal for the cause of financial gain and social status. Lady Catherine de Bourgh is also the only person who approves of him, if in a slightly selfish, condescending manner. Mr. Collins, as mentioned, has no true friends and his wife Charlotte, though a sensible woman, can barely tolerate his presence. What else can a man consigned by nature, circumstances and society to be perpetually ridiculous do? Sometimes, Mr. Collins even makes me feel wistful, considering that the text reads that his humility at one point was quite natural-with some guidance, he might have at least acquired the likeability of Miss Bates in Emma, an old spinster whose ridiculous nature is tempered by the heartfelt goodness she sees both in the world and the people that surround her.
Said story is also notable in that it sports Mr.Collins’ natural counterpart, Mr. Elton, who is the proudest, most self-satisfied clergyman Austen ever wrote. Mr. Knightley, the romantic interest of the titular heroine Emma, insinuates that the young clergyman is shrewd and calculating, aware of his own worth and unlikely to ‘throw himself away’. Born into a good family (though not counted among the first rank in society, as either the Woodhouse’s or the Knightley’s are), blessed with good looks, pleasing manners and being the incumbent of a sizeable living by way of Highbury, Mr. Elton, unlike Mr. Collins, does not need to affect servility. Conscious of his relative superiority, he means to marry well to further secure his future, rendering Emma’s plotting to get him matched to Harriet Smith, her beautiful but penniless friend of obscure birth, moot.
Though Mr. Elton’s duplicity is striking (he is a ‘flowery’, romantic gentleman to the ladies but exposes the genuinely mercenary views he holds to gentlemen), personally, I’ll always lambast him for his foppish manners. There is a passage in Emma where he plans to make a ride to London only to get a suitable frame for a half-finished portrait. (To understand my consternation at this ridiculous act, watch the scene in the newest adaptation of the book starring Anna Taylor Joy. The extravagance of that gaudy, golden frame makes for a good laugh.)
Could this be a man of the church? The priests I actually knew (outside of that party encounter!) were constantly overworked, sitting in various parish committees, busy planning youth events, church festivals, spiritual retreats, writing sermons-when they were not preoccupied in keeping the peace within their respective communities. From this, one can judge how Mr. Elton’s affectations could rankle.
I felt vindicated once he started showing his true colours, going off in a huff after not securing Emma as his wife, a woman he only saw as a prize to be won. His marriage to the future Mrs. Elton, a rich, handsome heiress who is also described as vulgar and ill-bred, finally shows him as the social climber he is.
Being the Vicar of Highbury and subject to the rector, Mr. Elton may evince some sympathy over the fact that he is only entitled to 10% of tithes while having to take charge of the parish. Grudgingly, we can admit that he cannot marry Harriet on these grounds but the way he snubs her and automatically goes for the most elegant, beautiful and well-off woman within his vicinity is despicable. One also loses all sense of compassion when considering his spendthrift habits. Mr. Elton, we learn in the course of Emma, improves his vicarage with an eye towards fashion rather than more becoming economy and is noted for being exceptionally well-dressed. These are not the actions of someone conscious of his lean purse or even his standing in society as a clergyman. We get glimpses of good behaviour (he attends parish meetings and is good to the poor) on his side but there is little to suggest that this is not just another form of social affectation to further cement his public reputation.
Ironically, Austen also wrote a man of the church seemingly cut from the same cloth who we can’t help but root for. Henry Tilney is the kind of fashionable dandy (really, he reminds me of the kind of fictional heroes Oscar Wilde would breathe life into!) that Mr.Elton’s means prevent him from being. In Northanger Abbey, he proves himself adept enough to hold his own in conversation on anything ranging from the newest Gothic novels to the particularities of ladies’ fashion. Because Henry is the wittiest male hero Austen ever wrote and the reader can’t help be amused as he promenades, dances and charms his way into Catherine Morland’s heart, one tends to forget that while he is having a good time in Bath, a curate is overseeing his clerical duties, leaving him free to undeservedly rake in most of the tithes.
Financial mismanagement gets far less press than sexual scandals in the Church, yet the former is not a light offence. To see someone who is supposed to represent a God who was not too proud to be born the son of a mere carpenter ‘live it up’ is galling.
I take offence to priests becoming ‘celebrities’, mingling in society to the point that newspapers splash pictures of them posing next to an array of beautiful young ladies, champagne glass in hand. Also, why should they live in an apartment worth millions, even if they have an eminent position? Money does not render one automatically immoral yet one has to admit that a real life Job (the Biblical hero and ‘righteous man’ who was so despite being extremely wealthy) is rare indeed. With Henry Tilney, his affluence does neither him nor his parish any good, his position as rector only a means of financial independence to secure the poor wife he loves in the face of his father’s disapproval. Though there is nobility in that, it is undeniable that Henry Tilney is utterly unsuitable for his clerical position, having no true vocation.
In that, he is similar to Edward Ferrars. One of Austen’s most uninspired creations, his awkwardness masks a heart (and principles!) of pure gold. Sharing common ground with Henry Tilney (domineering family members, lack of personal freedom), the lack of pretension in Edward Ferrars renders him sympathetic. He freely admits that he has no way with words to the artistically minded Marianne, taking no offence at her good natured ribbing. To Elinor, her older sister and the woman he falls in love with, he is similarly frank, admitting that he is in danger of becoming a no-good wastrel, mid-way through his studies but with no eye as of yet for a profession to occupy him. Still, it’s hard not to disapprove when he ‘settles’ on being ordained because it ties in with his own dream of leading a happy, domestic life.
This is because faith has never been a means to an end for me. Even when I lost mine in my early teenage years, I was constantly grappling for it. For meanings behind prayers, for the veracity of sentiments behind teachings, for personal experiences of what we call the divine. Even when I tried letting it go, the idea of God consumed me. When Tolstoy, Austen and Tolkien count among your favourite writers, it’s difficult not to live and imbibe the brand of Christian social teaching that renders their fiction alive. Choosing a profession mired in that self-same spirituality out of a desire for personal comfort can therefore never sit right with me.
One of my cousins, similar to one of Austen’s brothers, came late to the clergy, after having had a succesful professional life. He felt himself called to be a priest and abandoned a well-paid job to start from scratch again. As someone who used to volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity while facing a personal crisis of meaning, I practically had a front row seat to the beauty and despair that a religious life can entail. I’ve interviewed priests. From all these experiences, I’ve learned one thing-no one chooses to give their life to God. That life chooses you, it becomes a thought nagging you, a dissatisfaction that disrupts the usual rhythms of your life. There is nothing to be done except let go. Because this is one of those professions where the idea of a self needs to dwindle, God taking centre stage. Of course, there is comfort in that, but certainly not the kind Edward Ferrars dreams of attaining.
The only clergyman who could understand that sentiment in Austen is Mansfield Park’s Edmund Bertram. This dark Cinderella tale was envisioned by the author as her ‘church story’, showing her at her most spiritual. Like a red thread joining the narrative together, Edmund’s journey to become ordained takes centre stage, pushing aside the admittedly weak romance plot. (You can’t tell me that an epilogue where we only learn at the end that Edmund reciprocates his cousin Fanny’s feelings will ever come close to the passion evoked by Frederick Wentworth’s heartfelt letter to Anne or even Mr. Darcy’s contrite, besotted speech to Elizabeth.)
It is the only Austenian novel that gets explicit about her spiritual leanings, showing both it’s main characters vocally defend the church.
Edmund Bertram, piqued by his love interest Mary Crawford’s cynicism regarding clergymen, can’t help but say:
“I cannot call [the clergyman’s] situation nothing,” he says, “which has the charge of all that is of the first importance to mankind…the guardianship of religion and morals, and consequently of the manners which result from their influence.If the man who holds it is so, it is by the neglect of his duty, by foregoing its just importance, and stepping out of his place to appear what he ought not to appear.”
Fanny Bertram, his shy, diffident cousin who keeps to herself and usually does not share her real opinions in company, breaks out:
“It is a pity,” cried Fanny, “that the custom should have been discontinued. It was a valuable part of former times. There is something in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great house, with one’s ideas of what such a household should be! A whole family assembling regularly for the purpose of prayer is fine!”
Here we see something of the mature Austen, the woman who would compose her own prayers and who would, one day, write to her niece that an otherwise unremarkable, yet truly religious suitor trumps the man with the ever ready wit.
Edmund Bertram is by no means faultless. His tendency, for a large part of the novel, to excuse the moral failings of Mary Crawford, is not heartening. (Even St. John Rivers in Jane Eyre, a character similar to Edmund, is at least astute enough to understand that the unsuitable woman he loves would not make for a good missionary’s wife.) Additionally, Edmund’s manner is too grave for a man his age, especially when considering issues of right and wrong, and doubles as ironic, considering where he himself falls short of the moral ideals he so stringently defends .
Still, he is the only clergyman in Austen’s novels who talks about choosing his profession rather than seeing it as a means of provision for a younger son, something he evinces when he declares to Mary Crawford on the suggestion ‘that he go into the law’ that it would be as easy as going into the wilderness. Sir Thomas, his father, who, in many respects, fails to live up to that role, is still commendable in that he does not condone the idea of a rector living outside his parish (as Henry Tilney does, hiring a curate) and in that he manages to raise a son who wholeheartedly believes the same.
Intellectually, I approve of these opinions though it would be a lie if I said that I liked Edmund Bertram’s character. A man who can believe these things yet be so utterly mistaken about the nature of a woman he loves, who can forgive her moral lapses because her harp playing entices him and ‘she walks well’ cannot be taken seriously at every turn. More than that, his heavy handedness in dispensing moral judgments on Mary Crawford (a truly modern woman that even Austen’s contemporary readers preferred to Fanny) really does not age well.
Yet it makes for a nice change to see Austen write a dedicated, passionate clergyman without a trace of irony. Often, reading a story where a church visit is primarily an occasion to see a new neighbour and gossip (Emma) makes for entertaining and truthful reading (really, the gossip mill in church circles is literally on fire!) but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to have a hankering for a story that is unapologetically spiritual.
Austen’s clergymen are a study of light and dark, offering unremitting observations on both the state of the clergy as well as individual spirituality. But the examination of how these ‘men of God’ relate to the society they are placed in is what gives us a glimpse of what faith in action both should and shouldn’t be. We shudder at the idea of a man like Wickham as intended for the church and wonder what piety could like in an elderly Edmund Bertram. The reader is free to laugh at the ridiculousness of stringent religiosity transposed to actual life or frown at the gap between true faith and mere duty.
It is strong writing that encourages us to be not just the well-meaning but also ‘well acting’ heroes and heroines of our own lives.
