Jane Austen and Freedom

“To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart,” the narrator comments in Emma, “was the first endeavor.” Self-knowledge, in the order of knowledge, begins with external condemnation and ends with self-reflection. Jane Austen, in all of her novels, gives the leading lady a capacity for self-knowledge that sets her apart from the other characters. And, it is through self-knowledge that she explores the philosophical notion of freedom. The essential logic of her novels – Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Emma – remains the same. She develops her notion of freedom, beginning with the unity of reason and passion and ending with the subjection of the imaginary life to the rational life, throughout these four novels. Freedom occurs when the divine order, human soul, and social order meet. Austen thus necessarily begins her argument in Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, where reason and passion is united in the leading lady. In Persuasion, the transformation of the leading lady is a harmonizing of the inner consciousness and outer experience. And finally, in Emma, activity of the mind and the heart, harmonized with external experience, is rightly ordered, which occurs when liberty is structured within an ordered, established, social world.

Austen is maybe most well known today for her early feminism (this may, however, be a result of bad scholarship) because the protagonist of every novel is a strong woman in the man-dominated Regency England. It seems that she is focused on marriage, not because it was of romantic interest to her (she never married), but because it most adequately reflects the social order, which was the target of her satire. Furthermore, the protagonist must be a woman from the gentle classes because her place in marriage (as Austen sees it) reflects the individual’s place in the social order. In marriage, the woman must subject herself to an identifiable authority in order to gain freedom. Just as a woman cannot find liberty outside of marriage, the individual cannot find liberty outside of the social order. This ordering of marriage results from a tutor/pupil relationship, where both people at one point develop as a result of the other’s intrustion. The best marriages are thus formed from a mutual esteem of one another.

Sense and Sensibility, the first novel in this sequence, focuses on the dialectic between romance and practical wisdom as expressed through the relationship of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. It is not obvious which of the Miss Dashwoods is the leading lady. Moreover, it seems that the leading lady is neither, but Elinor and Marianne together. In the first chapter, the narrator describes both, noting that Marianne is sensible as well as clever and that Elinor’s feelings were strong yet she knew how to govern them. As the plot develops, Marianne, through the disaster of Willoughby, learns that her earlier notion of love was incorrect, and as the novel ends the narrator notes, “Marianne could never love in halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby.” Through the disaster of Willoughby Marianne learns not to abandon love, but to temper her romantic notions.

Elinor, on the other hand, was more circumspect, believing that conventions were necessary and even useful. She never abandoned this belief, but learned, in an opposing fashion from Marianne, to love Edward Ferrars romantically. This transition from cold, practical realism to a balance of reason and passion (and Marianne’s transition from romanticism to a similar balance) is the beginning of Austen’s argument. For freedom to properly develop, both capacities – reason and passion – must be employed. She shows us this through the opposing values of romance and practical realism that the Miss Dashwoods debate throughout the novel. This unity of reason and passion in Elinor and Marianne together is later formed in one character in Pride and Prejudice.

Elizabeth Bennet from the beginning displayed pride in her ability to laugh at herself and others. Her error, like her family’s, was that she did not take the objective elements of the social order with enough seriousness. The spirited woman in Austen’s novels is always the highest character, as Mr. Knightley points out in condemnation of Miss Fairfax, “She has not the open temper which a man could wish for in a wife.” As Elizabeth develops, through tempering her spirit by the social order, reason and passion are increasingly conflated.

The argument advances from Sense and Sensibility because, instead of this unity appearing through the Miss Dashwoods, it is seen in the repentance of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. This repentance coincides with Elizabeth’s recognition that her family was in error, even her father, and that family errors have consequences. Mr. Darcy, on the other hand, had to recognize that his silent, proud attitude was not the full embodiment of aristocratic propriety. Austen’s argument in Pride and Prejudice is complete when Elizabeth shows that she has learned to control what she laughs at by not sliding into cold silence but by acknowledging that Mr. Darcy has yet to learn to be laughed at.

Elizabeth Bennet, at the end of the novel, becomes a metonym for the unity of reason and passion that was formerly shown in Elinor and Marianne together. Austen’s argument, which was dramatized through the dialectic of Elinor and Marianne, is internalized in Elizabeth’s mind. This internalization must also be harmonized with the outer experience, as Anne Eliot in Persuasion reveals. Persuasion is a novel about the inner and outer life. In the beginning, Anne’s emotions, which primarily reveal her character in the first volume, imperfectly coincide with her conduct. Captain Wentworth, on the other hand, is largely known through his conduct, but it is also unharmonious with his desires.

The turning point for the novel is the incident in Lyme. Increasingly Anne is seen from this point on as an object of esteem for her circle. During the discussions deciding who will return and who will stay, Anne overhears Captain Wentworth refer to her as the most useful in this circumstance. In the second volume Elinor is known less from her body language and the narrator’s comments than from her dialogue. When Anne learns to express – externalizing the internal – she harmonizes that which has been previously un-harmonized: her emotions and moral actions. This harmony of the inner and outer life provides the foundation on which Austen can advance her argument. For, without a full employment of human capacity – reason and passion – and a harmony of the inner and outer life, freedom is not structured within an order, established, social world.

This harmony of the inner and outer is assumed in Emma. Emma’s vain attempts to convince Mr. Woodhouse of his inconsistencies are evidence of this. The discussion Emma has with her father about his obligation to visit Mrs. Elton after her marriage reveals that Emma assumes that her father’s moral actions reflect his desires.

The relation of desire (and capacity to achieve those desires) to social obligation opens the novel: “The real evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way.” Emma, a lady who “seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence,” was never forced by her social situation to control her imagination. She used it throughout the novel on Harriet, her proxy in love. When she realizes that she was in error, it was not because she used her imagination – Emma’s imagination was necessary for her to realize that she loved Mr. Knightley – but because her imagination had an improper relation to reason.

Austen’s picture of freedom is externally revealed through the experiences of the group at Donwell Abbey and Box Hill. Donwell Abbey is described as “low and sheltered” and the narrator notes that Emma, “felt an increasing respect for it, as the residence of a family of such true gentility, untainted in blood and understanding.” Emma’s experience at Donwell Abbey is similar in influence to Elizabeth Bennet’s at Pemberly. Box Hill, on the other hand, is an empty space, where people can wander off in all directions. Donwell Abbey, in contrast to Box Hill, expresses freedom as liberty structured in an order. Box Hill reveals the limitations of innovation and freedom. Their responses to Donwell Abbey and Box Hill represent what true freedom is, for Jane Austen.

When Emma realized that her imagination had done not only her wrong, but also Harriet and the entire community of Hartfield, she was immediately drawn into self-reflection. She learned the order of reason and passion through recognizing that her inner consciousness did not reflect her external environment, which propelled her to subject her imagination to reason.

When imagination is tempered by reason, the inner and outer life is harmonized. And when Emma’s imagination is not allowed to run wild, she is able to see the end of benevolence, which is the beginning of freedom for her. Only when she denied altruism was she finally able to act as she ought: “It was all the service she could now render her poor friend; for as to any of the heroism of sentiment which might have prompted her to entreat him to transfer his affection from herself to Harriet … Emma had it not.” Just as knowledge begins with self-knowledge, freedom begins when the individual is able to act as he ought to. Emma was thus able to unite the divine order, human soul, and social order through her right understanding of charity and its end.

Austen begins her argument for freedom with the unity of reason and passion as seen in Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. As this is established, the latter two novels present the right ordering of reason and passion contemporaneous with the harmony of the inner and outer life. The marriages in her novels, as mentioned, are used as proxies for the social order. Just as a woman finds true freedom when liberty is structured within an ordered, established, social world, so too does humanity find true freedom in the social order. Freedom is not to be free from authority, but to find the proper relationship of the subjective individual to the objective authority.

Emery Blagdon: The New York Newcomer?

Clive Bell in his classic Art presented one of the most famous illustrations of the analytical school of aesthetics – the onion. The definition of art (essentially what the analytical school of aesthetics was searching for) is found as one peels away the “layers” of a piece of art, finding its true definition in its essential essence inside the “frame.” Gallery art became Art and everything else became therapeutic distractions because only those pieces that were created with this function made sense in an art gallery. More importantly for our purposes, it seems the literature, sculpture, of photography of the Great Plains have been abused by this technique of “judging” or evaluating a piece of art. If the art cannot be appreciated in a sterile environment (i.e. New York art gallery) where it has been stripped of its creative context then it is at most kitsch.

Emery Blagdon’s wire sculptures, as well as many other works in the “outsider artist” group, have been so marginalized. Blagdon and many other artists of the Great Plains, however, are beginning to receive some recognition – Blagdon’s sculptures have made it into the elite world of New York Art (capital-A, of course). But, does Blagdon’s acceptance into an official art gallery help or hurt his sculptures? Furthermore, should one applaud this “acceptance?”

The current contemplation model, rooted in Joseph Addison’s and Immanuel Kant’s theories of the eighteenth century, excludes anything outside the frame. Blagdon and the “outsider artist” group, on the other hand, have widened the frame, which in essence breaks down the dogma of the contemplation model because the intellectual comprehension of the piece is of secondary import. Blagdon’s frame is not only the four walls of the barn, but also the empty land surrounding the piece, creating a context where the piece itself, external environment, and observer are able to “interact.” The interaction of the three elements is what makes his purpose for the sculptures as “healing machines” possible.

The art of the Great Plains is an art of severe contrast and Blagdon’s is no exception. Moreover, Blagdon’s sculptures are the clearest expression of this contrast that we interacted with this weekend. The spacing of the sculptures is characteristic of an urban area where people are literally stacked one upon another. The Great Plains, as Cather and Conrad expressed in their short stories, is a place of severe emptiness, where the empty land runs longer than any eye can see. The medium similarly expresses this contrast. Wire sculpture does not have the requisite material for smooth transition from one angle to another. This starkness is also found on the Great Plains: one can travel for hundreds of miles without sight of another man and the chance of meeting another seems to be as flimsy as a bent wire and as obscure as the distances between the wires. Without the context of the shed the wire sculptures may merely be one man’s lunacy and another’s junk.

Can Blagdon et. al. receive their deserved respect without the environment of the Great Plains? It would be far too gratuitous to suppose that the very dirt of the Great Plains bequeathed Blagdon and many others inspiration. But, would it be too much to assume that the obscurity of other men and women and the immense emptiness of the Great Plains created an environment in which the clutter and starkness of a shed could relieve the suffering of loneliness? Maybe the beauty of Blagdon’s sculptures is not inside the shed, but created with the interaction between the material, the Great Plains, and the observer bring with her remembrance of the smallness of her exterior environment?

Religion as Thinking

"A Christianity which will bear witness to God's Word in Jesus will be speaking, thinking, arguing, debating Christianity, which will not be afraid to engage in intellectual and philosophical contest with the prevailing dogmas of its day."

-- Oliver O'Donovan, Begotten or Made?

This quote by Oliver O'Donovan, arguably the leading political theologian, is difficult for me. I have been reading Hegel and a student of Hegel, James A. Doull, recently. To quote from Doull:

"Religion belongs to the individual primarily as universal or as thinking, and is only derivatively in the form of language, imagination, symbol or whatever else. In virtue of its origin int he complete rationality of ancient secularity the need and the impulse to know what is believed is not an extraneous curiosity but intrinsic to the religion. The religion itself therefore generates revolt against an ecclesiastical order whose function it is to present and teach the religion in its more accessible but deficient forms." ("Secularity and Religion" www.swgc.mun.ca/animus)

It may appear that Doull's thought is prior to O'Donovan's. Can O'Donovan make his claim without holding that religion belongs primarily to the individual as thinking? Would the danger of this be to provide an overly subjective religion? Also, just because there is a danger in freedom should it be thwarted?

JDT

Trinitarian Artist

Raphael is the most Trinitarian artist:

The Disputa

The School of Athens

The Parnassus

The Cardinal Virtues

Walking into the Raphael rooms of the Vatican is unlike any "experience" of art: the social and political context of the Church, the majesty of the piece, and excellence of the artist are unified in the rooms. The question of Christian art is popular today, but it seems to be based upon poor assumptions of what it means to be "Christian art."

Many people have attempted to decipher what it means to be a Christian artist by the authenticity of their faith. Could this assumption -- seemingly from American fundamentalism -- be incorrect? Is there another concept that we must look to, other than whether the work includes Eucharistic hymns?

So, may I suggest one criterion: does the work of art communicate the Trinity?

JDT