2021 Summer Reading Recommendations:
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
People often think of Jane Austen as an English novelist who wrote simple love stories exclusively for women. However, I believe this is an incredible understatement. After reading almost all her novels many, many times—and my Dominican brothers being so often astonished when they hear that she is my favorite author—I have come to realize that one of the reasons I appreciate them so much is simply because her characters, at least the protagonists, are always happy. These characters are happy because they are virtuous: governed by prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. One of the best examples of this is Elinor Dashwood of Sense and Sensibility.
The first virtue displayed by Elinor is temperance. Temperance is a restraining of the appetite for goods that are beyond right reason. Although Elinor does not have to restrain herself concerning food, drink, or sex, which are proper to temperance, she does have to subdue her mother and sister in their desire for a house beyond what reason would dictate they could afford. She understands that a moderate and simple house is all they can afford, so naturally, when they finally move into a cottage and out of a mansion, Elinor is the happiest for it.
The next virtue Elinor displays is fortitude. Fortitude is the endurance of evils that repel us from the good we seek. In this case, Elinor must endure the evil of Lucy, who is secretly engaged to Edward, the one Elinor loves. Elinor is aware of the engagement and that her hopes of happiness have been dashed because of it, but she continually bears with Lucy’s feigned friendship. Lucy, who is very jealous and knows Edward esteems Elinor, continuously tests Elinor by speaking of the love between herself and her fiancé. In bearing this evil, instead of outing the secretly engaged couple, Elinor is able to attain a certain kind of happiness. This happiness is a happiness of soul because she understands that she has been able to act with perfect justice through her fortitude.
Justice is the constant and perpetual will to render the other their due. This virtue is unique because it necessarily involves another person. Although Elinor acts with justice toward all of the other characters, even when her own family urges her not to, the most just action she does is concealing the secret engagement between Lucy and Edward. Lucy herself entrusts Elinor with the secret of the engagement as a way of displaying triumph and feigning friendship. Even though she intended to destroy Elinor’s hopes, Lucy shared secret information nonetheless, and it was not Elinor’s right to make it public. Had Elinor outed the two, she would have met her short-term goal: the ending of the secret engagement. Yet, this would not have made her truly happy. Edward was drawn to Elinor because of her virtue, but this virtue would have diminished if Elinor had acted unjustly.
Elinor is called “my prudent Elinor” by her mother because prudence is the virtue that governs all the other virtues, and Elinor displays her prudence through all her other virtues. Prudence is right reason applied to action, and this aptly describes everything that Elinor does and says, which ultimately leads to her happiness. The romance and the drama of Sense and Sensibility (and the rest of her novels) are a way for Jane Austen to write stories about virtuous people who, because of their virtues, are able to live happy lives.
This virtuous life is not for only one set of people. Just like Jane Austen’s novels, the virtuous life is for everyone. While virtue disposes us to live happily here on earth, we are ultimately not made for this life or this world. The virtuous life is meant to conform us to our ultimate end, to our ultimate happiness. The happiness displayed by the characters of Jane Austen’s novels pales in comparison to the happiness experienced by the saints here on earth, and can’t be compared to the happiness that is yet to come.
✠
Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash
