What I look for in Austen (1)

Critics usually single out two aspects of Austen: 1. her social observations and commentary (often incorrectly identified as social criticism) and 2. her use of indirect free speech to represent consciousness. I think both these elements are in Austen but believe both serve another and far more important purpose.

I think Jane Austen is writing about virtue and I read her to learn about virtue. As Gilbert Ryle said a long time ago, I think she created her characters around concerns about virtue and what happens when it is or is not present in a person. The reason her characters are so nicely differentiated is precisely because she identifies and develops characters based on issues stemming from considerations various virtues.

I started to think that from reading Sense and Sensibility. The title identifies the two virtues she will be dealing with. Marianne and Elinor both have sensibility. Sensibility is a virtue and their possession of it raises them above others in the novel. But Elinor has sensibility and sense and that sense balances her sensibility. This enables Elinor to succeed herself and to rescue her sister Marianne from the consequences of her mistakes.

I believe everything else, the perceptive accounts of how people interact, the psychological insights, the acidic criticism of John and Fanny Dashwood and their mercenary approach to marriage and life is there only to serve the higher purpose of describing Elinor's heroic virtue.