What's missing

Another paragraph from James Collins:

I find that reading Jane Austen helps me clarify ethical choices, helps me figure out a way to live with integrity in the corrupt world, even helps me adopt the proper tone and manner in dealing with others. Her moralism and the modern mind are not, in fact, in direct opposition, as is so often assumed.

Well, I'm pleased for him, I really am but I am afraid he has completely missed the point. Modern moral thinking is all about "clarifying ethical choices". Jane Austen's morality was not unconcerned with these things but it was concerned with something else first. And that something else was about developing a good character. Her morality is primarily concerned with how we become good people not about how we make choices.

Modern morality (which is to say either deontology or some variety of consequentialism such as utilitarianism for any philosophy geeks) is always about making choices. In Austen's world, the far more important thing is to be, or become if you are not, a certain sort of person.