virtue's reward

On virtue — not marriage — being the real issue at stake in Jane Austen's stories.

[Fair warning: this piece contains a few spoilers for Jane Austen stories and films.]

Like many people of my literary inclinations, I have long loved Jane Austen’s books, and the films adapted from them. My mother, sister, and I watched 2005’s Pride & Prejudice together when I was entering my pre-teen years. I treasure my memories of watching Lizzie and Mr. Darcy woo each other, and of giggling uncontrollably with my sister while the credits rolled.

I’ve been an unabashed Austen stan ever since. There are so many things I love about her stories — the razor-sharp humor; the character development; the concern for right action in human relationships, even at great cost to self. The nitty-gritty outworking of compassion in emotionally complex circumstances. The way Austen rigorously inquires into and tries to imagine a future for women of intelligence, prudence, passion, and elegance of heart in a world that limited their scope of opportunity and influence to one choice — who will I marry?

As one of my undergraduate professors pointed out: in Jane Austen’s novels, everyone is playing a game. The prize for winning? Marriage. Preferably marriage to someone amiable, handsome, and in possession of a good fortune.

But the longer I read these books and watch these movies the less convinced I am that marriage is the deeper thing at stake. What’s really at stake is virtue.

When my grandma and I went to see Love & Friendship back in 2016, I was struck by virtue’s place in the beauty of the final scene. The sexy, charming, amorous Lady Susan — who consistently uses her daughter Frederica as a pawn in her connivances, always manipulating her and never appreciating her earnest desire to be good — gains the titillating pleasures of her conquests, social power over others, and beauty, sure. Frederica, meanwhile, suffers her love for Reginald with no clear end in sight, and does her best to honor everyone she meets.

And when the film ends, it is Frederica whose character is praised by all, who captures the hearts of a new family network, and who marries her true love in the broad light of day, where she can share the delight of that love with everyone she loves. In the scene, Reginald stands up in front of all gathered to celebrate their marriage and reads a few lines of verse he wrote about her, including this — “Yet still, an higher beauty is her care: / virtue, the charm that most adorns the fair.” Frederica then sings a song, and the movie ends with its final bar, “. . . over rocks that are the steepest, love will find out the way.”

Which is to say virtue and an earnest, honest love get the last word in this movie.

When I noticed this here, I started to notice it in other Austen adaptations. In the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries, for instance, Jane and Lizzie (the prudent, thoughtful, patient sisters) celebrate a double wedding in the series’s last scene. While the priest reads out the marriage liturgy — “we are gathered here, in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman, and this man and this woman, in holy matrimony . . . an honorable estate, instituted by God, in the time of man’s great innocency, signifying to us the mystical union that is between Christ and His Church; and therefore is not by any to be enterprised lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy man’s carnal lusts and appetites. But reverently, discretely, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God . . .” (etc.).

While the priest reads these words, the camera pans out over all the other characters we’ve come to know. Perhaps most notably, it pauses a moment on each of the couples we’ve encountered — Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Mr. and Mrs. Collins, Lizzie’s aunt and uncle, even cutting in a shot of a beleaguered Mr. Wickham and Lydia in bed, looking bored of each other already. The viewer cannot help but compare the newly wedded couples’ happiness with the happiness of the other couples pictured.

2020’s Emma pulls a similar move in the closing scene. Or consider Persuasion’s improbable happy ending; or the close of Sense and Sensibility, in which Elinor Dashwood and Colonel Brandon’s commitments to prudent action and endurance in their long-suffering loves — against many odds — in happiness.

I find it astonishing that so many contemporary, secular adaptations of these films cannot seem to stop themselves from concluding on an unabashed, un-ironic, celebratory affirmation of personal virtue.

I do not want to imply here that marriage is the proper and best reward for virtue. There are many great goods virtue can engender — but given Austen’s context it makes sense that a happy, well-matched marriage would serve as a consistent symbol or metaphor for her as she considered those goods. It would have been one of the primary social issues at stake for her and most of the women she knew, and therefore a natural narrative playing field in which to explore and work out her questions about virtue.

Austen’s conclusions are moving because in the stories that lead to them, it often seems as if virtue will not in fact be enough. We read or watch breathlessly, speedily turning pages in hope that virtue will out, and the characters who have bound themselves to goodness will be happy. We want this to be the way things end for these characters because we want to live in a world in which virtue always has a good end.

I would argue that Austen’s stories are so powerful, so enduring, and so deeply comforting in part because they assert — over, and over, and over again — that even when it seems all is lost virtue is worth the suffering it often costs us. To the soul committed to integrity, virtue is its own wealth and reward — but also, virtue paves the way for any additional happiness (be that marriage, a good job, a close friendship) to be enjoyed freely, with the entirety of one’s self. Virtue never has to hide, and neither does the one who is virtuous.

Be true to your affections, Austen tells us, and honor the people in your circle with the respect due to them as human beings. It is better to be honest, temperate, and upright of heart than to cave before inordinate affection, or social discouragement, or to accept a shadow-form of the happiness you desire. Endure. Take heart. Have hope. Wait for the fullness of what is good to offer itself to you freely. All shall be well.