The Pleasures of Virtue: Political Thought in the Novels of Jane Austen. - book reviews

Analysis of one virtue does not excuse Ruderman from reconsidering familiar arguments about the possible lack of v virtue or success of characterization. Fanny Price, passive and priggish to some readers, provides Ruderman a perfect opportunity for rereading character. Fanny marries Edmund Bertram for love and for virtue which each facilitates and encourages in the other. Fanny's childlike innocence coupled with a tough spirit that makes her constant in her longing for virtue for herself and others mom than compensates for her passivity and inwardness. She has both a desire for and a vision of virtue that earns her heroine status and final happiness. Yet she is neither smug nor self-righteous. Deftly and carefully leaving unsaid that it is wicked to marry one person while loving another, Fanny typifies moderation in her speech, behavior, and even in her gratitude for Edmund's eventual proposal.

Fanny and Edmund, cousins and nearly siblings in late childhood and adolescence, raise the spectre of sibling love rivalling that of conjugal love. Ruderman enters this battle eagerly, seeing the issue first from the perspective of women's friendship and then of sisters, one for another, and finally of sister for brother. She moderates between the extremes with as deft a control as Austen herself, lodging in explanatory footnotes her awareness of all the arguments that have bent the texts to accommodate ideological readings, misprisions, and exaggerated claims.

Whether or not Austen knew Aristotle's various dicta on virtue, Rousseau's on education, or Wollstonecraft's on the rights of women, she illustrates again and again the pleasures of virtue, distinguishing proprieties from manners, judgment from conventions, and proper pride from egotism. Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightley, often accused of being proud, am appropriately high-minded, properly proud of their virtue, representing a mean between extremes of excessive modesty and vanity. Being neither social nor concerned with what others think of them, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightley speak less than they act, and they act for others rather than for themselves. Virtue rather than money and power sets off these heroes and earns them the gratitude of men and women alike. Religion undergirds the morality of Austen's heroes and heroines, but virtue is never solely a matter of religious faith or dogmatic obedience, not even in Persuasion or Mansfield Park, the most explicitly religious of Austen's novels. Individual morality supersedes evangelical or Anglican fervor, for virtue or its lack is practiced devotedly not devoutly. Moderation even in religion makes for happiness on earth.

The Pleasures of Virtue elucidates Jane Austen's characters in opposition to the prevailing political thought of Austen's fume. But the result is a timeless exposition of the human capacity for reason and virtue that leads to happiness, to the principal pleasures of life. Being constant to principles may require self-sacrifice, but none of Austen's heroes or heroines am saints. Instead they am decidedly human, courageous in speech, generous in action, and rewarded by happiness for having virtue. This essay is a fine study of moderation and a promising first book from a scholar who practices the moderation Jane Austen herself endorses.

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