Victorian Morality and Conduct: Jane Austen´s Representation

In 1753, the earl of Chesterfield writes to his son that in his whole life, he was never able to meet a woman possessing reason or consideration, or behaving consequently for twenty-four hours. In his view, sensible men do only dally with women as they in truth do only possess two passions: love and vanity.This study examines Jane Austen´s representation of morality and conduct in her two novels ‘Mansfield Park’ (1814) and ‘Persuasion’ (1818) by the use of the conduct books read and used by the people of the Victorian time.



Text Sample:

Chapter 2, Morality and Faith:

It has been universally acknowledged, that the intellectual powers of women are not restricted to the arts of the housekeeper and the sempstress. Genius, taste, and learning itself, have appeared in the number of female endowments and acquisitions. […] The Power who called the human race into being has, with infinite wisdom, regarded, in the structure of the corporeal frame, the tasks which the different sexes were respectively destined to fulfil (Gisborne, 1801/2012: 19).

Faith and Christian behaviour was an important guide to live after during the Regency Period. In Mansfield Park, Edmund Betram is the character best known for trying to act after Christian principles and also aiming to become a clergyman in his future. He does not preach the Christian principles at all times, but offers his morality in every situation when he thinks it can be of use. In Persuasion, there is not a clergyman among the protagonists. Nevertheless, there are many situations where the Christian education dominates in the characters, for example when Anne Elliot recommends the works of the best moralists to Captain Benwick for reading in order to ‘fortify the mind by the highest precepts and the strongest examples of moral and religious endurances’ (Austen, 1818/2007: 100).

The author of the above quoted Handbook Of The Good Society values religion as not being as important in education as in conduct, although he describes morality deriving from Christian education. He states that when it comes to the moral character of a person, the only case the best society is antagonistic to Christianity is when a man or a woman falls out of honour, as they do in Mansfield Park.

But, in extenuation, it must be remembered that there is no court in which are judged those who sin against it. Society itself is the court in which are judged those many offences which the law cannot reach, and this inclemency of the world, this exile for life which it pronounces, must be regarded as the only deterrent against certain sins (Anonymous, 1872/2012: 13).

Often, he adds, these judgements by society are passed without any foundation, and are able to ruin a person´s life. In Mansfield Park, Maria Bertram´s life is ruined by her elopement and the meaning this reflects on her social status. However, this can be seen as her own responsibility through her free decision to elope with a man though being married to another (out of free will, as she had chosen Mr. Rushworth to be her husband earlier).

The conduct book that was sent to and read by Austen herself, An Enquiry Into The Duties Of The Female Sex by Thomas Gisborne (1901/2912: 7) describes its mission as follows:

To such persons [...][who] have imbided opinions concerning female duties, and the standard of female excellence, at variance with those which Christianity inculcates, let me be permitted to recommend, antecedently to every study and to every pursuit, a deliberate and candid examination of the evidence of a religion, which promotes human hapiness by the holiness and wisdom of the principles and rules of conduct which it furnishes for this life[...].

Accordingly, Gisborne has to be understood as a Christian writer when quoted in the context of this thesis. His notions will be the ones given to him by his God, the entity he believes in. He wrote this conduct book and the rules it provides (ibid.: 8) ‘from Christian views and dispositions; from a profound reverence and grateful love for our Supreme Benefactor, and an earnest desire to obey and please him in every action of our lives.’ Men and women, in Gisborne´s notion, possess differences in their nature: ‘To me it appears, that He has adopted, and that He has adopted with the most conspicuous wisdom, a corresponding plan of discrimination between the mental powers and dispositions of the two sexes.’ (ibid.: 20). Austen might have doubted that, but with what she certainly would disagree is what follows (ibid.: 21):

The science of legislation, of jurisprudence, of political economy; the conduct of government in all its functions, the abstruse researches of erudition; the inexhaustible depths of philosophy; the acquirements subordinate to navigation; the knowledge indispensable in the wide field of commercial enterprise; the arts of defence, and of attack, by land and sea[...]; these and other studies, pursuits, and occupations, assigned chiefly or entirely to men, demand the efforts of a mind endued with powers of close and comprehensive reasoning, and of intense and continued application, in a degree in which they are not requisite for the discharge of the customary offices of female duty.

By writing this, he excludes the female sex from the possibility of possessing any skill in the above described fields. Furthermore, he describes this ‘fact’ as god-given and god-willed.

Another Christian writer, James Fordyce (1809/2009: 4), encapsulates it when saying ‘In fine, none but the most contracted, or the most prejudiced, will deny that women may avail themselves of every decent attraction that can lead to a state for which they are manifestly formed’, by which he means the way God as a creator has formed them. Out of this form, they are endangered to break when not being raised and educated in a proper Christian way. Whether Maria Bertram has enjoyed this Christian education is the question to be raised. Her upper class family home should have provided it for her, and, in her father´s opinion, has done so. He finds himself caught off-guard with the elopement. What Maria Bertram was able to develop in her life was a character aware of what she desires for her own life. Austen does not mind wit and character in her heroines, although her Christian basic attitude made her expect the superficiality and lack of principle to derive from the end of the domestic privacy (Brosch, 1984: 95). Her heroines, by which Fanny and Anne are meant, not Maria Bertram, match the expectation that is shown towards them to act in an honest way. They show an expected lack of refinement, an artlessness, not using pretence in their acting. But his openness does not reveal an expected mental vacuum and helplessness, but shows intelligent, judicious women, aiming for their goals and solving crises with their minds (ibid.: 120). The novel Mansfield Park also includes, in a Christian way, ‘condemned’ characters such as Mrs Norris. She is described as being snobbish, evil to Fanny, selfish in the everyday life and fawning towards the father, Sir Bertram, these adjectives all being terms not used in the conduct books when the wished-for character is praised. About the female character, but meaning rather the superficial and coquettish behaviour of Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park, Thomas Gisborne [1801/2912) writes when describing ‘incidents of good or evil; of the latter description are the effects which the influence of the female character produces’. In his conduct book he writes of his notion of the three particular effects, each of them being of extreme and never-ceasing concern to the welfare of mankind, which the female conduct has to represent (ibid.: 12): First, he expects a woman to be ‘daily and hourly to the comfort of husbands, of parents, of brothers and sisters, and of other relations, connections, and friends, in the intercourse of domestic life’. Secondly, every female has the duty to form and improve manners, dispositions, and conduct. The third point concerns the modelling of the human mind in the ‘early stages of its growth’, and to fix the principles under maternal tuition until having raised to an accomplished young woman. He then closes this topic (ibid.: 15) by saying that it is the most important duty for every woman to show felicity in following her conduct and caring for her family. In his opinion, the ‘Creator’ has ‘stamped upon the female mind’ (ibid.) certain characteristic impressions, which discriminate the talents and dispositions of women from those of men.

But not only the women in Austen´s novels, also the men do not behave appropriately at every time. A character not meeting the expectations of a gentleman of that time is Tom Bertram, the brother of Maria Bertram, behaving careless and extravagant. More on these characters and their actions and behaviour is found in the following chapters of this thesis, this being situated here because Tom Bertram should have gained the same superior education as his sister Maria Bertram.

A more subtle misbehaviour through lacking Christian principles in her education is shown by Mary Crawford. The lack of the moral and Christian principles in her upbringing generates a profit-seeking thinking, aiming for an improvement of her situation through marriage. Her practising of the art of seduction creates a dangerous coquetry, which also misleads Maria Bertram to her stumbling (Brosch, 1984: 31). Not the orientation on a good match is condemned by Austen, but the consequence of the exclusive occupation with the said, followed by coquetry and unscrupulousness. If the inner Christian principles of morality are internalised, these problems do not occur. The human being is at peace with the world and with oneself. If this is not the case, the person is forced to simulate contentment and finds no possibility to be content and happy. This is mostly the case with Julia Bertram, Maria´s sister, having to bear the flirtations of her engaged sister with Henry Crawford, the gentleman her own eye fell upon (Austen, 1814/1966: 91):

Poor Julia, the only one out of the nine not tolerably satisfied with their lot, was now in a state of pennance, and as different from the Julia of the barouche-box as could well be imagined. The politeness which she had been brought up to practice as a duty, made it impossible for her to escape; while the want of that higher species of self-command, that just consideration of others, that knowledge of her own heart, that principle of right which had not formed any essential part of her education, made her miserable under it.

She is not able to act against it. There is not only the un-Christian character that is condemned by the above authors. The anonymous author of The Handbook of Good Society (1872/2012: 53) condemns furthermore the active spreading and the following circulation of rumours and the random spreading of untruths in the neighbourhood, possibly causing bad reputation for people or places:

Oh, if the calumniator, male or female, could be hanged as high as Haman; if the ninth commandment, like the eighth, could be punished with death, many a hopeful career were not blighted at its outset, many an innocent woman were not driven from her home and thrust into the very jaws of sin, and the world would be happier, and far more Christian.

This rumouring is what takes place in Persuasion when Mrs. Smith ‘gains’ her information on the public happenings and persons such as Mr. Elliot through her nurse, Mrs. Rooke. Her notion on this sort of news (Austen, 1818/2007: 204) is a different one: ‘It does not come to me in quite so direct a line as that; it takes a bend or two, but nothing of consequence. The stream is as good as at first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily moved away.’ Anne does not share her notion on this, she agrees with the above quoted conduct book (ibid.) when answering: ‘My dear Mrs. Smith, your authority is deficient. This will not do.’ Here, Anne´s Christian morals are shown. She does not want to judge a person by what is told about him or her, and furthermore does not want her friends to spread rumours so easily.

James Fordyce (1809/2009: 5), the priest, speaks of the bigger concern for women than for men when it comes to morality and conduct:

A concern for character is, from their constitution, education and circumstances, particularly strong in women; in all but those who, having lost their native honours, have with them lost their sense of shame; an infamy to which they would have hardly descended, had they not first sunk in their own estimation.

By this he already speaks of the topic of vulgarity of those people not possessing certain values or misbehaving in public, which are going to be topics of the following chapters of this thesis. In the following chapter of this book, Fordyce writes about girls such as Fanny from Mansfield Park. Fanny is a shy girl, not valuing herself that good compared to her superior cousins. He advises to remind themselves of their own value, and to encourage a certain esteem for themselves (ibid.). Thus, he says, the affection can be insured and the importance be preserved to which every woman was born. She, as well as Anne Elliot in Persuasion, is the character in which the Christian principles are included, which will be elaborated on later. The worst violation Anonymous (1872/2012: 13) can think of is to be told:

The chaplain, in a frayed and dirty shirt, with holes in his boots and ill-combed hair, was sneaking up to the grandees and doing his best to gain their attentions by smiles and flattery. He had heard somewhere that no introductions were needed in Continental salons, and you can imagine our surprise when we saw him slide sideways up to the red-stockinged nuncio, tap him familiarly on the shoulder, and with a full grin exclaim, ‘Well my Lord, how did you leave the Pope?’



Svenja Strohmeier was born in Gehrden, Germany, in 1988. In 2008, she started to study English and History at the University of Hildesheim in order to become a teacher. There, she taught about morality and conduct at the English Institute of Literature and Language, in 2013. In August 2013, she will continue her education as a teacher in a Hanoverian school at the Realschule for English and History.