Core elements of ‘everyday spirituality’
I’ve just finished watching a TV documentary about the great British 18th century novelist, Jane Austen. Chosen as the perfect switch-off from the daily nerve-shock of global events, despite the annoying gushing of some of the commentators, it did the trick.
Jane Austen was obviously a genius and changed literature forever. But I have been reflecting on the roots of her perennial appeal. Yes, Austen’s masterful re-defining of the rom-com formula, her capacity to reflect the trials and joys of everyday life, her sharp insight, her championing of intelligent female heroines, her understated wit, her consummate skill in weaving a gripping narrative – all are reasons enough to return to her novels.
However, what was not mentioned was the core of moral strength that runs through Austen’s work. I think it’s this also that draws us back again and again, whether we know it or not. Her work nourishes some yearning deep within us. Austen’s novels follow the famous precept ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice’ *
In times of great uncertainty, disruption and turpitude we know that Austen’s tales will predictably bend to the good. This is balm and salve, but it is also encouragement for the good within us, which all of us struggle to manifest.
Austen lived through seismic times – extremes of ostentatious wealth (built on slavery and the spoils of Empire), equal extremes of poverty and disenfranchisement, the Napoleonic wars that consumed Europe from the 1790s, a post-war financial crash and economic depression, the destruction of the textile industry (among others) as the industrial revolution took hold, with evictions, migration and misery widespread. Add to this the ever-present reality of constant illness and death. Four of Austen’s relatives died in childbirth and she herself died at 41, probably of tuberculosis – cruelly, at the peak of her powers and fame.
This background and the moral issues and debates of the day are woven through all her novels. As the novelist Colm Toibín said: we must think of Austen as a great political novelist. I would add: and one of the greatest exponents of what I call ‘everyday spirituality’.
Jane Austen was a Christian, but she doesn’t preach or moralise – indeed she can be pointedly witty at the expense of those who do. Instead, we feel the backbone and heart in these stories of courage and love in the face of the formidable socio-political obstacles her heroines face.
In our current post-truth era of threat and uncertainty, performance-politics and growing polarisation, we too need to re-find this moral backbone for ourselves. It is knowing our values and ethics, where we stand, that adds the strength of steel to our open-heartedness. In a secular age expressing everyday spirituality means re-kindling Will alongside our capacity for Love. Combined they enable us to face into our personal and collective challenges with courage, discernment, compassion and skill.
*Attributed to Martin Luther King