Jane Austen, Parents Yelling at Kids, and the Beatitudes

I don’t want to write a political piece. Instead, I’d like to provide a reflection on Jane Austen, parents yelling at their kids in Walmart, and the beatitudes. This will address some of the issues in the world today without getting into the details.

Lessons from Jane Austen

Let me start with Jane Austen. For whatever reason, I’ve gone on a Jane Austen binge this summer. It started with a friend recommending the BBC Emma miniseries. It continued by watching that series, and, subsequently, listening to the book on audible. I’m now using an online library service to borrow a recording of all of the Jane Austen books.  I’ve now listened to Emma, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility (often while exercising or walking). I know listening to these books and watching the movies does not fit 100% neatly into stereotypical male behavior. That’s silly. Someday, I may write about the strong male characters in her books.

There’s a lot to be learned from Jane Austen’s works. I’ll sketch a few of the lessons I’ve learned lately. First, many of her female heroines – I’m thinking of Elinor Dashwood and Anne – the contradictory traits of tolerance and strong-will. They are true feminists in a sense that I doubt many of our current feminists would understand today. Secondly, the dishonest men in the novels use familiar means to seduce romantically minded female characters in the novels. This suggests little has changed today. However, Austen’s characters often learn their lesson.  They marry the “right man.” It took one Willoughby for Marianne. I have known people on their third or fourth male or female version of his character. 

Additionally, Jane Austen has proven quite fair to even the most despicable male characters in her works. I doubt Austen would embrace cancel-culture or the me too movement. Clearly, she lets us see Willoughby as the selfish person he is. Still, she provides a backstory. This lets us see that much of his downfall is a product of being part of an indolent and self-indulgent class of young men. Again, this sounds familiar to our day. There are many more lessons, but, as this is not an essay on Jane Austen, I will, unfortunately, have to stop.

Parents Yelling at their Kids in Walmart

Moving on to my next point, yelling parents, I have to say I see this more than I’d like. I’m not sure why it tends to be Walmart, probably because it’s the one store that has remained open through COVID. I know parenting is hard, so I’m not without mercy, but I also think that this has to be counter-productive, and, perhaps, the proof is in the pudding: we live in a society with a huge family problem. We also live in a society in which  – surprise, surprise – behavior of parents seems to reflect itself in the actions of their children as they become adults, who often exhibit little patience, self-control, or sense of what we might call proper etiquette.

Also, as adults, these children often seem to have angry feelings about their upbringing and act out these feelings in self-destructive ways. Some might disagree, but I feel this shows that this kind of parenting is not working. Let’s go back and look at Jane Austen.

Jane Austen’s day suffered from a lack of connection between parents and children as well. Money and status and the ability to have other people such as relatives or servants look after kids weakened bonds between parent and child even as happens today. Yet, a very strong sense of decorum – at times even to a fault or as mask to hypocrisy – and Biblical values offered parents of her day much more of a guide than parents have today. As much as we now point out that the institutions of Jane Austen’s day were flawed and corrupt, we cannot help but mourn their absence when we see children growing up without their protection, teenage girls almost obliged to wear bikinis and teenage boys left fuzzy or contradictory guidance about how to treat them or how even to exist in this radically altered world.

Finally, the Beatitudes

So, how does this relate to the beatitudes? Let’s start by going back to Elinor and Anne in Jane Austen’s novels. These characters are not weaklings; they show forbearance and patience that is both saintly and fast disappearing in society. Today, we mistake these traits for weaknesses when they are in fact strengths. These traits win the day for these characters in the style of the beatitudes. Their meekness literally helps them to inherit the earth. In the manner of a fable, it is actually the selfish, impetuous, and proud characters that end up being made into fools. Of course, for some this humbling leads to redemption.

In a purely factual way, Christ was “onto something” when he said that the meek will inherit the earth and that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. A small band of Christians has grown into the largest religion on earth. More recently, meek in his method and hungry for justice, Martin Luther King Jr. won in the end.

Justice does not always work out like this on earth. The spirit is the more profound angle to look at these situations and the one that is often forgotten. God detests sin and hates persecution but the beatitudes promise that, if accepted and offered up, earthly oppression and trial can lead to great rewards in heaven and peace here and now. Christ is close to those that suffer and feel humiliated. He sees our suffering as an opportunity for us – “Blessed are you when men revile and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” As odd as it sounds, to God the slaves were blessed in a way that the slave-owners were not.

So, I ask, has America forgotten that it is not the proud but the meek who inherit the earth? Not those with violent intentions but those who hunger for justice with peace in their hearts who become sons of God? Jane Austen’s world taught that characters like Elinor had value because of their forbearance, but today we are apt to see them as repressed. As Jane Austen might say, what a pity.