Review
Books
Culture
6 min read

The beliefs that made Jane Austen and her world

A ‘fashionable goodness’ lay at the heart of the author and her writing.

Beatrice writes on literature, religion, the arts, and the family. Her published work can be found here

A woman in 18th century clothes sits within a windowsill reading a book
Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen in Becoming Jane.

‘There just wasn’t a comprehensive book on Jane Austen’s faith’, Brenda Cox told me when I chatted to her recently, ‘That’s why I decided to write one’. She’s right. There are a handful of books that treat Austen’s Anglican faith seriously, even extensively. Irene Collins’ two books on Austen, Jane Austen and the Clergy (1994) and Jane Austen: The Parson’s Daughter (1998), as well as Laura Mooneyham White’s Jane Austen’s Anglicanism (2011) are excellent examples. But they’re also very academic. On the other hand, Cox’s new book Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England (2022) achieves something truly remarkable: it’s both highly accessible – assuming no prior knowledge of Austen’s life, of theology, or of Regency history – and highly insightful. It’s a true labour of love (Cox told me she spent years on reading and research), and it shows. Before I say anything else about Fashionable Goodness, let me urge you to read it. If you want to understand the way Austen and her characters saw the world around them, this is the book to pick up.   

I’ve spent the last ten odd years reading, thinking, and writing about Austen, and yet Cox has made me see her novels in a new light. What she does best is to help us immerse ourselves into the daily life of Regency people, detailing in the first part of her book how the Church of England functioned in Austen’s times. She explains the difference between a vicar, a rector, and a curate; what tithes were; what exams a young man had to pass to become an ordained priest. As I was reading Cox’s book, Austen’s characters gradually came alive in my imagination like never before. Learning more about how they lived their faith day to day helped me to better grasp their motivations and their behaviour. For example, how many readers (myself included!) have been left confused by the passage in Persuasion where Anne judges her cousin Mr. Elliot for his habits of ‘Sunday traveling’? It only starts to make sense once we know that traveling on a Sunday would have likely meant missing church attendance, of which Austen disapproved. Similarly, in Mansfield Park Mary Crawford’s scoffing remark that Edmund Bertram will become ‘a celebrated preacher in some great society of Methodists’ will mean little to us unless we know that in the early 19th century Methodists were often treated suspiciously and looked down upon as overly emotional and ‘enthusiastic’. To my surprise, even my opinion of Austen’s most notoriously silly clergyman, Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Collins, improved. Cox points out that Mr. Collins writes at least some of his own sermons, at a time when many clergymen would simply pick ready-written sermons out of a sermon book; he is also resident in his own parish of Hunsford after marrying Charlotte Lucas, when non-residence – the practice of a priest delegating all duties to a curate and living away from the parish – was common. Mr. Collins may be irritating and obsequious to a fault, but if we judge him by the standards of his own time, not of ours, he emerges as quite a respectable man after all.  

Far from being in ignorance of these changes in religious sensibility, Austen observed them, and they gave her hope. 

And that is something else that Cox does brilliantly: she shows us that the past is indeed a foreign country, with different moral standards. Instead of trying to find ways in which we’re similar to the people of Austen’s England, Cox helps us to realise that the values and assumptions of Austen’s England are radically different from ours. Even our language is different. Focusing on what she identifies as key ‘faith words’, Cox shows us that we cannot understand just how deeply English society was steeped in the Christian faith, unless we recognise the religious significance that many words had in Austen’s times. For example, when Elinor Dashwood cries to her sister Marianne, ‘Exert yourself’ in Sense and Sensibility, she doesn’t simply mean that Marianne should be less emotionally affected by Willoughby’s betrayal. Rather, she’s reminding Marianne of her religious duty of ‘exertion’, meaning not giving in to despair. Or, when Anne Elliot engages in ‘An interval of meditation, serious and grateful’ after her engagement to Captain Wentworth in Persuasion, we should not understand Anne’s ‘serious meditation’ as mere reflection; Austen would have expected her readers to know that, in this passage, Anne is examining her conscience and specifically praying. Even the word ‘manners’, often mentioned in Mansfield Park, had a deeper meaning than simply social graces, pointing to a person’s religious principles. Cox encourages us to notice these differences, and to let the past change our way of seeing the world through its alienness. 

Lastly, Cox also presents an England whose religious sensibilities were changing fast. The Church of England faced pressure to address its problems. Pluralism, the practice of one clergyman serving several parishes, meant that some members of the clergy were very well off, while others struggled to make a living. In turn, this encouraged non-residence – especially if the parishes were far from each other – and led to the non-resident parishes to be neglected. But at the same time, the Church of England was also being infused with newly found religious fervour. The Evangelical and Methodist movements, still officially part of the Anglican Church at this point, were spreading at a rapid pace thanks to figures like George Whitfield and the Wesley brothers, championing many worthy causes in the name of the Christian faith. The abolitionist movement heralded by Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Hannah More was gaining momentum just as Austen was beginning to write novels. By the time Sense and Sensibility, her first, was published, the slave trade had been abolished in England. Sunday schools were opening up which would educate thousands and thousands of children in the 19th century; the prison reform movement was gaining popularity, as were efforts to combat animal cruelty and ensure better conditions for factory workers. Goodness, as Cox puts it, was becoming fashionable in England.  

What about Austen herself? Cox tells us that she mentions reading the works of abolitionists with pleasure in her letters, as well as remarking on the newly emerging Evangelical movement with somewhat like cautious admiration. Far from being in ignorance of these changes in religious sensibility, Austen observed them, and they gave her hope. As Cox quotes in the final chapter of Fashionable Goodness, in an 1814 letter to her friend Martha Lloyd, Austen describes England as ‘a Nation in spite of much Evil improving in Religion’. Austen was confident that faithful Christians could rise to the challenges placed before them, and this confidence is reflected in her heroines and heroes, whose storylines trace their growth in virtue. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that 1814 is also the year Austen started working on Mansfield Park, a novel whose heroine, Fanny Price, is famously the most ardent in her moral principles. Fanny’s ‘goodness’, however – which the narrator often explicitly mentions – is no longer fashionable. Contemporary readers of Austen tend to dislike her seriousness and her outspoken religiosity. But perhaps, if we join Brenda Cox in immersing ourselves in the alien country that is Regency England, we can learn to judge the ‘goodness’ of Austen’s characters by different standards from our own. Perhaps we can free ourselves of our prejudices, and appreciate earnest characters like Fanny, as well as witty ones, like Emma Woodhouse or Elizabeth Bennet. Perhaps we too, like Austen herself, will gain hope that ‘goodness’ can be made fashionable once more in our time. 

Review
Culture
Film & TV
Monsters
Race
4 min read

Sinners is standout thanks to Ryan Coogler and his ‘no stupid people’ rule

A cleverly choreographed culture clash between the living and the un-dead.

Giles Gough is a writer and creative who host's the 'God in Film’ podcast.

Two actors in 1930s clothes sit in an open car while the film director gestures towards them.
Delroy Lindo, Michael B. Jordan, and Ryan Coogler.
Warner Bros.

Coming off the back of Black Panther and Creed, Ryan Coogler fights off franchise fatigue with Sinners, a historical crime drama turned horror film that might be his most personal film yet. Set in 1932, Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers returning to their hometown in rural Mississippi to open a juke joint. But a trio of guests, both unwelcome and undead, crash their opening night. 

Any film set in the Jim Crow era South following a Black protagonist can set off warning bells for savvy audiences. The blatant racial oppression can often bring with it a fair share of trauma porn. But that’s not what Sinners is about. For a significant chunk of the run-time, the film is downright hopeful. Jordan’s dual role as the brothers Smoke and Stack presents them as dangerous and driven, but also compassionate, responsible and endlessly charismatic – the type of figures who could easily become folk heroes. There’s a scene where Jordan’s Smoke not only employs a young girl to watch his truck, but also teaches her how to negotiate, doing himself a worse deal in the process. Watching them recruit musicians, cooks and sign-painters for their juke joint from the under-appreciated and under-paid is a compelling exploration of Black enterprise. 

As night descends, and the juke joint opens for business, this peek into Black enterprise turns into a delightful celebration of Black joy. Chris Hewitt of Empire magazine referred to this film as a ‘stealth musical’ and it’s not hard to see why. Almost every main character gets a musical interlude of some sort. The standout by some distance is newcomer Miles Caton, who plays Sammie, the guitar-playing cousin of Smoke and Stack, who they recruit as the centrepiece of their entertainment for the night. Sammie is at the centre of a musical sequence that will have you leaning forward in your seat in amazement at what cinema is capable of. This film brings with it its own mythology, telling us that there are people whose music is so transcendent, they are capable of piercing the veil between the past, present and future. Sammie is one such person, and his talent attracts everyone for miles around, including ancient Irish vampire, Remmick, played by British star, Jack O’Connell.  

Perhaps what’s unusual for a vampire film is that, as an audience, we’re having such a good time at the juke joint, we can almost resent the imposition of the vampires forcing themselves into the narrative. The racial parallels of these monsters might not be as obvious as the ones you find in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, but they are still there. Remmick, as the head vampire, gains the memories of each of his victims, and he wants Sammie’s abilities as a means to communicate through time with those he’s lost. (Yet another example of Ryan Coogler’s ‘no stupid people’ rule. Every character has a convincing reason for doing what they do, even the blood suckers.) The vampires here are drawn in by the music and can represent a white ruling class that wants to exploit Black music for its own purposes, in much the same way that culture vultures took music of black origin like the blues and rock, and popularised it with more palatable white artists like Elvis Presley.  

The sequence where the vampires themselves have a riotous, yet melodic dance in the dark, reminiscent of a rowdy worship session.

Perhaps another reason why vampires are such a popular monster to revisit in western culture is how they are a literalised inversion of Christianity. In the same way that Christians are promised an eternal life through the blood of Jesus Christ, vampires get immortality through drinking the blood of their victims. Even the rule where vampires can’t enter a private building without permission could be seen as warped version of the image of Jesus standing at the door of our hearts and knocking as shown in Revelation, the last book in the Bible. Vampires are a perverted vulgarisation of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and this, on an unconscious level as a society, might be why we find them so fascinating. The way the vampires use words like ‘fellowship’ to make their dark gift sound more appealing to those still inside the building suggests Coogler is conscious of this parallel. The sequence where the vampires themselves have a riotous, yet melodic dance in the dark, reminiscent of a rowdy worship session, further emphasises how music can bring people together.  

There are so many fascinating aspects to the film it’s impossible to mention them all, which might be deliberate on Coogler’s part, as he tells EBONY:  

“I wanted the movie to feel like a full meal, your appetizers, starters, entrees and desserts, I wanted all of it there.”  

While this does mean a sequel is unlikely, and some critics have complained of it being over-stuffed, it does mean that the film will richly reward repeat viewing.  

By now, Sinners will have no doubt secured its spot in many critics’ top films of the year. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners could so easily fall apart in the hands of a less skilled storyteller, but in the hands of one of the best directors of his generation, it absolutely sings.  

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