ESSENTIAL FRAMEWORK:

Local professor introduces Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' (Nashua Telegraph, 1/18/09)

For [Thomas More College Professor of Humanities Christopher] Blum, who has garnered a national reputation for his authoritative scholarship on the British novelist, writes that the works of Austen are filled with a dramatic and often hilarious portrayal of virtues and vices in action. His introduction to "Pride and Prejudice" delves into the role of virtue in Austen's life and how Catholic morality is evident within her novel.

"Although Jane Austen herself never married, she plainly understood that marriage and family were the essential framework of the moral life," Blum said. "And it is indeed because of its creator's moral vision, and not merely for its fairytale-like ending, that 'Pride and Prejudice' is a work of such rare loveliness. As with each of Jane Austen's novels, it is a probing reflection upon love, marriage, family, and the search for stability and goodness . . . ."

While some readers have dismissed Austen's work as merely amusing, Blum said that she, in fact, addresses the central question of human life: How shall we live together in community – beginning with its most basic unit, the family? Austen examines human depths that are not sounded in the typical novel of manners or 19th century love story.

" 'Pride and Prejudice' stands apart from Austen's other novels for its sustained and focused consideration of the moral development of its heroine and hero," Blum noted.

However, Blum does not see in Austen's delightful tales allegorical treatises or moralizing tracts.

Blum's essay also examines Austen's quiet Christian faith, her picture of the hero Mr. Darcy against the standard of virtue which she would have known, and her treatment of feminine character in light of her contemporaries. He contends that Austen is "the last great representative of the classical tradition of the virtues."

Emma is one of the world's great political novels, a fictional Road to Serfdom.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 25, 2009 9:29 AM