Virtue and Romance: Allan Bloom on Jane Austen and Aristotelian Ethics

MARY BETH GARBITELLI is an adjunct instructor of English at the University of Southern Maine. Her father, DOUGLAS KRIES, is the Bernard J. Coughlin, S.J., Professor of Christian Philosophy at Gonzaga University. His most recent book is The Problem of Natural Law.

Within Allan Bloom’s last book, Love
and Friendship, stands a chapter on
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.¹ The chapter
is short—just over seventeen pages in
length—but that it exists at all in a volume
that features Plato and Rousseau may be
surprising to many. Nevertheless, Bloom
offers an incisive if unorthodox interpretation
of Austen’s novel, ultimately suggesting
that Austen advances a position that
features a unique combination of modern
romantic love and ancient friendship.
That the translator of Emile sees echoes of
modern romanticism in Austen’s books is
hardly to be wondered at, for her works
display many themes that are reminiscent
of Rousseau: marriage is the foundation
of society and, for most, the source of
meaning and purpose in life; social barriers
such as class often present themselves as
unjust obstacles to romantic desire; chastity
is the prerequisite of strong romantic
attachment; differences between males and
females are augmented rather than minimized;
the rural is superior to the urban;
sentiment tends to be predominant. What
is perhaps unexpected, though, is Bloom’s
insistence on “Austen’s classical preferences,”
on her appearance “as a partisan of
Aristotelian rationalism against the dominant
principles of modernity,” and on her
desire “to celebrate classical friendship as
the core of romantic love.”²

Without claiming that Austen actually
read Aristotle, we may accept and even
extend Bloom’s claim that there is a strong
Aristotelian element in her work. Indeed,
Bloom attributes to Austen a unique and
daring synthesis between modern marriage
and classical friendship, but does not
think that her attempt to reconcile these
elements wholly succeeds. Nevertheless,
his refutation does not take into account
that Austen has anticipated and answered
his objections in her fiction. We may,
therefore, accept Bloom’s interpretation of
Austen while rejecting his evaluation.

Smallness and Happiness

Aristotle is of course famous for his comment
in the first book of the Politics that
man is a political animal. The polis, however,
is a city of limited size—one in which
there is a good chance that any given citizen
will know any other given citizen,
or at least have some reasonably reliable
knowledge about any other citizen. In his
discussion of the life of the polis, Aristotle
seems only indirectly interested in how
such a city relates to other cities or nations,
especially if they are far away. It is not that
he completely ignores foreign affairs, but
what makes a polis an important and natural
feature of human life is how it promotes
human happiness by advancing the virtues
of the citizens; this means that Aristotle is
principally concerned with how the citizens
themselves relate to each other.

This restricted horizon within which
human beings work toward their happiness
is further limited when one turns
from Aristotle’s Politics to his Ethics. Certainly,
Aristotle advocates the study of the
city in the Ethics, but in Books VIII and
IX of the work he explains that a circle of
friends within a city is actually the very
best situation that human beings can hope
for. These friends, sharing a noble conception
of the good, will practice virtue
toward each other, thereby improving each
other and leading each other into the true
happiness that comes with genuine virtue.
It seems that the justice provided by the
polis is indeed the natural social horizon for
human beings, but within the polis there is
an even smaller social circle that provides
the context for the best life for the best
human beings. “When men are friends,”
Aristotle says, “they have no need of justice,
while when they are just they need
friendship as well.”³

Jane Austen’s novels share the Aristotelian
focus on small social arrangements.
If Aristotle prefers a small circle of friends
living within a city of restricted size, Austen
prefers a small circle of families living
within a village of modest size; both, however,
emphasize situations in which a handful
of people share together a life in which
their happiness is intertwined. In a letter of
1814 to her niece and aspiring story-teller
Anna Austen, Jane Austen says, “You are
now collecting your People delightfully,
getting them exactly into such a spot as is
the delight of my life;—3 or 4 Families in a
Country Village is the very thing to work
on.”⁴ Indeed, Aunt Jane’s Pride and Prejudice
begins with the authoress collecting a
small number of families in the vicinity of
a country village and bringing them into
contact with each other at small gatherings,
including parties and dances; her
Emma has two spatial foci, the two country
estates of her hero and heroine, which are
within walking distance of each other, as
are the local village and all of the dwelling
places of the other important characters in
the novel. Like Aristotle, Austen seems to
grasp the fact that the human horizon is
limited by space and time in such a manner
that it is possible to know well—as
friends—only a small number of people.
If significant human communication is
to occur, it will have to occur within a
limited circle of people who are involved
with each other in seeking to live well. As
Alasdair MacIntyre notes perceptively of
Austen’s work, “The restricted households
of Highbury and Mansfield Park have to
serve as surrogates for the Greek city-state
and the medieval kingdom.”⁵

Another way to make this point is to
note that Austen harbors an Aristotelian
distrust of large political arrangements
in which anonymity is prevalent. It is an
almost universal rule in Austen’s novels
that little good ever comes from the
great metropolis of London. In Pride and
Prejudice, for example, London is the place
where Lydia and Wickham flee to absent
themselves from their families and indeed
from all of their political obligations. They
conceal themselves in the great anonymity
that is London’s political life. To be sure,
Elizabeth Bennet’s decent aunt and uncle
live in London, as do Emma Woodhouse’s
decent sister and brother-in-law. Any ambi
guity, however, about the status of London
in Austen’s view that would remain after
considering Pride and Prejudice and Emma
would seem to be dispelled in Mansfield
Park, in a brief but important rural conversation
between the “villainess,” Miss Mary
Crawford, who has lived in London, and
the eventual hero of the book, Edmund
Bertram. Edmund is intending a career
as a clergyman; this, in Miss Crawford’s
view, is a very bad idea—indeed she calls
the clergyman’s status “nothing,” an assertion
that gives rise to a spirited response
from Edmund:
“I cannot call that situation
nothing, which has the charge of all
that is of the first importance to mankind,
individually or collectively considered,
temporally and eternally—which has the
guardianship of religion and morals, and
consequently of the manners which result
from their influence.” In the exchange that
follows, Edmund argues that the reason
Miss Crawford thinks the clergy insignifi-
cant is her experience in living in an urban
center so large that the private moral lives
of both clergy and parishioners are hidden.
In smaller political settings the true function
of clergy can come to the fore:

We do not look in great cities for
our best morality. It is not there, that
respectable people of any denomination
can do most good; and it certainly
is not there, that the influence
of the clergy can be most felt. A fine
preacher is followed and admired;
but it is not in fine preaching only
that a good clergyman will be useful
in his parish and his neighbourhood,
where the parish and neighbourhood
are of a size capable of knowing his
private character, and observing his
general conduct, which in London
can rarely be the case. The clergy
are lost there in the crowds of their
parishioners. . . . ⁶

Austen’s “Aristotelian” preference for
small political arrangements is also shown
by the marked lack of interest in geopolitical
affairs in her novels. Austen wrote just
after the author of Reflections on the Revolution
in France, just before the author of A
Tale of Two Cities, and contemporaneously
with Sir Walter Scott. Yet her books are
vastly different from those, for nowhere in
her novels do we read much about tremendous
battles, revolutions, or politics on a
grand scale. Although in Pride and Prejudice
some soldiers are stationed near the
home of the heroine and her sisters, they
are only interesting as possible domestic
partners; they are never called upon to do
any fighting or dying, and indeed it is not
all that clear just why they have congregated
in the first place.⁷ In Emma, we do
learn of a military hero of some years past,
and we also learn of acquaintances who are
traveling in Ireland, but none of the main
characters seems to be much interested in
the world beyond England. Indeed, only a
few of them even have much knowledge
of a world beyond their village, and those
few who do are usually among the least
attractive characters in the book, such as
Mrs. Elton and Mr. Frank Churchill. Foreign
lands do play a more prominent role
in Mansfield Park, for Sir Thomas Bertram
absents himself from his family and village
because of urgent economic endeavors
in distant Antigua. This turns out to be
unwise, however, for Sir Thomas thereby
fails to attend to the even more urgent
duty of overseeing the behavior of the
young people in his charge. And of course,
there are the noble sailors of Persuasion,
but even in this novel what is important
about the wanderers is that they have come
home to marry and found families in or
near villages. The navy is important in the
book primarily as a way for young men to
prove their worthiness for winning fine
English wives who live in small political
settings. In the end, one could say that
Austen implicitly criticizes the imperial,
nationalistic politics of Napoleon, rather in
the same manner that Aristotle implicitly
criticizes the imperial, nationalistic politics
of Alexander.

Friendship in Aristotle

While the overall goal of the Nicomachean
Ethics is to explain happiness in terms of
virtue, Aristotle explains in his two books
on friendship how the practice of virtue
that constitutes the highest happiness
is generally to be found only within the
communication that grounds a particular
type of friendship. This capacity for
friendship is one of the most important
inherent characteristics of human beings.
“Without friends,” he says, “no one would
choose to live, though he had all other
goods” (1155a5–6). In Aristotle’s analysis,
friendship is based on a shared understanding
of what is good, and the general
opinions on the nature of the good can
be organized into three main categories,
with each category representing some
fundamental option. Aristotle thus determines
that since human beings commonly
perceive the good to consist of pleasure,
utility, or virtue, friendships may also be
divided into those same categories.

All three types of friendship require
physical proximity, for although distance
does not necessarily end friendship, Aristotle
points out that it does prevent the
day-to-day activity of friendship and may
cause the friendship to diminish or even
cease over time. For Aristotle, “there is
nothing so characteristic of friends as living
together,” for the opportunity of frequent
interaction is an essential condition
of friendship (1157b19–20). Friendships
based on pleasure or utility, or some combination
involving pleasure and utility, are
merely incidental, susceptible to change,
and easily destroyed. Such relationships
are founded upon the needs and wants
of each individual, and so change as frequently
as do personal needs and wants.
Aristotle writes that “those who love for
the sake of utility love for the sake of what
is good for themselves, and those who love
for the sake of pleasure do so for the sake of
what is pleasant to themselves” (1156a14–16;
emphasis added).

The highest form of friendship, and
ultimately the only true form of friendship,
is friendship based on the truest
good, namely virtuous activity, which of
course is true happiness. Thus, Aristotle
writes, “Perfect friendship is the friendship
of men who are good, and alike in virtue”
(1156b7–8). This type of friendship
is most rare, since truly good people are
rare, and their having the opportunity to
live together and interact as friends is likewise
often rare. Nevertheless, friendships
based on virtuous activity are the most
permanent, for unlike friendships based
on pleasure and utility, this type of friendship
is based on something more permanent
and unchanging. Such friends are
truly “friends without qualification”; they
want what is best for one another and try
to benefit each other (1157b3). This results
in a mutual education in virtue, a sort of
pedagogical friendship: “The friendship
of good men is good, being augmented by
their companionship; and they are thought
to become better too by their activities and
by improving each other; for from each
other they take the mould of the characteristics
they approve” (1172a13–15). Indeed,
friendship based on virtue represents not
only a shared understanding of the good,
but the most promising way to achieve that
good. Practically speaking, then, in Aristotle’s
view, the highest form of human
association and attachment turns out to be
a small circle of friends who enable each
other to perfect themselves through their
communication as friends.

Friendship in Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is probably the most
popular of all of Austen’s novels; it is also
the novel in which we can most easily see
a similarly between her thinking about
matrimony and Aristotle’s thinking about
friendship. The match between Mr. Collins
and Charlotte Lucas, for instance, is
clearly based on utility. Collins is useful to
Charlotte, for he provides her with a stable
source of support; Charlotte is useful to
Collins because his patroness, Lady Catherine
de Bourgh, approves of her and of the
general idea that a clergyman like Collins
be married. The utility of the marriage is
further emphasized when it becomes clear
that the two are not seriously interested
in each other. Indeed, Charlotte carefully
arranges the house so that they can
avoid each other as much as possible. Even
though Elizabeth is initially shocked at the
mutual self-interest that defines their relationship,
it does not necessarily follow that
Austen herself unequivocally condemns it.
To be sure, Charlotte’s situation is unromantic
and emotionally empty, but it nevertheless
promises certain positive results
for herself and her family. Of Charlotte’s
decision to accept Collins, the narrator
says, “Without thinking highly either of
men or of matrimony, marriage had always
been her object; it was the only honorable
provision for well-educated young women
of small fortune, and however uncertain
of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest
preservative from want” (I.22). Austen
presents the advantages and disadvantages
of the marriage as they are, without
excluding the possibilities that may ensue
from the establishment of a family—perhaps
one that will eventually include children—
in a quiet, peaceful village.

While the marriage of Collins and
Charlotte is focused on utility, the match
between Lydia and Mr. Wickham arises
principally from a mutual desire for sensual
pleasure. Once again, Elizabeth is dismayed
at this union, but to a much greater degree.
Through her indulgence in a romantic
love rooted in sexual desire, Lydia endangers
her family’s reputation and status,
whereas Charlotte had at least helped her
family grow in fortune. Thoughtless Lydia
does not even seem to grasp how greatly
she has risked her family’s economic stability
as well as its prestige and standing;
moreover, her flippant remarks reveal a
profound misunderstanding of the effect of
her actions on the prospects of her sisters’
marrying at all, let alone well. Whereas
Austen does not indicate the ultimate fate
of the attachment between Collins and
Charlotte, at the end of the novel we learn
that Lydia and Wickham are often in want
of both happiness and financial stability.
The desire for pleasure is never satiated if
it is not moderated, and Lydia is constantly
in need of funds. The omniscient narrator
reports Elizabeth’s reflections on the
match in this way: “How Wickham and
Lydia were to be supported in tolerable
independence, she could not imagine. But
how little of permanent happiness could
belong to a couple who were only brought
together because their passions were stronger
than their virtue, she could easily conjecture”
(III.8).

If the Collins and Wickham matches
can be viewed as corresponding to the
Aristotelian friendship models of utility
and pleasure, respectively, then that of Mr.
Darcy and Elizabeth corresponds to the
category of friendship based on virtue.
This match, however, does not begin auspiciously.
At first, Darcy at least pretends
not even to notice Elizabeth at a Merryton
assembly; it is hardly love at first sight.
Elizabeth does not find Darcy pleasant;
Darcy certainly sees nothing useful in
Elizabeth’s connections. Even after Darcy’s
recognition of Elizabeth’s agreeableness
and her understanding of his utility,
marriage does not immediately appear to
be a prudent choice. Since neither party is
aware of the other’s virtue, Darcy’s premature
proposal is spurned, and even in making
it, Darcy admits that it goes against his
better judgment. Both parties want more
from marriage than utility or pleasure. As
virtuous people—or as people who are
on the way to becoming virtuous—both
Darcy and Elizabeth know, or at least
sense, that they will be most happy with a
virtuous spouse. Thus, each believes entering
marriage without such a manifestation
of virtue would be foolish. This does not
mean that the other reasons for marriage
are necessarily excluded, but such ends are
to be subordinated to a higher one.

By the time Elizabeth and Darcy happen
to meet at Pemberly, in Volume III of
the novel, each has begun to recognize the
virtue of the other. Through Darcy’s letter
to her, Elizabeth has become painfully
aware that she had earlier misjudged him;
more importantly, she now learns through
the testimony of Darcy’s servant at Pemberly
that he is virtuous—even magnanimous
in every respect. Precisely when the
two have come to understand themselves
and each other much better, and seem about
to become engaged, Lydia and Wickham
suddenly threaten everything by creating a
family scandal that makes the possibility of
a marriage between Elizabeth and a man
of considerable social stature like Darcy
very nearly impossible. Confronted with
the reality that her incipient relationship
with Darcy must end, Elizabeth now finds
herself mourning the missed opportunity.
At this point, Austen withdraws from her
heroine’s perspective and, in a notable
shift, addresses the reader directly, asking
for a judgment on Elizabeth:

If gratitude and esteem are good
foundations of affection, Elizabeth’s
change of sentiment will be
neither improbable nor faulty. But
if otherwise, if the regard springing
from such sources is unreasonable
or unnatural, in comparison of
what is so often described as arising
on a first interview with its object,
and even before two words have
been exchanged, nothing can be said
in her defence, except that she had
given somewhat of a trial to the latter
method, in her partiality for Wickham,
and that its ill-success might
perhaps authorise her to seek the
other less interesting mode of attachment.
(III.4)

The focus of Austen’s reflection here is the
fundamental question that the novel seeks
to answer: what is the most admirable
form of friendship between a man and a
woman? In referring to the reasonable
or natural approach as the “less interesting
mode of attachment,” the authoress is
clearly being ironic, and indeed the choice
of judgments that the narrator offers to the
reader is meant to be rhetorical only. Having
developed esteem for Darcy’s character
and gratitude for his esteem for hers,
Elizabeth’s sentiments have improved and
are now, in Austen’s view, far more reasonable
and natural than any sort of romantic
infatuation arising prior to rational
discourse. Elizabeth’s marriage to Darcy,
based on qualities of mind and virtues of
character, would have been an opportunity
for the deepest kind of friendship,
namely one that is founded upon nascent
virtue and fosters its improvement. As
Elizabeth herself notes a few chapters later,
such a marriage would have taught “the
admiring multitude what connubial felicity
really was” (III.8).

Pedagogy and Friendship in Emma

Of all of Austen’s novels, it is easiest to see
in Pride and Prejudice a parallel to Aristotle’s
treatment of friendship. If space permitted,
it would be profitable to show how the
basic teaching of that novel is developed
in the less typical attachments that Austen
explores in Mansfield Park and Persuasion.
At present, however, we must confine ourselves
to a brief analysis of Emma, for, as
noted above, a crucial element in Aristotle’s
treatment of friendship is the manner
in which friends are pedagogues in virtue
to each other.

Like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, Mr.
Knightly and Emma are shown to achieve
what will certainly be a happy attachment
based on their mutual concern for one
another’s virtue. In Emma, however, this
concern with virtue arises within the relationship
between master and student, for
Knightly assumes the role of teacher, educating
Emma in the virtues she lacks, while
Emma displays her charm and vitality as
she learns thoughtful concern for the wellbeing
of others. As Anne Crippen Ruderman
points out in speaking of the novel,
“Mr. Knightly’s project of education—his
concern with Emma’s virtue, and her concern
with his—is the truest foundation for
their friendship and love.”⁸ Lionel Trilling,
who approaches Austen quite differently
than Ruderman or Bloom, agrees that
Austen understands moral education to be
grounded in friendship and love:

[Austen] was committed to the
ideal of “intelligent love,” according
to which the deepest and truest
relationship that can exist between
human beings is pedagogic. This
relationship consists in the giving
and receiving of knowledge about
right conduct, in the formation of
one person’s character by another,
the acceptance of another’s guidance
in one’s growth. The idea of a love
based in pedagogy may seem quaint
to some modern readers and repellent
to others, but unquestionably it
plays a decisive part in the power and
charm of Jane Austen’s art. And if
we attempt to explain the power and
charm that the genre of the novel
exercised in the nineteenth century,
we must take full account of its pedagogic
intention and of such love as a
reader might feel was being directed
towards him in the solicitude of the
novel for his moral well-being, in its
concern for the right course of his
development.⁹

Despite their shared attraction to the
virtuous life, Knightly and Emma do not
bring the same benefits to the relationship.
They are not both teachers—at least not in
the same way—and Austen emphasizes that
they play very different roles within the
friendship. They both care about each other’s
virtue and happiness, but the strengths
that they bring to the attachment are complementary
rather than identical. Although
Elizabeth and Darcy are not equals with
respect to property, one becomes aware
in reading Pride and Prejudice that they are
more or less equal in character; indeed, it
is Darcy’s failure to recognize this equality
that causes Elizabeth to scorn his first proposal.
The relationship between Knightly
and Emma, however, is far less equal.
They are on a more equal economic footing,
but Knightly is thirty-seven or thirtyeight
years old and Emma twenty (nearly
twenty-one); more importantly, Knightly
clearly possesses a certain authority over
Emma as her informal moral pedagogue.

Closely connected to her family because
of location and because of the marriage
between his younger brother and Emma’s
older sister, Mr. Knightly is a frequent
visitor to Hartfield and a good friend of
Emma despite their difference in age.
Austen shows that Mr. Knightly makes
every effort to promote Emma’s virtue, an
endeavor that her other friends and family
have neglected. Emma’s great flaw is the
result of inadequate companionship both
at Hartfield and in the neighboring village
of Highbury, for a lack of discipline and an
excess of flattery have made Emma somewhat
spoiled and conceited: “The real
evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the
power of having rather too much her own
way, and a disposition to think a little too
well of herself; these were the disadvantages
which threatened alloy to her many
enjoyments” (I.1). In her childhood Emma
was never disciplined; her mother died
when she was very young and her governess,
Miss Taylor, although an upstanding
example to Emma, was more a comrade
than a governess. She “had such an affection
for [Emma] as could never find fault”
(I.1). Emma’s father, a benevolent hypochondriac,
“could not meet her in conversation,
rational or playful,” and spoiled and
praised her to no end (I.1). Truly, Emma
has no equals at Hartfield; as Knightly
points out, “Emma is spoiled by being the
cleverest of her family” (I.5).

Only Mr. Knightly censures Emma in
any way, and thus he is the main and practically
only contributor to her education
in virtue. It seems that he has recognized
Emma’s lack of discipline in her home
and continually attempts to remedy this
by repeatedly bringing her errors to her
attention. The nature of their relationship
is addressed in the very first chapter, where
Emma tries to pass off Knightly’s criticism
of her as a joke so as to avoid offending her
flattering father:

“Mr. Knightly loves to find fault
with me, you know—in a joke—it
is all a joke. We always say what we
like to one another.”

Mr. Knightly, in fact, was one
of the few people who could see
faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the
only one who ever told her of them:
and though this was not particularly
agreeable to Emma herself, she knew
it would be so much less so to her
father, that she would not have him
really suspect such a circumstance
as her not being thought perfect by
everybody.

“Emma knows I never flatter
her,” said Mr. Knightly. (I.1)

The friendship between Knightly and
Emma thus originates in a common concern
for Emma’s own well-being and a
commitment to the improvement of her
character. In fact, Mr. Knightly considers
friendships inferior if they do not augment
the virtue of the individuals involved. He
tells Mrs. Weston that he considers the
friendship between Harriet, who is pretty
but poorly educated, and Emma to be a
bad thing because he thinks that “they will
neither of them do the other any good”
(I.5).

The most important moment in
Knightly’s educational project comes in
the climactic scene at Box Hill in which
Emma quite improperly insults the very
decent if rather pitiful Miss Bates. Taking
Emma aside, Knightly severely castigates
Emma for her actions:

Emma, I must once more speak to
you as I have been used to do: a privilege
rather endured than allowed,
perhaps, but I must still use it. I cannot
see you acting wrong, without a
remonstrance. How could you be so
unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could
you be so insolent in your wit to a
woman of her character, age, and situation?—
Emma, I had not thought
it possible. (III.7)

Upon receiving Knightly’s reprimand,
Emma is immediately ashamed of herself,
but she attempts to defend her behavior
nonetheless. This only invites Knightly
to increase his censure, and he appeals to
their friendship as giving him license to do
so: “This is not pleasant to you, Emma—
and it is very far from pleasant to me; but
I must, I will—I will tell you truths while
I can, satisfied with proving myself your
friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting
that you will some time or other do
me greater justice than you can do now”
(III.7). Emma no longer attempts to
respond verbally to Knightly, who does
not recognize that she is ashamed. Without
a word she steps into her carriage and
departs, reproaching herself not only for
her conduct toward Miss Bates but also for
her failure to acknowledge what Knightly
has done for her in correcting her for her
misdeed. Indeed, she seems to be at least
as concerned with the ill opinion that her
teacher now has of her as she does with her
inconsiderate remark to Miss Bates: “How
could she have exposed herself to such ill
opinion in any one she valued! And how
suffer him to leave her without saying one
word of gratitude, of concurrence, of common
kindness!” (III.7). Her attachment to
her teacher causes her to be desirous of his
good opinion and to despair when she feels
that she has lost it. Indeed, it would seem
that only now that she has lost her teacher’s
good opinion is Emma cognizant that
Knightly is her teacher and important to
her for that very reason.

The friendship between Knightly and
Emma, then, can be seen as similar to a
pedagogical relationship in its primary
inequality. Knightly censures Emma
because Emma is spoiled and needs to be
corrected, but Knightly himself is never
shown to be in need of correction by
Emma. On the contrary, Mr. Knightly is
always shown to act as a gentleman, one
who follows the sound principles of his
mind with appropriate action. He embodies
the correct standard of behavior, and
his virtue and rationality fail only in the
exceptional case of his brief jealousy of
Frank Churchill. Therefore, Emma cannot
possibly assist Knightly’s virtue in the
same way as he can hers. Yet Mr. Knightly
still admits in the end that his pedagogical
concerns improved himself. After he
and Emma have revealed their true feelings
to each other and their attachment
is formed, he says, “The good was all to
myself, by making you an object of the
tenderest affection to me. I could not
think about you so much without doating
on you, faults and all; and by dint of fancying
so many errors, have been in love
with you ever since you were thirteen at
least” (III.17).

The Marriage of
Virtue and Romance?

As noted in the introduction, Bloom’s
overall interpretation of Austen is not that
she is simply a representative of the Aristotelian
viewpoint, but rather that she in
some sense combined modern romanticism
and classicism, Rousseau and Aristotle,
Emile and the Nicomachean Ethics, into a
unique position of her own. Assuming that
there is something to be said for accepting
our claim that Austen reaches certain conclusions
that are similar to Aristotle’s, it is
now possible to consider Bloom’s complete
or full interpretation of Austen as arguing
for a synthesis of classical friendship and
romantic matrimony.

In Bloom’s analysis, it is through Austen’s
integration of eros into her illustrations
of friendship that the transition to
proper matrimony occurs. In his view,
unlike Aristotle, Austen incorporates both
romantic passion and friendship based on
the good in her conception of marriage,
uniting these two traditionally warring
portions of humanity, reason and passion,
under the marriage contract:

Austen brings passionate love to
marriage where the classical moralists
never encouraged it. It was not
that they simply rejected or despised
love in marriage, but that it got in
the way of being reasonable . . . .
The adjustment of the sexual passion
to the love of virtue is for Jane
Austen the central question, as it is
for Rousseau, and the wholly unclassical
expectation of these novels is
that one’s beloved will be one’s best
friend or that marriage itself is the
essential friendship.¹⁰

For Bloom’s Austen, romantic eroticism
need not necessarily be a distraction from
the quest to live virtuously, let alone an
excessive and detrimental passion that
excludes reason. Her position is that, properly
cultivated and pruned, sexual desire
might be made to assist in the search for
virtue. By painting marriage as the highest
form of friendship, Austen is translating
the philosopher’s quest for virtue and truth
into the loving relationship between husband
and wife. This necessarily recasts the
sexual tensions as somehow natural to the
pursuit of virtue. Elizabeth and Darcy, and
Emma and Knightly, are indeed desired
by each other, but this natural desire supports
and improves their quest to live the
best life possible—a quest not completely
unlike that of Aristotle’s philosophical
friends.

This is not to say that romantic love is
totally rehabilitated by Austen. Certainly
she warns her readers about the dangers
of romantic attraction and certainly her
novels contain many illustrations of the
destructiveness of romantic love. The
escapade of Lydia and Wickham comes
immediately to mind, as does the wayward
romance of Marianne Dashwood in Sense
and Sensibility. One must be careful not
to overstate this point, however. While
Austen’s goal is surely not to advocate the
sentimental approach of “love conquering
all,” neither is it to advocate a rationalistic
approach whereby love is simply enslaved
by reason.

MacIntyre characterizes Austen’s views
well and aligns himself more closely with
Bloom’s interpretation, in suggesting that
in Austen’s depiction of romantic friendship,
virtue provides a practical basis for
the passions. “Morality in Jane Austen is
never the mere inhibition and regulation
of the passions,” he states, but “is rather
meant to educate the passions.”¹¹ Therefore
MacIntyre argues that, for Austen,
the moral intellect actually teaches the
passions what is proper and improper to
want, thus redirecting rather than stifling the passions by providing them with
a stable foundation. Ruderman goes further,
claiming that in Austen’s presentation
of passion, the integration of the highest
form of friendship with the marriage contract
actually deepens and increases the
emotional passion of the relationship. She
argues that without virtue “it is not possible
to have the depth of feeling that leads
to real attachment.”¹² Thus, the virtuous
lovers, in her view, are also the most passionate
ones.

Austen, then, seeks not simply a sort of
negotiated compromise between reason
and romance within the bond of matrimony,
but she wants reason and romance
to mutually reinforce and increase each
other. Stated differently, she seeks to avoid
a human soul that is divided between logos
and eros and pursues instead a higher unity
of soul in which both aspects are augmented.
Bloom views this holistic solution
of Austen in this way:

This romantic friendship could be
understood as a kind of idealism
in which the whole self is engaged
without the separating out of the ele
ments that friendship used to require;
or, it could be understood as a hardheadedness
that, not trusting in the
self-sufficiency of the spiritual, gives
an anchor in the body and its passions.”
¹³

Presumably Austen’s blending of emotional
and intellectual elements is intended
to unite and improve the entire person, so
as to result in a better integration of Aristotelian
friendship with the varied facets of
human existence.

Even though Allan Bloom was clearly
fascinated by Austen’s attempt to unify a
concept of friendship similar to Aristotle’s
with an understanding of Rousseauesque
romanticism, he remained unconvinced
that such a blending was possible:

For Aristotle, the friendship of
shared discourse is the highest thing
to which everything else must be
subordinated while receiving its
due. In Romantic love, friend,
lover, father or mother of one’s children,
and fellow citizen are all the
same, and no act of subordination
is required. This is a charming and
tempting solution, but does it work,
and does it give each of the elements
its proper due?¹⁴

Bloom ultimately rejects Austen’s solution
on the grounds that there is no reason
to think that romantic love and classical
friendship have any intrinsic connection
to each other. He seems to think that Austen
is naïve in failing to notice that friendship
and eroticism do not share a necessary
relationship, and thus that any coincidence
between the two will be, at most, only
accidental.

One wonders, though, whether Austen
is really so naïve as Bloom suggests. Does
she really think that the marriages she
wants are likely to occur? Does not Austen
tacitly admit that the sort of marriages
she advocates will be exceedingly rare,
if for no other reason than that virtuous
people who are able to make each other
the objects of romantic love are themselves
exceedingly rare? Most of the matches
within Austen’s novels are not good ones;
it is only the match between the hero and
the heroine that belongs to the highest
type. Austen understands that the good,
the pleasant, and the useful almost never
coincide in the way we might hope; stated
differently, Austen understands at least as
well as Aristotle that the philosophical life
and the domestic life will remain distinct
for most people, and that the latter needs to
be subordinated to the former in the souls
of most serious human beings.

One piece of evidence suggesting that
Austen does recognize this problem is provided
especially in her narrator’s description
of the life of Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth’s
father. He had foolishly fallen for a woman
beautiful in body but weak in mind, and
soon “respect, esteem, and confidence”
were gone from his marriage. He did not
seek solace for his lack of “domestic happiness”
in the vices to which most men in
such situations turn, but had sought his
consolation in a life that is described in
philosophical terms:

He was fond of the country and of
books; and from these tastes had
arisen his principal enjoyments. To
his wife he was very little otherwise
indebted, than as her ignorance and
folly had contributed to his amusement.
This is not the sort of happiness
which a man would in general
wish to owe to his wife; but where
other powers of entertainment are
wanting, the true philosopher will
derive benefit from such as are given.
(II.19)

Mr. Bennet, as the narrator explains, is
painfully aware that his domestic life does
not coincide with the higher life of his
mind. We should be careful in taking the
phrase “the true philosopher” at face value,
but Mr. Bennet does spend most of his days
in his library, and when he emerges it is
to view the people around him with an
amusement that comes from his knowing
that he is superior to them. To be sure, Austen
depicts Mr. Bennet as being, in the end,
imprudent, for his neglect of the education
of his daughters proves to be most detrimental
to his family, although not really to
himself. Nevertheless, her narrator’s portrayal
of Mr. Bennet suggests that Austen
understood very well that the contemplative
life and the domestic life rarely line up,
and that therefore often the best marriage
must remain one that can be founded only
in speech. Bloom’s contention that Austen
misunderstood something crucial in
offering her synthesis of the friendship of
ancient philosophy with the matrimony of
the modern age may itself turn out to be
only a misunderstanding of Austen.

NOTES

1. Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon
   & Schuster, 1993). One notes that Austen’s first attempt
   at novel writing, undertaken at the age of fifteen,
   was titled “Love and Friendship.”

2. Bloom, 201, 191,
   and 208, respectively. Bloom even reminds his readers
   that Leo Strauss himself had compared Austen to
   Xenophon in On Tyranny (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
   Press, 1963), 198. In the passage, Strauss says
   that “we are in need of a second education in order to
   accustom our eyes to the noble reserve and the quiet
   grandeur of the classics,” including especially Xenophon,
   and he notes that “those modern readers who
   are so fortunate as to have a natural preference for Jane
   Austen rather than for Dostoievski, in particular, have
   an easier access to Xenophon than others might have;
   to understand Xenophon, they have only to combine
   the love of philosophy with their natural preference.”
   Irving Kristol recalls Strauss making a similar point in
   this way: “Strauss, in conversation, once remarked that
   it was entirely proper for a young man to think Dostoevski
   was the greatest novelist, but it would be a sign
   of maturity when he later concluded it was Jane Austen
   who had the most legitimate claim to that place.”
   See Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography
   of an Idea (New York: Free Press, 1995), 9. Although
   Bloom’s understanding of Austen as in some sense an
   Aristotelian is uncommon, it is not unique. Anne Crippen
   Ruderman, Bloom’s former student, goes so far as
   to say of Austen that “it would be possible to use her
   novels to illustrate the view of human nature put forth
   in Aristotle’s Ethics, which is not at all to say that she
   meant them to do this”; see her The Pleasures of Virtue:
   Political Thought in the Novels of Jane Austen (Lanham,
   MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), 8. David Gallop
   says of Austen’s moral thought that “Aristotle’s ethics
   can be read as an uncanny anticipation of hers”; see his
   “Jane Austen and the Aristotelian Ethic,” Philosophy and
   Literature 23.1 (1999): 98. Also Gilbert Ryle, “Jane Austen
   and the Moralists,” in Critical Essays on Jane Austen,
   ed. B. C. Southam (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
   1968), 114–22; David Fott, “Prudence and Persuasion:
   Jane Austen on Virtue in Democratizing Eras,”
   Lamar Journal of the Humanities 24 (1999): 17–37.

3. Ethics
   1155a25–27, trans. W. D. Ross, in The Basic Works
   of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Modern
   Library, 2001). All quotations of the Ethics in this essay
   will be taken from Ross’s translation; references will
   be to Bekker numbers and will be given in parentheses
   in the text.

4. #107 in Jane Austen’s Letters, 3rd ed.,
   ed. Deirdre La Faye (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
   1995), 275.

5. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study
   in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
   Dame Press, 1981), 224.

6. Mansfield Park, I.9. All quotations
   of Austen’s works in this essay will be taken
   from the various volumes of The Cambridge Edition of
   the Works of Jane Austen; references will be to novel volume
   and chapter and will be given in parentheses in
   the text.

7. See Bloom, 192.
8. Ruderman, 49.
9. Lionel
   Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, MA:
   Harvard University Press, 1971), 82. With the phrase
   “intelligent love,” Trilling is relying, he says, on an
   anonymous critic who wrote of Austen in 1870 in the
   North British Review.

10. Bloom, 195–96.
11. MacIntyre,
    224.

12. Ruderman, 63.
13. Bloom, 207.
14. Bloom, 207.