Jane Austen and Failed Fathers

Men who aren't patriarchal enough

Men and women manifest human nature differently, and their proper familial and social roles differ accordingly: they complement each other. And in her masterful portrayals of human nature, Jane Austen explores the ways men fail as fathers, letting down their children and wives.

Man is called to the position of leader, as shown by his bodily and intellectual make-up. Thus Leo XIII in the encyclical "Arcanum", 10 February, 1880, declares: "The husband is ruler of the family and the head of the wife; the woman as flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone is to be subordinate and obedient to the husband, not, however, as a hand-maid but as a companion of such a kind that the obedience given is as honourable as dignified. As, however, the husband ruling represents the image of Christ and the wife obedient the image of the Church, Divine love should at all times set the standard of duty".

Fatherhood and motherhood are therefore a responsibility not simply physical but spiritual in nature. And Austen’s novels explore fathers who neglect their duties.

In Northanger Abbey, Mr Morland is weak and passive. His speech is never directly reported. And when required to help his wife sustain a conversation, he can’t be found. He also fails to protect his daughter: he puts her in the care of a neighbour for a visit to Bath and then agrees to her leaving Bath with complete strangers.

In Sense and Sensibility, Henry Dashwood’s early death after only two pages casts his two daughters adrift with no fortune. Reality is harsh, and their otherworldly mother is unable to cushion it.

In Pride and Prejudice, Mr Bennet shirks his responsibilities and withdraws into his library, embracing cynicism: “In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquillity; and though prepared, as he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room of the house, he was used to be free from them there.” Elizabeth, condemning his behaviour, tries to warn him of its consequences: “Excuse me,-for I must speak plainly. If you, my dear father, will not take the trouble of checking her (Lydia's) exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment.”

In Mansfield Park, Sir Thomas neglects his children’s upbringing, doesn’t appreciate his wife and is mostly absent pursuing profit in the West Indies. He realises the “reserve of his manner represse[s] all the flow of [his children’s] spirits before him”. Too late he realises “how ill he had judged” in raising his daughters and that he had “increased the evil by teaching them to repress their spirits in his presence”. He feels his “grievous mismanagement” and realises that his daughters “had been instructed theoretically in their religion, but never required to bring it into daily practice”. Because of this, ‘conscious of errors in his own conduct as a parent’ he was ‘the longest to suffer’: ‘bitterly did he deplore a deficiency which now he could scarcely comprehend to have been possible.

In Emma, Mr Woodhouse is a hopeless hypochondriac - feeble, infantile and inert. To Emma, ‘he was no companion for her. He could not meet her in conversation, rational or playful”. Austen adds that “his horror of late hours, and large dinner-parties, made him unfit for any acquaintance but such as would visit him on his own terms”.

In Persuasion, Sir Walter Elliot is absorbed in his own vanity and neglects his duties. Described as “a conceited, silly father”, he is a “foolish, spendthrift baronet, who had not had principle or sense enough to maintain himself in the situation in which Providence had placed him”. More interested in his reflection in the mirror than in his duties as a father, ‘vanity was the beginning and end of Sir Walter's character; vanity of person and of situation... He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the object of his warmest respect and devotion.’

Significantly and subtly, most of Austen male characters’ fathers have also died: Willoughby, Darcy, Bingley, Crawford, Mr Knightley, and Captain Wentworth. This leads them free to do what they like and to marry whom they choose. But they are too free. Freedom from the wider obligations of family too often leaves them lacking guidance - just like their female counterparts.

Few novelists are more important for the problem of male rootlessness and isolation today.