British Empiricism and Jane Austen!

(Scroll down for the prompt-post, but I thought a sample response might be helpful too!) 

        Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books (and I know for a fact the majority of this class has read it…or at least watched the BBC miniseries), so I’ll select that book. I’ll approach the work and Austen’s work in general with an empirical mindset, and focus on David Hume.

         Hume, as you now know from your study of Sophie’s World, was a British empiricist who lived in the early eighteenth century, making him both a compatriot of Jane Austen, and a thinker whose writing would have been available in her time, as Austen lived in the late eighteenth century.

         Gaarder points out that Hume wanted to “clean up all the wooly thought concepts and thought constructions” and focus on daily experiences  and everyday life” (Gaarder 268).  Austen’s critics often note that her work is too focused on the minutia of daily life. None of her six novels take us far from the small corner of England in which she lived. None, Pride and Prejudice included, deal with abstract ideals or the types of lofty questions that philosophers often ask. The only time the outside world even intrudes on the hermetic, day-to-day life of her landed gentry characters it’s for brief mentions of the conflict with Napoleon—and even then these notes are only to explain why characters connected to the military are or are not present.

        

         Hume’s ideas about the unalterable ego remind me of the protagonist of P&P, Elizabeth Bennet. Her most defining characteristic is her refusal to fall in line with her society’s rules. If she had done so, she would have married Mr. Collins. Instead, Elizabeth turns down not only Collins but also the incredibly rich Mr. Darcy, all because she wants to marry for love.

         This lack of attention to the practical may seem on the surface to be in contravention to Hume’s ideals. But if one considers Hume’s ideas about the importance of experience and preconceived opinions, it’s clear that Elizabeth would have approved of Hume’s worldview. Gaarder states that Hume’s ideas lead us to one of the most distinguishing virtues of the philosopher: “The child perceives the world as it is, without putting more into things than he experiences” (276) Elizabeth, like an uncorrupted child, bases her firm and repeated refusal of the oily Mr. Collins on her own experience. She does not think highly of him in any regard. She does not consider the societal expectations or pressures which would have compelled her to say yes and marry him.

         It is this quiet rebellion which makes the work so beloved to (some) modern readers. Had Elizabeth not acted in accord with her own understanding of a Hume-ian “natural law,” she would be repugnant to today’s readers. On a larger scale these little domestic stories of Austen’s, did they not contain such iconoclastic characters and their small revolutions, would lack universality or at least staying power.

         In contrast to Elizabeth in the novel stands her foil, Charlotte Lucas, who makes the opposite choice, and acts (in securing Mr. Collins’s sweaty hand in marriage) in complete accordance with her ingrained, adult, view of the world. She has been corrupted and she makes a fully mercenary choice. Charlotte does not obey her own “natural law” which must surely include some degree of revulsion at the thought of marrying this man. Like Hume stated, because we act based on what we see and experience (and what people tell us to do) we “can easily come to the wrong conclusions” (Gaarder 277).

Work Cited

Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie's World. New York: Berkely Books, 1994. Print. 

The wrong conclusion