Jane Austen’s fascinating shadows

Jane Austen’s Darkness

By Julia Yost
Wiseblood Books, 2024

Many readers view Jane Austen’s novels as a refuge from the bleakness of modern life. In a gloomy season or on a sick day, I often choose to be swept up in the charming pastoral settings, humorous misunderstandings, and romantic resolutions in her novels and their on-screen adaptations. In Jane Austen’s Darkness, a monograph from the Catholic publisher Wiseblood Books, Julia Yost explores the darker elements of Austen’s significant works. She presents Austen as a cunning social critic who casts her unique form of meaningful “shade.”

Yost’s reflections are informed by scholar and war psychologist D.W. Harding’s 2001 essay “Regulated Hatred.” While Yost seems to adopt a more optimistic view of human nature than Harding, she is intrigued by his beliefs about Austen’s ability to utilize the socially acceptable medium of literature to condemn dishonourable individuals. Yost asserts that it is possible to “view Austen’s novels as animated by a disgust for the selfish, obtuse, mediocre, or malicious individuals who dominate…and as haunted by the realities of precarity, poverty, sickness, and death that such people overlook and exploit.”

At under 100 pages, Yost’s book is slim yet brimming with fresh and fascinating insights. She delves into various topics, such as the historical function and significance of “Great Houses,” the concealment of Gothic cruelty beneath the facade of English respectability, the possibility of hypochondria as a response to modernity, and much more. 

Since Austen is most famous for her romantic plots, marriage and love are prominently featured in Yost’s study, “Romantic love is often costly, nor does it always coincide with the acquisition of self-knowledge or ascension to a deserved place in society,” she writes. In such a delicate social order, unmarried women are highly vulnerable — and while marriage is a form of safety, it’s not a magic fix. 

Yost dares to question even seemingly ideal married pairs. She is especially critical of men who engage in acts of deception (characters often softened in film adaptations of Austen’s works). A prime example is Edward Ferrars from Sense and Sensibility, who enjoys Elinor’s romantic attention while secretly engaged to another woman. Yost points out that his eventual redemption comes chiefly through external circumstances that lead to his easy forgiveness. Does Austen consider him an equal and suitable match for the loyal and rational Elinor? Yost doesn’t think so. (I’m still working out whether or not I agree, though I confess that Hugh Grant’s charming portrayal of Edward in the 1995 film version may be skewing my views).

In her analyses of Austen’s characters, Yost is astute and, at times, amusing. She commends characters who make correct moral judgments, viewing them as potential extensions of Austen’s passionate judgement. Take Mr. Darcy from Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice. Darcy isn’t merely a bored grump; he reserves his most severe treatment for flawed, selfish characters, such as the deceitful Wickham and the shameless social climber Caroline Bennet. “His hauteur is everybody’s social revenge fantasy,” writes Yost, celebrating his moral assessments. 

While discussing the presence of sickness and mortality in Austen’s works, Yost highlights biographical details about the young author’s personal experiences with suffering and grief, including the loss of her father and the severe illness that ultimately ended her life. She notes that “[Austen’s] private papers reveal that she drew on more-than-mortal resources against death in her orthodox Anglican faith.” I would have welcomed further detailed ruminations on how Austen’s faith shaped her outlook. However, her commentary on Persuasion offers an intriguing look into characters who believe God guides human lives. She singles it out as the only Austen novel with many “several direct references to “[P]rovidence.”

At the end of Persuasion, Anne Elliot reunites with Captain Wentworth after seven years of painful separation and starts her new role as the wife of a Navy captain. On the surface, this is an idyllic ‘sailing off into the sunset’ ending.  As Yost emphasizes, though, the newlyweds set off to sea with the risks inherent in the naval profession and the looming threat of war; so much is unresolved and known. Even so, Yost sees Austen as optimistic about their marriage. 

Yost describes Anne and Wentworth as “trusting to Providence, [which] does not mean resting in the expectation of happy endings . . . Rather, it means resolution and resignation, without worry for the morrow.” She appreciates that Austen does not present their union as a safeguard against all hardship. Instead, they are world-wise, well-matched partners braving unpredictability together. “[I]t is suggested that the only guarantee, in earthly terms,” writes Yotes.” is the one acknowledged in their marriage vows: that death will part them.” 

I approached Yost’s commentary on Persuasion’s central couple with the most trepidation, since it is my favourite and most revisited Austen novel (as I wrote in a 2016 CC article). To my relief, it is also my favourite section of Yost’s book. 

Jane Austen’s Darkness has opened up new avenues of admiration for Austen. I look forward to carrying several of Yost’s insights into my future readings while paying greater attention to Austen’s “harsh wit,” sharp sense of virtue and realistic romanticism. These are Austen’s literary tools of defiance against the very real murk of corruption, greed and other hardships (that still trouble our world in various forms today). 

Austen novels may not be the “comfort reads” that offer merely saccharine escape or gentle distraction. However, I don’t see them as “downers,” either. There’s a different, more resilient comfort in embracing Austen as a literary guide who combines bright pleasantries with uncomfortable shadows. She provides much more than a candle’s worth of ambient light and can hold a blazing torch for readers willing to follow her into the dark.