From Jane Austen we can see a people we don't want to be again

I had the good fortune of watching Becoming Jane last night: the biopic of Jane Austen. It was a wonderful movie with great pacing and an appropriately 19^th Century British feel to it. Most especially enticing was the sincerity with which they approached the subject. There was no hint of Hollywood influence or a heightening of affect—it was natural and more subtle than similar stories.

Perhaps what moved me the most was the intimacy and care with which they told Jane Austen’s story as if it were one of her novels. Most enlightening was, as expected, the two major themes of love and class/power/money; the themes universally present in her writing and that dominated her thinking. The film serves as a cautionary tale for our rapturous dreaming and idealizing of the past while reducing the present to a time that never existed. But, perhaps I get ahead of myself.

This film illustrates a society in which the law is not serving justice (as the lawyer apprentice clearly states), but serving the purpose of maintaining property (according the wealthy lawyer uncle of the apprentice). The very nature of law, according to the film, is not to maintain societal order, but to maintain the economic stratum in place to prop up the wealthy and discourage the poor.

Secondly is the relationship between wealth and positive qualities of character: good breading, good prospects, and good skill. As the lawyer uncle states baldly, he may have been born wealthy, but it was his wit and ingenuity to maintain that wealth. A modern analogy would be that he was born on third base, the next batter drives him home, and he gets to take credit for the run scored.

Lastly, the debate of choosing between personal happiness, arranging for the betterment of others, and the prospect of financial security, because they aren’t all attainable is a frightening prospect in modern society. In the stark world of wealth and poverty that exist without a middle class, everyone is forced to choose between love and survival. This isn’t the rose-colored poverty, but the kind that beats you down and breaks you. As Jane’s parents are tormented by their choice of marrying for love, the prospect of marrying for wealth is presented as equally frightening.

What this means for us is that Republicans love the 19^th Century. In fact, they are enamored of British law that places property right above civil or even human rights. The primary rule of law to them is the maintenance of property, and they justify it by suggesting that superior skill and quality of character is required to become wealthy and maintain wealth as opposed to the luck or ruthlessness required to devastate and demoralize others for the sake of personal gain.

What the film does show us is the horror of an uncaring society. A society that doesn’t strive to help those that do not have fortune smile upon them: the sick, the widowed, or even the brilliant who aren’t allowed professional fulfillment and personal happiness. A society that cannot recognize the hypocrisy in this arrangement is destined for failure and dysfunction. Unfortunately, there are many that want us to forget it all and return to a sick and bedeviling age of ridiculous and immoral devastation: all for a couple of extra bucks.