Article
Books
Culture
Paganism
6 min read

Mr. Darcy: pagan hero?

Just over 200 years ago, Jane Austen died on July 18 1817. Not happy with how some today might interpret Mr. Darcy, the most beloved of Austen's male protagonists, Beatrice Scudeler re-examines the virtues he practises.

Beatrice writes on literature, religion, the arts, and the family. Her published work can be found here

A man dressed in Georgian clothes walks out of the mist.
Mr Darcy, portrayed by Matthew Macfadyen, in the 2005 TV adaptation of Pride & Prejudice.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in how Jane Austen thinks about morality, and how she uses the characters in her novels to explore ideas about what it means to be ethical or virtuous.  

‘Virtue’, a word not particularly popular in our contemporary society, is what all her characters must attain if they are to be happy; but which virtues exactly take priority, is a matter that remains up for debate.  

When I first read British philosopher Gilbert Ryle’s piece on Austen, ‘Jane Austen and the Moralists’, I began to seriously question whether her heroes and heroines exhibit virtues which are more distinctly secular or Christian. Ryle argues that Austen’s virtue ethics follows the Aristotelian tradition. For Aristotle, virtue consists in finding the golden mean between a lack of a quality, and an excess of it. For example, courage is the virtue in-between cowardice, which is a lack of courage, and rashness, an excess of courage.  

Similarly, Austen’s characters must find a balance, for instance between Elinor’s excessive reserve and Marianne’s excessive feeling in Sense & Sensibility. So far, so good. But Ryle’s take is that, while Austen was most likely ‘genuinely pious’ in her own life – especially as the ‘dutiful daughter of a clergyman’ – her ethics remain essentially ‘secular’, rather than presenting an evolved, Christianised version of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. Ryle notes that Austen’s heroines and heroes are rarely seen discussing religion or praying, and thus leaves the question at that. 

The more I thought of Ryle’s explanation, the less convinced I was by it. So, I started wondering, can we really think of Mr. Darcy, the most beloved of Austen’s male protagonists, as an essentially pagan hero? Or, in contrast to that, can his narrative arch better be compared to Dante’s spiritual pilgrimage in the Divine Comedy?  

He is magnanimous, – that is, neither too vain nor too timid – generous without being excessively so, and careful in all his actions.

Let’s test these two possibilities by looking at which virtues Mr. Darcy practises and learns in Pride & Prejudice. From the very beginning of the novel, Mr. Darcy acts the part of the ideal Aristotelian hero. He is magnanimous, – that is, neither too vain nor too timid – generous without being excessively so, and careful in all his actions. Rash characters such as Lydia, and occasionally even his own sister Georgiana, are described as acting with ‘imprudence’. On the other hand, Elizabeth Bennet confesses to her sister Jane that she believes Charlotte Lucas, in accepting Mr. Collins’ marriage proposal, has acted with excessive ‘prudence’, which becomes tantamount to ‘selfishness’. Not so for Mr. Darcy, who is prudent in the right way, and to the right extent.  

The entire proposal scene is one of the most elegantly crafted clashes of values in fiction.

And then we come to the crux of the problem, that is, pride. While all the qualities I listed above are pagan virtues which Christians have historically had no trouble accepting, pride stands apart as a distinctly pagan virtue. For Aristotle, pride was entirely acceptable. While the excess of pride, hubris, is undesirable, pride is positively laudable when it consists in the acknowledgement of one’s accomplishments. Aristotle believed humility, on the other hand – a key virtue to Christians – to be symptomatic of a deficiency of truthfulness. For the first half of Pride & Prejudice at least, Mr. Darcy is in perfect agreement with Aristotle on these points. While Elizabeth is staying at Netherfield, he remarks that, while vanity is indeed a vice, ‘pride—where there is a real superiority of mind—pride will be always under good regulation’. 

Elizabeth’s reaction is telling. Not only does she disagree with Mr. Darcy, in that she lists pride as a weakness of mind, but she responds to his confident assertion by turning away ‘to hide a smile’. Her sarcastic smile is a hint of the reproach that will find its full expression following Mr. Darcy’s first marriage proposal. After insulting her family and reminding her of his superiority of character and station in life, Mr. Darcy is firmly chastised by Elizabeth, who freely admits that his manner has impressed her ‘with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others’. The entire proposal scene is one of the most elegantly crafted clashes of values in fiction. Here is the hero of the story, perfect in every pagan virtue of character, being confronted by the heroine with the truth that he substantially lacks in the one virtue that would distinguish him as Christian, humility. 

I am struck by how much this proposal scene mirrors Dante’s meeting with Beatrice at the very end of Purgatory in the Divine Comedy. Up until this point, Dante has been led through hell and purgatory by Virgil but, lacking the Christian faith, Virgil cannot enter heaven. Although Virgil has been both ‘father’ and ‘mother’ to Dante, who has relied on him unconditionally, by the end of purgatory he must leave Dante’s side and be surpassed by Beatrice. Virgil’s guidance as an impeccable paragon of pagan virtue is simply not sufficient in the final stage of Dante’s spiritual growth. Virgil having silently departed, Dante finally sets eyes on Beatrice, expecting a happy reunion after not seeing her for years following her death. Instead, she is peremptory and unsentimental in her greeting: ‘Look here! For I am Beatrice, I am!’. She is reproaching him for not remaining constant to her memory after her death. Instead of letting his love for her lead him to a greater love of God, she says, Dante allowed himself to become distracted by worthless intellectual pursuits. Dante feels the ‘bitter savor’ of her sternness, but he knows that she is right in chiding his intellectual pride. He confesses his past sins, and only then is he truly prepared to enter heaven.

By the time Darcy proposes a second time, his attitude has changed entirely. He no longer values pride as the chief indicator of virtue. 

Now, if Pride & Prejudice ended with the proposal scene I described, Gilbert Ryle would be correct in suggesting that Austen’s characters, or at least her male protagonist, are virtuous in an essentially secular and pagan way. But this is not the case. Instead, exactly what happens to Dante happens to Mr. Darcy. Like Beatrice’s chiding, Beatrice’s refusal and scolding lead Darcy to repent and learn humility. By the time Darcy proposes a second time, his attitude has changed entirely. He no longer values pride as the chief indicator of virtue, and thus he has become much more explicitly Christian in his way of exercising virtue. After Elizabeth has accepted his marriage proposal, he confesses to her:  

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit… I was spoiled by my parents, who, though good themselves…allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing… to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was… and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled.  

Just as Dante was reminded that he must confess and repent of past pride by Beatrice, so Mr. Darcy is ‘properly humbled’ by Elizabeth. Humility thus becomes central to the resolution of Pride & Prejudice, for without it there could have been no reconciliation between hero and heroine, no marriage at the end. Although Mr. Darcy may not be seen kneeling to pray, or declaring his love of God, the deepening of his virtues as a Christian is what ensures the forgiveness of the woman he loves. He may be the perfect pagan hero when the novel begins, but by the end he becomes the Christian hero we all know and love. 

Article
Character
Culture
Film & TV
Music
4 min read

We want to feel the main character energy of each of the Beatles

But is love all we need?

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

Four actors dressed in black stand together
The new cast.
Neal Street Productions.

One of the joys of moving into central London is the nostalgia. You can 'remember' anything in London, but for a Beatles fan like me (one year I was in the top one per cent of listeners globally on Spotify - impressive, I know - and it was before I had kids), the aesthetic of central London is deeply connected to the fab four. I'm aware it's not Liverpool but look what London has to offer fans of the fab four.  Abbey Road’s crossing, the rooftop performance in Savile Row, or the amount of time the fab four spent just here for the famous launch of Sgt Pepper. Walking around these streets with my headphones in, it's impossible not to smile at music that is faultlessly happy-making. 

Sir Sam Mendes, however, is taking the immersive Beatles experience to a whole new level. Four coordinated films will be released in 2028 in a stunning act of ambition and delayed gratification. Mendes' production company says it will be the first 'bingeable theatrical experience.' 

Now that the cast have been revealed, lots of questions remain: How long will the films be? Will they all be released at exactly the same time? Will there be Lord of the Rings viewing marathons? By the way - did you hear about the failed pitch for a Lord of the Rings film starring John as Gollum, Paul as Frodo, George as Gandalf and Ringo as Sam? We've missed that particular masterpiece, as Tolkien turned it down, as did Stanley Kubrick for that matter. The man it did fall to, Peter Jackson, recently also released a Beatles television experience in Get Back. Even for Beatles diehards like me I've not made it through all 468 minutes. But I saw enough to see Shakespeare being written. 

Screenwriter Peter Straughan (Wolf Hall, Conclave) said that the different script writers for the not-so-imminent upcoming four films were "firewalled off from each other", so we receive four takes truly inhabiting the shoes of each protagonist. Band members wanting their own 'main character energy'? Surely not! 

Only Mendes knows how the films will tie together. "Each one is told from the particular perspective of just one of the guys," Sir Sam told CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Monday. "They intersect in different ways - sometimes overlapping, sometimes not." 

"They're four very different human beings. Perhaps this is a chance to understand them a little more deeply. But together, all four films will tell the story of the greatest band in history." 

An omnipresent director still has infinite attention for each one us within a grander narrative arc. 

Lennon and McCartney are undeniably geniuses. But with the Beatles, they were always greater than the sum of their parts. Even the songs that were solos were credited to Lennon/McCartney. Their solo works, no disrespect, never quite reached the dizzying heights of their collective efforts. 

But a biopic for each bandmember is a terribly 2020s take. We want to feel that main character energy pulsing through our veins. While we want to feel part of something bigger, we want to feel that our lives are unique and distinct, not derivative (the latter not being a problem for The Beatles). 

But a quartet of films, "challenging the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies", harmonising in new ways (remind you of anything as subversive and groundbreaking?) provides an utterly lovely step-change in cinema. There's been no shortage of Beatles biographies and films, but this new concept comes closer to art imitating life. Our lives have to be lived independently, but are somehow made more meaningful and rich in connection and collaboration with others.  

The philosopher Tom Morris wrote: "There are two striking human passions, the passion for uniqueness and the passion for union. Each of us wants to be recognised as a unique member of the human race. We want to stand apart from the crowd in some way. We want our own dignity and value. But at the same time, we have a passion for union, for belonging, even for merging our identities into a greater unity in which we can have a place, a role, a value.” 

Can those passions be held in tension? The Christian faith, while commending us to be outward-focused, does more than polyphonic films. It says that each of us are worthy of our own 'cinematic events'. Yes, we mightn't have started living until we have broken free from our own confines to the concerns of broader humanity, as Martin Luther King said, but an omnipresent director still has infinite attention for each one us within a grander narrative arc. 

All you need is love, they sang. But that love needs the perfect perspective of someone else. 

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since March 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.
If you’re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.
Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief