Jane Austen's Benevolent Patriarchy
"Every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense." - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Lately there has been a lot of enthusiasm for “benevolent patriarchy” (or “Christian patriarchy”) in the Catholic world. Other writers have offered excellent1 rebuttals2 to these arguments, so I won’t do so in detail here. Instead, I will approach the idea of benevolent patriarchy through the literature of Jane Austen, who is my favorite author of all time.
I’ll start with an informal definition of patriarchy as a legal, social, and civil system of male leadership in which women are generally restricted from certain avenues of public life, such as the political and judicial spheres, and in which women have few or no independent legal rights, such as the ability to vote or to divorce their husbands.
Jane Austen lived in a patriarchal society - that is, Regency England - for her entire life from 1775 to 1817.3 Writing for the Jane Austen Society of North America’s publication Persuasions, Barbara W. Swords describes the legal status of women in Jane Austen’s world:
Certainly it was limited, for, of course, a woman could not hold public office or vote. Prior to marriage, a woman’s legal protection and status were vested in her father, but after marriage, her legal status “disappeared”; the Law of Coverture at this time made it clear that “the very being or legal existence of a woman is suspended during marriage…Her children, her residence, her way of life were completely under her husband’s legal control. If she were widowed, she had no control over her children unless her husband had named her as guardian; if she were separated from her husband, she was disgraced in the public eye and her husband had legal possession of the children.4
While women had limited rights, Regency England was not a brutal misogynist regime of the likes of present-day Afghanistan. Presumably, people who advocate for “benevolent” or “Christian” patriarchy today envision a world that looks more like Regency England and less like Kabul under the Taliban.
One clear problem with patriarchy is that not all men are good and some are even evil. Still, I think most men (and women) are generally good, meaning they are trying to do what they view as best for their families. But all people, even very good people, are deeply flawed. This is why even benevolent patriarchy can be disastrous.
Take Mr. Bennet of Pride and Prejudice for example. It’s tough not to love Mr. Bennet - he is “so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice”5 whose witty jokes throw his wife’s petty behavior into sharp relief.
But Mr. Bennet has a problem. His estate is entailed6 upon the male line, and he has five daughters but no sons. His wife and daughters will be homeless upon his death and, given the patriarchal nature of society and their social class, they would have no ability to earn an income. Had Mr. Bennet saved wisely when his children were small, he could have set aside a sum for them in the event of his death. But Mr. Bennet failed to plan ahead:
“When first Mr. Bennet had married, economy was held to be perfectly useless; for, of course, they were to have a son. This son was to join in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should be of age, and the widow and younger children would by that means be provided for.”7
With no son after many years of marriage, Mr. Bennet finally accepts that he has failed to provide for his wife and daughters when he dies, reflecting that he “had very often wished, before this period of his life, that, instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum, for the better provision of his children, and of his wife, if she survived him. He now wished it more than ever.”8
Mr. Bennet knows that his wife and daughters will be homeless when he dies unless a. one of them marries a wealthy man or b. all of them marry men with livable incomes. Still, he does little to introduce his girls to society. Instead, he spends most of his time hiding away in his library or mocking his silly wife. While Mr. Bennet is often funny, the narrator describes his conduct as a husband as “highly reprehensible.”9
Mr. Bennet’s inattention damages his family. Mrs. Bennet is a terrible example whom he does nothing to counteract. As a consequence, his three youngest daughters mirror Mrs. Bennet’s rudeness, and the youngest two are profligate, shameless flirts. Perhaps worst of all, Mr. Bennet sometimes displays his disdain for his wives and young daughters in public. As a result, when an eligible, wealthy bachelor named Mr. Bingley wants to marry Mr. Bennet’s oldest daughter Jane, his friends intervene due to the “total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed” by Mr. Bennet and his family.10 A union between Bingley and Jane would have secured the future of Mrs. Bennet and all of her daughters, and Mr. Bennet’s failures as a father serve as its primary impediment.
Mr. Bennet’s indifference soon almost dooms his daughters. Ignoring his daughter Elizabeth’s warnings about the fact his youngest daughter, Lydia, has become “the most determined flirt that ever made herself and her family ridiculous,”11 he allows Lydia to spend time away from the family at the home of a friend. While there, Lydia absconds with a treacherous man who refuses to marry her. Lydia’s behavior creates a level of disgrace that is difficult to imagine today. One acquaintance observes that “[t]he death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this,” given that her behavior will taint the virtue of her entire family. 12
In the end, Mr. Darcy saves the Bennet family from ruin by forcing Lydia’s lover to marry her. But this only happens by chance. If Darcy had never fallen in love with Elizabeth, the Bennet sisters would have all lost their hopes of making a decent marriage when Lydia ran away, and they would have been doomed to depend on charity after Mr. Bennet’s death.
I’m sure Austen’s characterization of Mr. Bennet as an endearing man but a weak father was very deliberate. While Mr. Bennet is far from a monster, he is not dependable, and it is the women in his family who suffer the consequences of his actions.
I suspect Austen was offering a gentle rejoinder to the notion of benevolent patriarchy, suggesting that even good men should not have total control over the destinies of their wives and daughters.
Patriarchy advocates tend to emphasize wifely obedience, often citing Ephesians 5:22 as evidence for their ideas.
I think this focus is misplaced, not least because Paul never said that wives must “obey” their husbands, despite using “obedience” in other contexts.13 Christian marriage is founded on love, not obedience, as argued by St. John Chrysostom in a homily about submission delivered in the fifth century:14
“You have seen the measure of obedience, hear also the measure of love. […] For what sort of union is that, where the wife trembles at her husband? And what sort of pleasure will the husband himself enjoy, if he dwells with his wife as with a slave, and not as with a free-woman? Yea, though you should suffer anything on her account, do not upbraid her; for neither did Christ do this.”
Chrysostom elaborates:
"Your wife may wage war against you…[i]t is sad when your helpmate becomes your enemy! But examine yourself. Did you never harm a woman in your youth? And thus that wound, inflicted by you on another woman, is now being healed by a woman, and the ulcer of another woman is being cauterized by your own wife. That a bilious wife is a punishment to the sinner is written in the Scriptures. A bad-tempered wife will be given to a sinning husband, given as a bitter antidote which will dry up the evil juices of the sinner."
Finally, it’s worth noting Chrysostom’s attitude towards physically abusive husbands:
“Wherefore also such a man, if indeed one must call him a man and not rather a wild beast, I should say, was like a parricide and a murderer of his mother.”15
If Austen illustrates the fallibility of the benign patriarch, Chrysostom illustrates the priorities of a Christian husband. A Christian man should not seek to rule, but to serve; his goal should be humility, not domination.
The Bible clearly states that wives should submit to their husbands, and the submission of the wife is crucial in Christian marriage. But what does submission mean? I would argue that it is far from blind obedience. As St. Pope John Paul II wrote:
“[M]arriage corresponds to the vocation of Christians only when it mirrors the love that Christ, the Bridegroom, gives to the Church, his Bride, and which the Church (in likeness to the wife who is ‘subject,’ and thus completely given) seeks to give back to Christ in return.”16
In other words, a husband is to love, and a wife is to submit to him by accepting that love. Submission means wives must treat their husbands with deference and respect, not that wives are “inferior” or must treat their husbands as “bosses.”
This is why I don’t think patriarchy is a useful concept in discussions of Christian marriage. “Patriarchy” is an inherently political term that covers the public sphere as well as private, essentially grafting the male-dominated power structure in the civic arena onto the home. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1606 reminds us that “a spirit of domination” within marriage is the result of sin.
Christian spouses are called to live differently, not in a paradigm of hierarchy but in a paradigm of love.
B.C. Southam, "Jane Austen." Encyclopedia Britannica, October 13, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jane-Austen.
Barbara W. Swords, “Women’s Place” in Jane Austen’s England, 1770 - 1820, Persuasions (Persuasions #10, 1988) https://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number10/swords.htm#:~:text=Prior%20to%20marriage%2C%20a%20woman's,and%20consolidated%20into%20that%20of.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 1
Id. at Chapter 50; it’s worth noting that apparently, there is some debate among legal scholars about whether what Jane Austen describes is a true entail (Peter Appel argues here that “If the restriction on Longbourn was an entailment standing alone—which would have in all likelihood cut off any provision for the Bennet daughters—then the current life tenant (i.e., Mr. Bennet) could have “barr[ed] the entail.”) Given that I tried to forget every crumb of property law I learned once I passed the bar, I will leave this debate to others.
Id.
Id.
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 42.
“That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.” Id. at Chapter 28.
Id. at Chapter 41.
Id. at Chapter 48.
Romans 6:16.
Homily 20 on Ephesians, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230120.htm.
Homily 26 on 1 Corinthians, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/220126.htm; Christian Marriage According to St. John Chrysostom, Natalie Semyanko (ed.), https://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/marriage_chrysostom_e.htm#:~:text=Is%20it%20not%20the%20height,their%20father%20or%20their%20mother.
From St. Pope John Paul II, “Theology of the Body” 90:2, as cited here by Dr. Katie Froula: https://www.hprweb.com/2016/02/wives-be-subordinate-to-your-husbands/#fn-16674-13.
Love this. Mr Bennet is the real villain of Pride & Prejudice despite his lovable quirks. Great piece, I was thinking about the whole “submission” question this morning. I grew up in very conservative baptist circles where submission was interpreted as “absolute obedience in all things” and urgh it was awful. Loved the excerpts from St John Chrysostom especially.