Of morals and genius

Two recent books on abstract concepts use Jane Austen as an example.

The Moral Imagination by Gertrude Himmelfarb discusses moral judgment in various historical figures and authors.

But that’s not a criticism; this book about the fascinating complexity of moral judgment in a world riven with conflict and contradiction is well worth the read for anyone interested in history, politics, philosophy or literature.
“The current intellectual fashions put a premium on simplicity and activism,” writes Himmelfarb, a much-honored historian. “The subtleties, complications and ambiguities that until recently have been the mark of serious thought are now taken to signify a failure of nerve, a compromise with evil, an evasion of judgment and ‘commitment.’ “

Well, that all sounds very fine indeed, but we were a little confused by the tidbit in the review about Jane Austen.

But Himmelfarb hasn’t written a 19th-century soap opera guide. Her subjects brought this same facility for resolving competing rights and ambiguous wrongs first and foremost to their work.

She discusses Jane Austen’s “Emma” as an example of the moral education of an essentially decent yet self-involved young woman finding her way in early 1800s England.

“It is a drama of manners, with manners in the service of morals,” Himmelfarb writes. “For manners, even more than morals, lend themselves to the subtleties and nuances appropriate to the variety of classes and characters. And manners, more readily than morals, can be taught — as Emma was taught.”

Does that make any bloody sense whatsoever? We suppose it might be better not taken out of context as it is in the review.

Jane moves up in the world to the “genius” category in Paul Johnson’s new book Creators: From Chaucer and Dürer to Picasso and Disney. Virginia Woolf famously wrote of Jane Austen, “Of all great writers, she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.” Johnson, according to the reviewer, does no better than did Miss Woolf.

Or when he is issuing such Coles Notes-worthy banalities as, “Victor Hugo was a creative artist on the grandest possible scale with the widest scope, and the highest productivity,” or, “[Jane Austen's] early death, like that of so many creative people of her era . . . leaves us with a fierce longing for the works she would undoubtedly have produced to delight us.”

Again, hard to tell from a quote taken out of context, but we have to agree with the reviewer.