Contrasting Concepts of the Clergy: Jane Austen and Religion in Mansfield Park

This article originated as a reflective paper written for the purpose of my studies with The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Spring 2024.

 “I cannot call that situation nothing, which has the charge of all that is of the first importance to mankind.”[1]Although this statement belongs to Edmund Bertram, the sentiment is surely shared by the author herself. Jane Austen was not just born to a clergyman; she was born into a family of clergymen. Her maternal grandfather, great uncle, godfather, one of her uncles, two of her brothers, and four of her cousins were all ordained to serve in the Church of England.[2] While great houses of the gentry dominate Austen’s novels, she almost always includes nearby parsonages of the clergy, often describing them in even greater detail.[3]

This familiarity was more than contextual for Austen, as she was also a committed follower of the Christian faith.[4] Across her novels, Austen’s unobtrusive, yet unwavering, religion is perhaps best seen in Mansfield Park, which she began in 1811 and finished in 1813.[5] Around six months before its completion, Austen referenced it in a letter, contrasting it with her most recent release, by explaining: “Now I will try to write of something else, & it shall be a complete change of subject–ordination.”[6] This short statement has caused no end of controversy, with many commentators arguing the subject is neither significant nor does Austen suggest that it is.[7] However, such assertions ignore the most natural interpretation of Austen’s language and, as shown below, understanding ordination as central arises from a close reading of the text itself.[8]

The Subject of Ordination

Of course, it cannot be claimed that the subject appears on every page. Austen is far too accomplished a writer to work in such an amateur way. Further, while clerical characters are a constant across her novels, they never occupy the leading role. [9] At least one clergyman, James Stanier Clarke, invited Austen to pen such a protagonist.[10] However, she rejected his invitation, explaining that though she knew enough to include clergy as significant characters, she did not believe herself capable of writing a novel in which they alone occupy the foreground.[11] This conscious constraint leads us to expect that, if Austen did write a book on the subject of ordination, the theme would occupy an organizing rather than an obvious role.

This is exactly what we find in Mansfield Park. Although ordination does not appear on every page, or even in every chapter, the subject casts a long shadow across the whole book. While setting the scene in the opening chapters, Austen interrupts her verbose introductions of various individuals by inserting a straightforward statement: Edmund Bertram “was to be a clergyman.”[12] Shortly thereafter she highlights this ordination will be central going forward, beginning the third chapter, and the longer narrative as a whole, with the statement, “The first event of any importance in the family was the death of Mr. Norris.”[13] Austen uses this to reflect on Edmund’s future and the predicament of who will occupy the parsonage.[14] In this way, she erects a bookend that corresponds with her conclusion, when the last important family event, the death of Dr. Grant, another clergyman, enables Edmund to finally inhabit that parsonage.[15]

Ordination not only operates as a background arc, opening and closing the narrative, but it also fills the foreground in many of the most significant scenes.[16] Even Lovers’ Vow, the play that is so formative to the book’s future trajectory, depicts a drama between the clergyman Anhalt and his admirer Amelia.[17] The tension between these characters continues long after Edmund and Mary Crawford have given up their parts. Of course, that Mansfield Park has other themes should not be ignored. However, it is upon the matter of ordination that so many of these terminate. The work’s materialistic, matrimonial, and moral concerns all coalesce around this center.[18] Ordination is the crux of a collection of other key themes, being the presenting and pressing issue that causes the countless thematic tensions between Austen’s main characters.

That ordination should have such a central role is unsurprising not only because of Austen’s personal background but also the religious and political concerns of the period. In the early nineteenth century “the clerical profession was on the threshold of important structural changes.”[19] Austen’s life spanned an era of ecclesiastical reform, including the results of the earlier rise of evangelicalism.[20] Therefore, it is unsurprising the novel contains a clash between two competing concepts of the clergy. This essay will explore these ideas, identifying them as decency and devotion, and argue Austen uses the novel to recommend the latter to her readers.

The Decent Clergyman

Mansfield Park outlines an understanding of ordination that chiefly conceives of it as a position of social respectability and financial stability. In this model, a clergyman is seen as a gentleman who happens to occupy a parsonage and, if strictly necessary, a pulpit. Such a picture is presented to the reader from the beginning: the impact of Mr. Norris’ death on his wife is chiefly seen in a reduction of income and their replacements are introduced as “very respectable, agreeable people.”[21] Later in the novel, when Dr. Grant is observed speaking with Edmund, Henry Crawford suggests they can only be conversing about “how to make money–how to turn a good income into a better.”[22]Further, Edmund’s ordination is described as providing a “living . . . earned without much trouble,” and preaching is seen as an occasional performance that displays an individual’s education and eloquence.[23] Parish duties, such as the conversion of an old lady, are considered to be an inconvenience.[24] Additionally, though this was becoming less common in Austen’s lifetime,[25] it is assumed Edmund will not even reside within his parish.[26] When Henry Crawford later views the parsonage where Edmund will live, he repeatedly urges him to improve it in order to give it “the air of a gentleman’s residence.”[27] He argues it should appear as “the residence of a man of education, taste, modern manners, good connections. . . . to make its owner be set down as the great land-holder of the parish.”[28] That there should be any discernible difference between a clergyman and gentleman appears entirely foreign to most of the characters.

However, while clergy like Dr. Grant are viewed as having a veneer of decency, Austen also reveals other less virtuous traits, including a vacant spirituality. When introduced, Dr. Grant’s insatiable appetite is alluded to and the picture of a plump parson who delights more in the spread of his table than the state of his people is repeatedly emphasized throughout the book.[29] The fact that Dr. Grant pays his cook as well as the Bertrams do shows what he values most, as well as the comfortable living his position can bring.[30] However, while we are told he “looked the gentleman” and had “a house commodious and well fitted up,” no mention is made of any spiritual tendency. As Peter Leithart comments, we are presented with the “vacuous religiosity of Dr. Grant, who is a pastor only in name and not in fact.”[31] For example, the chief purpose he seems to have in improving the parsonage garden is to “shut out the church-yard,” thereby even severing him from his sphere of spiritual service.[32]

This social conception of the clergy, over against a more spiritual understanding, is not limited to Dr. Grant. For example, Mrs. Norris previously suggested the very same improvement for the parsonage’s garden.[33] Additionally, at Sotherton, the local church’s sole acknowledgment is for contributing to the village’s aesthetics.[34] The distance between it and the house is even seen to be desirable, with the church bells, meant to summon parishioners to worship, unlikely to be an “annoyance” as a result.[35] The parson there appears to fit the mold of Dr. Grant, with “the parsonage; a tidy looking house, and . . . the clergyman and his wife . . . very decent people.”[36] According to this understanding, nothing is more desirable than a respectable parson who will not interfere with ordinary life, performing all necessary piety in some distant location. The state of spirituality within Sotherton itself only promotes this perception. While it has a “handsome chapel,” it is no longer “in constant use both morning and evening,” with such prayers recently discontinued.[37] What spirituality the house once had is now gone, with only a vacant chapel left to show visitors. In this way, a shell of decency remains even though the spirit of devotion has been removed.

Viewing ordination like this was common in Austen’s lifetime. Nigel Yates explains:

By the beginning of the eighteenth century the Church of the England had largely resolved the problems . . . attracting men of adequate social standing and education to its ministry. Whereas in the seventeenth century it had not been considered ‘honourable’ for men from noble or gentry families to become clergymen, this was no longer the case by the eighteenth century.[38]

Yates suggests one “of the reasons for the increasing social status of the clergy during the period 1714–1815 was the increase in the value of clerical and episcopal incomes.”[39] The financial security provided by such positions appealed to many and those aspiring “to Holy Orders were not tested for their sense of vocation. Some 60 per cent of graduates from Oxford and Cambridge went into the church . . . many candidates with no more than ordinary religious leanings can be expected to have regarded the clerical profession as a job like any other.”[40]

Austen’s Critique of Decency

While this concept of the clergy is presented by many characters, Austen has Dr. Grant personify it in an almost comical way. The kind hospitality he shows to the Crawfords is explained by the fact that “a talking pretty young woman like Miss Crawford, is always pleasant society to an indolent, stay-at-home man; and Mr Crawford’s being his guest was an excuse for drinking claret every day.”[41] The environment in his parsonage is a socially attractive one, even to the principled Edmund, with a “young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as elegant as herself,” seated at the edge of an enclosed garden, from which we recall that the churchyard is shut out. To this, Austen adds a pleasant tray of sandwiches, from which Dr. Grant himself is said to be feeding.[42] Austen continues painting this garish picture of Dr. Grant throughout the rest of the book: his Sunday lunch is more anticipated than his Sunday sermon, an ecclesiastical promotion is seen as a way to increase the quality of his food, his dining table at the parsonage is even wider than the table at Mansfield, and his usual style of dinner is described as “elegant and plentiful.”[43] Given this, we are unsurprised to read in her closing chapter that, after the coveted ecclesiastical promotion to Westminster, and the resulting increase in income, Dr. Grant’s appetite finally brings about apoplexy, just as predicted when he was first introduced.[44]

As individuals with at least some similarities to Dr. Grant filled parsonages across the country, it is unsurprising Austen includes such a character. However, this is not uncritical, for she ultimately underlines the comical to better uphold the commendable. A powerful aspect of Austen’s attempt to do so is her use of Mary to critique clergy like Dr. Grant. This begins at Sotherton, where Mary considers cancelling daily prayers to be an improvement.[45] She cannot see good in forcing others to “leave business and pleasure” to preserve an appearance of piety, which she assumes was insincere.[46] The only consolation Mary believes there to be is if the parson is “worth looking at”![47] When she is later confronted by Edmund’s future ordination, she cannot understand why he does not enter politics or the military instead.[48] Seeing the church as merely one career among many, she believes other paths offer a much greater opportunity to “rise to distinction.”[49] When pressed, she confesses she believes that a “clergyman is nothing.”[50]

Mary’s critique chiefly comes from her close observation of clergy like Dr. Grant. Speaking of the sincerity of one seeking ordination, she states:

Oh! No doubt he is very sincere in preferring an income ready made, to the trouble of working for one; and has the best intentions of doing nothing all the rest of his days but eat, drink, and grow fat. It is indolence Mr. Bertram, indeed. Indolence and love of ease – a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which makes men Clergymen. A Clergyman has nothing to do but to be slovenly and selfish – read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife.[51]

Asserting this as widespread public opinion, Mary argues it is confirmed by the case of Dr. Grant, who, though a kind and clever gentleman, is undoubtedly a “bon vivant” and disagreeable glutton.[52] Looking at his respectable veneer, she finds there to be little virtue. What many conceive to be social decency, she considers nothing other than ‘desperate dullness.’[53] In this way, Austen uses Mary to expose the emptiness of viewing a clergyman as a gentleman in a parsonage.[54] The only way Mary could ever contemplate future marriage to Edmund is to “shut out the church, sink the clergyman, and see only the respectable, elegant, modernized, and occasional man of independent fortune.”[55]Although it is unclear whether Mary was ever able to remove the religious from her concept of a clergyman, it appears almost all of Austen’s other characters had already done so.[56]

The Devoted Clergyman

We must not conclude Mary’s criticisms contain the complete picture of Austen’s own concept of the clergy. As Leithart states, “some of the most severe satire of the clergy in church history has come from devout Christians incensed at the abuses of their leaders. Like them, Austen attacks false clergy not to destroy clergy; she attacks false clergy to defend the true.”[57]

From her very first critique, Austen indicates Mary’s critical error. In seeing cessation of prayer at Sotherton as an improvement, Mary reveals her presumption that all piety must be insincere.[58] She considers it certain the family members who required the household to assemble would be “inventing excuses themselves for staying away.”[59] “Thatis hardly Fanny’s idea of a family assembling,” is Edmund’s response, revealing that Mary’s reaction is founded on a false premise.[60] By this, Austen expose that the character so critical of ‘clerical nothingness’ is also committed to a view of ‘spiritual nothingness’.[61] This spiritual vacancy explains why Mary cannot comprehend the church ever providing any distinction or consequence in society.[62] While she does not wonder that men are soldiers and sailors, she cannot understand why they choose to be clergymen.[63] She sees such service as a sacrifice, a career only coveted for its comforts.[64] As a result, seeking ordination without securing these is “madness indeed, absolute madness!”[65]

By the novel’s conclusion, this spiritual deficiency has also been detected in other characters. For example, Sir Thomas Bertram grieves the want of “active principle” in his daughters and regrets that they “had been instructed theoretically in their religion, but never required to bring it into daily practice.”[66] However, the greatest moral horror is reserved for Mary, with Fanny Price and Edmund ultimately reflecting she lacked the principles necessary for proper discernment.[67] Austen uses this final determination to undermine all of Mary’s earlier judgements, including her contempt for the clergy.

Austen’s Commendation of Devotion

In contrast to her use of Mary, Austen employs Fanny to commend a different view of the clergy.[68] While Mary sees cessation of prayer at Sotherton positively, Fanny views it as a pity, feeling family prayer to be a fine thing.[69]The eventual moral failure of Sotherton’s family vindicates Fanny’s view of their vacant spirituality. For her, the “handsome chapel” is “a mere, specious, oblong room,” with “nothing aweful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand.”[70] It is significant that Edmund, a future parish clergyman, points her to the distanced parish church for such spiritual substance.[71] While Mary suspects Edmund’s motives for ordination, Fanny supposes them to be virtuous and views it as no lesser a career than serving in the army or navy.[72] She also echoes Edmund’s principles of parish ministry, encouraging him with “gentle earnestness.”[73] Fanny challenges Mary’s observations of the comical Dr. Grant, highlighting her experience of a kind chaplain and believing Dr. Grant to be better for being a clergyman. [74] For her, ordination is significant enough to have had at least some sanctifying influence on him.[75] Given all this, it is unsurprising the novel closes with Fanny marrying Edmund.  

Reflecting on Dr. Grant’s deficiencies, Mary wishes Fanny a better future than to be married to a clergyman.[76] However, Edmund is entirely unlike Mary’s concept of such a man. He is realistic about his ecclesiastical context, for he accepts that some clergy align with Mary’s assessment and declines to defend Dr. Grant.[77] In this way, Austen acknowledges critique is not unwarranted in all cases. However, Edmund believes better pastors to be possible, considering the present generation as preferable to the past.[78] While Henry perceives preaching as nothing other than occasional acting, Edmund believes a clergyman is more than a mere “pulpiteer.”[79] His private character must be known to his parishioners if he is to recommend the principles that produce good conduct.[80] For this reason, Edmund will reside within his parish. While he can “do the duty” from a distance, only a relationship of devoted attention will produce his parishioners’ good.[81] Edmund is determined to be more than a decent clergyman: he desires to be a devoted one. For this reason, readers are led into agreeing with Fanny’s final assessment, viewing the new clergyman of Mansfield’s parsonage as an improvement on the previous two occupants.[82]

Conclusion

What kind of clergyman will Edmund be? This is the basic question at the heart of his hesitancy to marry.[83]Edmund’s eventual rejection of the unprincipled Mary, and final embrace of the faithful Fanny, reveals that he has determined to be a devoted one. It seems Austen desires her readers to make the same decision, rejecting the chiefly social understanding held by most of her characters and accepting Fanny and Edmund’s more spiritually substantial view.

Despite this, we must be careful not to overinterpret Austen. While she wrote during a period of reform that was in response to evangelicalism, it cannot be so easily concluded that she herself was an evangelical.[84] At times, particularly near the book’s beginning, both Edmund and Fanny display non-evangelical tendencies.[85] However, the novel does include many evangelical concerns, with more than one commentator noting her characters come close to expounding evangelical views.[86] It is widely accepted that evangelicalism increasingly influenced Austen during the period in which she wrote Mansfield Park.[87] This thesis is surely strengthened by the fact that it is possible to perceive a steady progression of evangelical emphases throughout the book. These clearly culminate at its conclusion: the unaffectable Lady Bertram cries herself to sleep after an affecting sermon, Edmund is ridiculed for acting as if he is a Methodist or missionary, and Sir Thomas laments his daughters’ lack of practical devotion.[88] Therefore, regardless of Austen’s ecclesiastical persuasions when the project began, it seems possible that she developed alongside her characters, becoming increasingly evangelical even as she narrated others doing the same.

In the end, Austen’s greatest achievement with respect to the subject of ordination in Mansfield Park is convincing readers that the conclusions of both Mary and Edmund are correct. The decent clergyman of Mary’s mind really is nothing, as the garish and gluttonous Dr. Grant clearly demonstrates. In contrast, for Austen, to be a devoted clergyman of Edmund’s ideal is something of the greatest consequence and the highest distinction.

[1] Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed. Jane Stabler and James Kinsley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 73.

[2] Irene Collins, Jane Austen: The Parson’s Daughter (London: The Hambledon Press, 1998), xv-xvi. As Collins observes elsewhere, Austen “knew a vast number of clergy – more than any lay person would be likely to know today. Her correspondence includes references to at least 90 clergymen of her acquaintance, and her biographers could add many more to the list.” Irene Collins, “Displeasing Picture of Clergymen,” Journal of the Jane Austen Society of North America – Persuasions, no. 18, (1996): 110.

[3] Collins, Jane Austen: The Parson’s Daughter, xvi.

[4] Michael Jackson summarises: “There is much evidence of the sources and nature of Jane Austen's unobtrusive religion. She went to church and heard the Prayer Book services. Her brother Henry said that she was “well instructed on serious subjects, both by reading and meditation”. “I am very fond of Sherlock's sermons, prefer them to almost any”, she wrote . . . .Three prayers written by her survive. Her letters mentioned her devotion to the sacrament and her insistence on religious principle. Reticence marks her approach to religion, which is none the less deeply felt and carefully thought out.” Michael Jackson, “Jane Austen’s View of the Clergy,” Theology  78, no. 663 (1975): 532. Collins also agrees, arguing “She was a loyal member of the Church of England, attending its services Sunday by Sunday, defending its Prayer Book from criticism and using its approved publications regularly in her private devotions. Her own faith was to be strong enough to support her all too soon through a distressing illness towards an early death.” Collins, “Displeasing Picture of Clergymen,” 109–110.

[5] Charles E Edge, “Mansfield Park and Ordination,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 16, no. 3 (1961): 269.

[6] R.W. Chapman, ed., Jane Austen's Letters to Her Sister Cassandra and Others (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), 298. Quoted in Edge, “Mansfield Park and Ordination,” 269.

[7] Edge surveys a spectrum of views that have been taken on the interpretation of Austen’s language, including the remark that “the most unsympathetic reader of Mansfield Park would scarcely describe it as being about ordination.” Edge, “Mansfield Park and Ordination,” 269–271.

[8] Peter Leithart agrees, arguing that “evidence of Austen’s theological contribution—and of my thesis—is strongest in Mansfield Park. When Austen wrote about it in a letter (to her sister Cassandra, January 29, 1813), she said she intended ‘to write of something else;—it shall be a complete change of subject—Ordination.’ Indeed, that is its unlikely focus. As a result, Mansfield Park, frequently despised as Austen’s worst novel, is in fact her greatest and most important, though admittedly far from the most entertaining.” Peter J. Leithart, “Jane Austen, Public Theologian,” last modified January, 2004, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/01/jane-austen-public-theologian.

[9] Jackson identifies a total of 13 such characters across Austen’s novels, including both clergymen and those on the way to becoming clergy. Jackson, “Jane Austen’s View of the Clergy,” 532.

[10] Collins, “Displeasing Picture of Clergymen,” 112–113.

[11] On December 11, 1815, Austen wrote to James Stanier Clarke stating, “I am quite honoured by your thinking me capable of drawing such a Clergyman as you gave the sketch of in your note of Nov:16. But I assure you I am not. The comic part of the Character I might be equal to, but not the Good, the Enthusiastic, the Literary.” Deirdre Le Faye, ed., Jane Austen's Letters, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 319. As is clear from the rest of her letter, Austen’s key consideration here is her lack of knowledge of subjects like science and philosophy, which she believed would need to be included to provide a proper picture of such a clergyman.

[12] Austen, Mansfield Park, 17.

[13] Austen, Mansfield Park, 18.

[14] Austen, Mansfield Park, 18.

[15] Austen, Mansfield Park, 371.

[16] As this essay demonstrates, ordination is discussed in great detail at each of Sotherton, Mansfield, and the parsonage, with key scenes in each volume of the novel directly referring or alluding to the theme.

[17] Austen, Mansfield Park, 114.

[18] Oliver MacDonagh explained it particularly well when he argued, “We should not confine it to the narrow usage of ceremonial appointment to the Christian ministry. On the one hand, the primary meaning of the word is classification (generally social in character) and arrangement into ranks. On the other hand, the taking of Anglican orders in 1813 (when Mansfield Park was finished) raised many questions of ecclesiastical discipline – residence, pluralism and ceremony; of livelihood – the variation, sources and ownership of clerical income; of the nature of the parish and its duties, and the crisis presented by urbanization and manufacturing industry; of religion of the heart, conversion and enthusiasm; and, though only in a  premonitory and tentative form as yet, of the sacramental and special or “holy” nature of the priesthood. It is with these narrower meanings of ordination that I am primarily concerned, although, of course, no late Georgian would have distinguished them altogether from social order and stable rank.” Oliver MacDonagh, “The Church in Mansfield Park: a Serious Call?” Sydney Studies in English, no. 12 (1986–1987), 37.

[19] MacDonagh, “The Church in Mansfield Park: a Serious Call?”, 52.

[20] Mark Noll details the rise and development of the evangelical movement from the 1730s to the end of the eighteenth century, shortly after which Austen began to write her novels. Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003).

[21] Austen, Mansfield Park, 18–19.

[22] Austen, Mansfield Park, 177.

[23] Austen, Mansfield Park, 177; 267.

[24] Austen, Mansfield Park, 310.

[25] Nigel Yates, Eighteenth-Century Britain: Religion and Politics, 1714–1815 (New York: Routledge, 2014), 137.

[26] Austen, Mansfield Park, 193.

[27] Austen, Mansfield Park, 189–90.

[28]Austen, Mansfield Park, 191.

[29] Austen, Mansfield Park, 19.

[30] Austen, Mansfield Park, 25.

[31] Leithart, “Jane Austen, Public Theologian.”

[32] Austen, Mansfield Park, 43. Shortly thereafter, quoting the evangelical William Cowper, Fanny mourns with Edmund the ‘improvements’ that will cause them to cut down some old trees at Sotherton. It is hard not to conclude that Cowper, along with Fanny and Edmund, would also lament over the planting of new trees at the parsonage which have caused a separation between a parson and the churchyard.

[33] Austen, Mansfield Park, 43.

[34] Austen, Mansfield Park, 65.

[35] Austen, Mansfield Park, 65.

[36] Austen, Mansfield Park, 65.

[37] Austen, Mansfield Park, 68.

[38] Yates, Eighteenth-Century Britain: Religion and Politics, 130. Collins agrees, stating, “In the early decades of the eighteenth century, the clergy came mainly from the small farming and shopkeeping classes. By mid-century, many were coming from professional and even lower gentry circles. By the end of the eighteenth century, considerable landowners such as Sir Thomas Bertram and General Tilney were putting their sons into the church. As the level rose, clergymen were more readily accepted into local elites, and recruits from the lower echelons were likely to findthemselves moving in higher circles than those to which they had been accustomed.” Collins, “Displeasing Picture of Clergymen,” 118.

[39] Yates, Eighteenth-Century Britain: Religion and Politics, 132.

[40] Collins, “Displeasing Picture of Clergymen,” 118.

[41] Austen, Mansfield Park, 37.

[42] Austen, Mansfield Park, 52.

[43] Austen, Mansfield Park, 166; 169; 368; 172; 187.

[44] Austen, Mansfield Park, 368–369; 19.

[45] Austen, Mansfield Park, 68.

[46] Austen, Mansfield Park, 68–69.

[47] Austen, Mansfield Park, 69.

[48] Austen, Mansfield Park, 72–73.

[49] Austen, Mansfield Park, 167.

[50] Austen, Mansfield Park, 73.

[51] Austen, Mansfield Park, 87.

[52] Austen, Mansfield Park, 88.

[53] Indeed, “a desperate dull life,” is exactly how she describes that of being married to Dr. Grant. Austen, Mansfield Park, 94.

[54] Collins argues “she provides Mary Crawford with a clergyman who can be cited as evidence for the argument that the clergy are chiefly occupied in indulging their pleasures: Dr. Grant is excessively fond of a good dinner every day. But not all clergymen are like him, Edmund Bertram points out.” Collins, “Displeasing Picture of Clergymen,” 110–111.

[55] Austen, Mansfield Park, 194.

[56] At different points, Mary appears to arrive at contrasting conclusions regarding whether she could be content marrying a clergyman. For example, she is frustrated that Edmund seems set on “fixing himself in a situation which he must know she would never stoop to.” Austen, Mansfield Park, 178. However, as Leithart observes, “She is willing to accept a clergyman husband, so long as he is sufficiently wealthy and potentially stylish.” Leithart, “Jane Austen, Public Theologian.”

[57] Leithart, “Jane Austen, Public Theologian.” Leithart goes on to note that Austen includes such an attack in a number of her novels, “Two of her clerical characters, Mr. Collins (of Pride and Prejudice) and Mr. Elton (of Emma), are insensitive morons, and she has no toleration for the kind of hypocritical pomposity that they represent. Nor, in Mansfield Park, does she have much use for the vacuous religiosity of Dr. Grant, who is a pastor only in name and not in fact.”

[58] Austen, Mansfield Park, 68.

[59] Austen, Mansfield Park, 68.

[60] Austen, Mansfield Park, 68.

[61] C. S. Lewis perhaps said it best when he stated, “Deception is most fully studied in the person of Mary Crawford, ‘a mind led astray and bewildered, and without any suspicion of being so: darkened, yet fancying itself light.’ The New Testament echo in the language underlines the gravity of the theme.” C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, edited by Walter Hooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 183.

[62] Austen, Mansfield Park, 73.

[63] Austen, Mansfield Park, 87.

[64] Austen, Mansfield Park, 87.

[65] Austen, Mansfield Park, 87.

[66] Austen, Mansfield Park, 364.

[67] Austen, Mansfield Park, 358–360.

[68] Leithart agrees, arguing, “Unless we are to suspect Austen of a hyper-ironic stance where Austen’s lack of irony toward Fanny is a way of reinforcing irony, then we should accept at face value that Austen considers Fanny morally and intellectually exemplary.” Leithart, “Jane Austen, Public Theologian.”

[69] Austen, Mansfield Park, 68.

[70] Austen, Mansfield Park, 68.

[71] Austen, Mansfield Park, 68.

[72] Austen, Mansfield Park, 86.

[73] Austen, Mansfield Park, 74.

[74] Austen, Mansfield Park, 88–89.

[75] Austen, Mansfield Park, 88–89.

[76] Austen, Mansfield Park, 89.

[77] Austen, Mansfield Park, 87­–88.

[78] Austen, Mansfield Park, 266. This improvement in reading and preaching among the clergy of Edmund’s generation could be seen as an effect of the evangelical movement.

[79] Austen, Mansfield Park, 267–268. Leithart remarks, “Henry’s treatment of the subject reduces liturgical reading and preaching to another form of acting... Sermonizing is another “role” that Henry would dearly love to play (since it would be new), so long as he could preach only to educated congregations. And not too often: preaching occasionally would suit, but “not for a constancy; it would not do for a constancy.” But constancy, perseverance, a long obedience in one direction—this, of course, is precisely the difference between acting a role and accepting a role as a vocation.” Leithart, “Jane Austen, Public Theologian.” Peter J. Leithart, Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen (Mosco, ID: Canon Press, 2004), 132.

[80] Austen, Mansfield Park, 74.

[81] In the end, Edmund appears to accept pluralism and somewhat separate himself from his parishioners at Thornton Lacey by moving to the parsonage at Mansfield. However, this only occurs in the final lines of the book and is set alongside an otherwise positive picture of Edmund fulfilling his ideals. Given all that we have seen, it can only be imagined that Edmund will be a more devoted clergyman from a distance than many are while resident. The inclusion is more likely due to Austen wanting to complete the narrative arc by closing as she began, with an arrival at Mansfield’s parsonage, as opposed to her making any ecclesiastical point. Nevertheless, the fact that Austen felt able to do so, without entirely undermining all that Edmund previously said, implies that she was more comfortable with the practice than some were in her lifetime.

By critiquing such abuse earlier in the novel, yet allowing room for the practice as appropriate, Austen displays both her sympathy for and independence from the evangelical cause. When the novel was being written, the issue of multiple incumbencies was “a cause celebre of English national life”, with evangelical influence being exerted in Parliament to mitigate abuse of the practice. Leland Ryken, Philip Ryken, and Todd Wilson, The Pastors in The Classics: Timeless Lessons on Life and Ministry from World Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2012), 154. Austen’s approach is unsurprising, given her brother was an incumbent in multiple parishes. Collins, Jane Austen: The Parson’s Daughter, 100. Further, Yates argues such pluralism did not lead to “any serious lack of pastoral oversight in most parts of the country.” Yates, Eighteenth-Century Britain: Religion and Politics, 137.

[82] Austen, Mansfield Park, 372.

[83] Leithart echoes something of this when he explains, “Edmund’s calling lends an almost allegorical tone to the story. Edmund, the future guardian of morals, is attracted to the flashy novelty of Mary Crawford of London, and fails for some time to see her true character. Choosing this temptress would lead him far from his calling and, because the clergy are the protectors of morals, would contribute by omission to the decline of English morals. Eventually, however, he chooses the modest and moral Fanny Price. He is set up to choose between Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly, between the true Church and the false.” Leithart, “Jane Austen, Public Theologian.”

[84] Jackson observes, “The vicar of Bray said that his aunt had recorded “the opinions and practices then prevalent among respectable and conscientious clergymen before their minds had been stirred, first by the Evangelical, and afterwards by the High Church movement.” Jackson, “Jane Austen’s View of the Clergy,” 536.

[85] For example, it has been argued that Edmund’s early comments about the clergy are as much Erastian than anything else. Oliver MacDonagh, Jane Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 8. Similarly, Fanny can view Dr. Grant’s sermons as “very good sermons in so good a manner.” Austen, Mansfield Park, 89. Avrom Fleishman suggests, “Edmund, like all Jane Austen's clergymen, is strikingly devoid of religious doctrine, sentiment, and other-worldliness. But his dedication to the clerical vocation is a step in the direction of religious vitality.” Avrom Fleishman, “Mansfield Park in Its Time”, Nineteenth-Century Fiction 22, no. 1 (1967), 6.

[86] Kathryn Sutherland, introduction to Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen ( London: Penguin Classics, 2011), xxxvii.

[87] For example, Fleishman argues, “Jane Austen came under Evangelical influence during the years 1811-1813” and that this is evident throughout the novel. He asserts, “Beyond its references to the clerical abuses of the times, there is a more profound sense in which Mansfield Park echoes Evangelicalism: in its criticism of the religion of the British gentry. After such works as Wilberforce's A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity (1797), the practical paganism not only of the libertine aristocracy but also of the solid gentry became a favorite target of the Evangelicals. Since Mansfield Park operates to criticize the weaknesses of the gentry, it takes up the barrenness of that class's "High-and-Dry" Anglicanism.” Fleishman, “Mansfield Park in Its Time”: 1, 5.

A progression in Austen’s perception of evangelicals can be clearly seen in her letters. ““I do not like the Evangelicals”, she wrote in January 1809 from Southampton, after the family's four years stay at Bath where she might have come under their influence – Walcot church, where the Austens worshipped, then being in Evangelical control and the living of Bath Abbey itself later to be bought by the Simeon Trustees. Yet the question of a possible match between her favourite niece Fanny Knight and Mr John Plumptre, an attractive young man and a good example of a serious-minded Christian, draws a different reflection in her advice to Fanny"...as to there being any objection to his Goodness, from the danger of his becoming even Evangelical, I cannot admit that. I am by no means convinced that we ought not all to be Evangelicals, and am at least persuaded that they who are so by Reason and Feeling, must be happiest and safest” (November 1814).” Jackson, “Jane Austen’s View of the Clergy,” 532. Indeed, the first part of Austen’s next comment in this letter to Fanny could well have been written to her namesake in Mansfield Park: “Wisdom is better than Wit, & in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side; & don’t be frightened by the idea of his acting more strictly up to the precepts of the New Testament than others.” MacDonagh, Jane Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds, 6.

[88] Austen, Mansfield Park, 356; 360; 364.