Jane Austen's Criticism of the Clergy in Pride and Prejudice

In many of Jane Austen’s novels religion plays an important role in the characters’ lives. Although it cannot be considered as the main theme in Pride and Prejudice, being aware of the role of the clergy in Jane Austen’s time is essential to understand her fiction. Knowing about her ecclesiastical relatives and her own piety makes it easier to understand her novels because she was connected to the clerical profession in many ways.

Jane Austen was born in 1775 as the seventh child and second daughter of Reverend George Austen. She grew up in an upper middle-class family in the village Rectory of Steventon in the county of Hampshire, as her father was the Rector of the parish. Two of her brothers became clergymen as well: James Austen succeeded his father George as the Rector of Steventon when he went to Bath with his family. Henry Austen ended up as a country clergyman, too, after he had served in the Oxford Militia. In addition, two of her brothers married sisters whose father was a Rector. Her grandfather and her great-grandfather were clergymen, as well as one of her cousins. Two of Austen’s aunts married clericals and, moreover, she had many ecclesiastical friends.2

Considering this list Jane Austen obviously had much knowledge of the rural clergymen, not only through her father’s profession. She was familiar with the conventions and traditions of the church and described English country life in her fiction mostly “through the Rectory window.”3

Jane Austen herself can be considered as deeply religious and devout. She is said to have attended every morning and evening service in church and has read lots of sermons. Her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh described that she “had lived the life of a good Christian” and that “piety [...] ruled her in life, and supported her in death”.4 In general it can be assumed that Jane Austen was as religious as it could be expected from the daughter of a cleric.

In spite of that she never used to discuss religion, as her nephew explained: “that is a subject on which she herself was more inclined to think and act than to talk”.5 However, in her fiction Austen tried to separate her own piety from her imagination. Especially in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ she proved that she was not afraid of being ironic towards clergymen. With the character of Mr. Collins she creates an obsequious clerical who is discovered to be “a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man”6 by Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of the novel. In her fiction she generally presents clergymen in their social and secular roles as lovers rather than in their ecclesiastical roles. Mr. Collins, for example, is not shown in one of his sermons throughout the whole novel, the reader gets to know him only from dinners, letters or balls. In ‘Pride and Prejudice’ Mr. Collins represents one bad example of a cleric because it must be confirmed that