Bad Dads of Jane Austen

Here we go again smashing the patriarchy. Happy Father’s Day! Plus: the most romantic apology in all of fiction, and glimpses of Darcy and Knightley as fathers. It’s all there in Austen.

Hello dear friends,

We don’t want to go negative, but you knew this was coming: We’ve gone there for Mother’s Day, for Valentine’s Day, for Thanksgiving. We seem to take every occasion we can to examine the many ways of being bad in Jane Austen.

And the fathers are not getting off the hook this Father’s Day.

Because while Austen certainly is showing us something with her bad marriages, her bad mothers, and her horrifying family gatherings, it is Austen’s treatment of fathers that might carry the most weight because it’s the father treatment that ties in with the most important questions of Austen’s day: Questions about power and wealth and how it should be structured in society, whether through a Burkean adherence and respect for patrilineage, aristocracy, and tradition, or through more reformist policies that reconsidered and updated traditions in favor of individual education and liberty for women and working classes. 

And this discussion was taking place amidst debates about the slave trade, which was showing up the exploitation and cruelty not to mention the irresponsibility of those Powers That Be. Also ongoing were the debates about the rights of women and the plights of younger sons within the practice of primogeniture. At the same time, it was a post-revolutionary world where reformism and individual liberty taken to its logical extremes seemed to have resulted in the Guillotine, violence, and chaos - and a loss of those American colonies! 

Confusing times, to be a writer, a human, a dad, in Jane Austen’s Regency.

So amidst all of this conflation of ideas and ideals it’s actually surprising that Jane Austen had a take. And as we know for centuries any “take” she might have put forward was muted by her family’s emphasis on her quiet, humble, spinster life – a muting we’re still shouting over even today. And a muting that is understandable when you consider that during Jane Austen’s teen-age years Thomas Paine, writer of The Rights of Man and a critic of patrilineage among many other things, was imprisoned for his revolutionary writings, and Mary Wollstonecraft, author by the same publisher of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, was, after the posthumous publication of her memoirs, made into a national joke.

But in the midst of all of this late 18th century and early 19th century cacophony, Austen dared to create some deceptively simple family portraits – portraits that encompass and reflect the world she was in and some of its most important questions. 

Jane Austen was too inventive and challenging as an artist for her stories to put forward any simple outline of her political views; rather her portraits of fatherhood offer an examination and an exploration of her time and its central questions. They challenge us to examine and reexamine those questions and also the assumptions we bring to those stories.

And some of the most challenging and unexpected portraits Austen paints for us through these stories are those of fathers. Because fathers were key to the power structures and traditions – and frankly to the stability – of Jane Austen’s world. And that’s why it’s fascinating that Austen’s body of fatherhood portraits are such a parade of awfulness.  

Mr. Woodhouse fits right into the Bad Dad Austen canon but we love him anyway, because Emma does and because he makes us laugh. Pictured here: Bill Nighy’s wonderful portrayal of Mr. Woodhouse in Autumn de Wilde’s 2020 film EMMA. Photo courtesy Focus Features.

And this is not a little thing to us, to critic Claudia Johnson, author of our current read Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, and to critics that form what Johnson calls the “subversive school” of Austen criticism. We find in Austen’s humor and satire a thorough examination of the 18th and 19th century powers that be, those powers being largely tied up in parental authority, the patriarchy, the aristocracy, and conventional practices of patrilineage and primogeniture that passed along wealth, power, and authority through the male line and which formed the foundations and - many thought - stability of the 19th century world rife with revolution and reformism. 

Some however might disagree with this subversive school!

 And so with each of our fathers here - we’re going to include a passage from Austen herself on said Bad Dad, said Patriarchy, said Subversiveness. We are not making it up - it is always right there hiding in plain sight in Austen. 

Jane Austen was too inventive and challenging as an artist for her stories to put forward any simple outline of her political views; rather her portraits of fatherhood offer an examination and an exploration of her time and its central questions.

Yes, it’s a parade of fathers that is not for the faint of heart, but as always here at the Austen Connection, you’re in safe hands: Our trajectory will go through the horrific and end up with some inspiration and wisdom. 

Because unlike other satirists of her day (looking right at you, Mr. Thackeray), Austen did not just send up the bad, but also presented us always with a vision for good: A way forward through the paternal problems of greed, neglect, and arbitrary power, into if not perfect felicity always, at least a way that promotes integrity, intelligence, agency, and inner peace.

So: Enjoy! 

And here’s our list – with a passage for each from Austen herself - from the absolute worst to the quite-bad dads of Jane Austen. 

General Tilney – not so much perfectly amiable

Right off the bat, in the presumably first written of her major published novels, Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen tackles the subject of power and oppression in an awful portrait of our beloved hero Henry Tilney’s father, General Tilney.

Much is made all the time of the telling-off by Henry of naïve Catherine Morland for her wild gothic imaginings of the outrages committed by the General in this novel – and also of the fact that ultimately Catherine’s wild imaginings are found to be a little closer to the mark of General Tilney’s character than Henry’s viewpoint. Basically: She’s right! She suspects General Tilney of being “not perfectly amiable” at the start, and he more than lives up to that assessment by suddenly expelling her from the abbey as soon as he learns that he himself has been mistaken about Catherine being an heiress.

By the end of this novel, the General whom the always-observant and always-undermined Catherine has sanguinely deemed “not perfectly amiable,” has had his number called by Austen’s narrator, as he forbids anyone in the house from associating with our lovely Catherine. Here it is in this near-final passage of the novel:

“The General, accustomed on every ordinary occasion to give the law in his family, prepared for no reluctance but of feeling, no opposing desire that should dare to clothe itself in words, could ill brook the opposition of his son, steady as the sanction of reason and the dictate of science could make it. But, in such a cause, his anger, though it must shock, could not intimidate Henry, who was sustained in his purpose by a conviction of its justice.”

And what is Henry’s purpose? To go and propose to Catherine, taking us to the happy ending of this novel wherein we blatantly defy the authority of the father in a pursuit of love, happiness and, ultimately, “justice.”

Congratulations and best wishes, Henry and Catherine!

Sir Walter, ‘like a good father’

This one is a favorite because by the time Austen gets to her seasoned and final published novel, Persuasion, she has perfected a portrait of fatherhood that combines awfulness and cruelty with absurdity and hilarity, all amounting to the same effect: Dissecting and disarming the idea of a patriarchal figure being worthy of the land, lives, and country he is responsible for.

Sir Walter fails in this responsibility to his estate, the people whose lives depend on that estate, and his own family, whom he mishandles and neglects. And ironically, it’s his own figure as a patriarch and English land-owner that he’s hilariously obsessed with.

And his daughter, the quiet, stoic, intense Anne Elliot sees all. And because of the intimacy created by Austen’s techniques, including free indirect discourse, we very much see and feel it all with her.

Our immediate introduction to Sir Walter places him squarely in relation to Anne and fatherhood, and makes clear the harm he inflicts. The narrator tells us quite clearly that Anne’s mother, Lady Elliot, was of an exemplary and strong character that Sir Walter could not match.

Here we go, with a passage that Claudia Johnson highlights on why Sir Walter remains single: It’s ostensibly for his daughters; but also clearly not at all for his daughters.

“Be it known then, that sir Walter, like a good father, (having met with one or two private disappointments in very unreasonable applications) prided himself on remaining single for his dear daughter’s sake.” 

And one paragraph later we get the full sum of Anne in relation to her family: “Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister …”

It’s easy to forget that this lens that we see Anne Elliot and her many attributes through - the lens of her negligent, self-obsessed father - really heightens our sense of her loneliness, the injustice of her treatment by her family, and it draws us to her. 

And with one more passage along these lines we have the clencher, friends, and it’s one of the passages that endears all of us to Anne Elliot forever, and makes us vicious about any reinterpretation of this character that does not measure up, on the screen or elsewhere:

“A few years before, Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early: and as even in its height, her father had found little to admire in her …”

We all recall that “bloom” vanishing from our beloved Anne Elliot – but may have forgotten that even in its height, Anne failed to capture the attention of her father. Yeah, happy father’s day indeed. So sad!

We all recall that “bloom” vanishing from our beloved Anne Elliot – but may have forgotten that even in its height, Anne failed to capture the attention of her father. Yeah, happy father’s day indeed.

And this is why we so rejoice when Anne manages to navigate this awfulness and neglect – which in fact she has become “hardened” to – and finds happiness and love outside of this family circle of horrors.

You go, Anne girl!

The Education of Sir Thomas

The horrors of the halls of Mansfield Park and its patriarch Sir Thomas have been celebrated here many times – and this portrait leaves little doubt that Austen was at the very least examining the powers and traditions that English conservatism held dear at the time, including traditions of patrilineage, patriarchy, and arguably colonialism and its dependence on the slave trade, and even the Church. All seem to be called up in this novel, and much of it centers on the benevolent dictatorship of Sir Thomas, who vociferously and proudly upholds all of the above on his estate and ultimately proves ineffective at keeping his own house and family out of danger and social ruin.

But the passage we’d like to look at today is a surprising one, located at the very end of this tale of Mansfield, and revealing that in this rather hasty ending Austen tells us that Sir Thomas has been schooled, as a father, and by none other than Fanny Price, that unfortunate niece whom he had reluctantly and snobbishly received into his house when she was a child.

Here's where the tables have been truly turned, Fanny has conquered with the most success in terms of suitors, education, marriage, and consequence, and has truly beaten this proud family at its own game, while at the same time Fanny has remained dutiful, humble, and has managed to not only retain Sir Thomas’s affections but has taken center stage in this theatrical.

Here we are in Sir Thomas’s very own thoughts:

“Sick of ambitious and mercenary connections, prizing more and more the sterling good of principle and temper, and chiefly anxious to bind by the strongest securities all that remained to him of domestic felicity, he had pondered with more than genuine satisfaction … the high sense of having realized a great acquisition in the promise of Fanny for a daughter, formed just such a contrast with his early opinion on the subject when the poor little girl’s coming had been first agitated, as time is for ever producing between the plans and decisions of mortals, for their own instruction, and their neighbors entertainment.”

Buried in the gentle cadence of this denouement, friends, don’t miss the actual words Austen is using here: sickening ambition and anxiety has turned to a hope for domestic felicity in the only place that remains for Sir Thomas, that of Fanny Price, and he has been duly instructed by this “little” “acquisition.” 

Those of us listening closely to the content behind this cadence can hear the music. Sir Thomas still views people as acquisitions based on how they benefit himself. But nevertheless, we consider him duly schooled even if we are not for a moment fooled!

John Dashwood’s awful whisper

Friends, we have mentioned before that the drawing rooms of that lovely story Sense and Sensibility are pure death. 

In this story, the “silent and strong” Elinor and the romantic but also ultimately strong Marianne are neglected by their wealthy brother John Dashwood, after their own father has managed to die without a clear provision for them in his will, and to the point that they subsist and navigate their way on their own, and they do so with intelligence and a growing maturity and loyalty and friendship, creating a network of support for their mother and themselves.

Those of us listening closely to the content behind this cadence can hear the music. Sir Thomas still views people as acquisitions based on how they benefit himself. But nevertheless, we consider him duly schooled even if we are not for a moment fooled!

But there’s one passage we’ll celebrate here with this brother, Mr. John Dashwood, who is also a young father; but more importantly he is a not-so-very-subtle symbol of the controlling, oppressive foolishness of patriarchal practices, including that of patrilineage.

Here’s one sample passage that shows us that foolery mixed with the oppressiveness - as John Dashwood struggles to get out a sentence simply telling Elinor that the engagement of her beloved Edward Ferrars to the mercenary Lucy Steele has angered the powerful matriarchal Mrs. Ferrars and that Elinor, whom any sensible person views as vastly superior, would have been “the lesser of two evils.”

Take it away, John:

“Of one thing, my dear sister,” kindly taking her hand, and speaking in an awful whisper: —“I may assure you;—and I will do it, because I know it must gratify you. I have good reason to think—indeed I have it from the best authority, or I should not repeat it, for otherwise it would be very wrong to say any thing about it —but I have it from the very best authority—not that I ever precisely heard Mrs. Ferrars say it herself—but her daughter did, and I have it from her—That in short, whatever objections there might be against a certain—a certain connection—you understand me—it would have been far preferable …’the least evil of the two’…”

Are you following this? Basically what we see in this confusing mashup of phrases that struggle to express one simple idea is John Dashwood’s vast undermining of his sister, Elinor. Elinor cannot even rely on moral support, much less the financial support she is due, from this family patriarch. 

But we also see that she’s having to endure an utterly foolish way he has of expressing himself, both in content and in form. All she can do is endure it, muster up her own self-esteem, and continue on her way as civilly as possible.

Which she does. And she ends up with a marriage to said Edward Ferrars in the end. But in the process, we’ve been shown the absence of any kind of fatherly or brotherly support, affection, or wisdom – and the message is clear: When the patriarchy isn’t doing it for you, get it somewhere else. You have a right to the pursuit of happiness (a future post on that forthcoming, friends). Do that for yourself – find the support and affection you can, where you can. Even if sometimes you will look all over for it only to find it within yourself.

Mr. Bennet, ‘so odd a mixture’

He’s always in his library. He forms negligence into a high art. He’s funny, unfortunately at the expense of his wife. And Lizzy is his favorite, so we are confused into forgiving him everything.

In Pride and Prejudice, the description we get of Elizabeth Bennet’s father Mr. Bennet is brief, but tells us everything we need to know:

“Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character.”

What is amazing about this passage is not only that it gives us the sum of a person – and a patriarchal person no less – in less than a sentence; it also invites us to judge astutely and well in all things because not only do we get this summation in a half-sentence, we are told at the same time that somehow 23 years have not provided time enough for Mrs. Bennet to come to this simple conclusion. Yes, it’s a mixture; but knowledge is attainable if you will open your eyes and judge for yourself.

So: Do that.

Darcy’s bad dad and the most romantic apology in all of fiction

And here’s a bonus parenting passage from Pride and Prejudice that is easy to miss, and Pride and Prejudice movie watchers you’ll love this: A note on Darcy’s bad parents!

Yes, it’s all spelled out - as so many things are - in the near-final pages of this book.

When Darcy and Elizabeth engage in that wonderful post-game analysis about what’s been going on in the preceding hundreds of pages of misunderstanding, mishaps, misplaced pride, and multiple prejudices, Darcy blames himself, sure, but mostly he blames his parents!

Here it is, and this is Darcy talking in what just might be the most romantic, non-patriarchal apology in all of literature:

“Painful recollections will intrude, which cannot, which ought not to be repelled. 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 not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son, (for many years an only child) I was spoilt by my parents, who though good themselves, (my father particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable,) allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing, to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world …”

This is followed, friends, by his gratitude to Lizzy for teaching him “a lesson, hard indeed” – and, well, no wonder we love Darcy.

Here is not only a glimpse into Darcy’s past but also his future – he is thinking about parenting, as he embarks on life with Elizabeth. Swoon-worthy indeed. 

Mr. Woodhouse: ‘Emma allowed her father to talk’

One of our favorite characters from a screen adaptation has to be Bill Nighy’s portrayal of Emma’s Mr. Woodhouse.

Mr. Woodhouse manages to combine the charm, neurosis, absurdity, and elegance that all co-exist in this father character who nevertheless might exist chiefly to showcase the power that Austen is portraying, as a contrast, in the character of Emma.

He is the one - as Emma’s former governess Mrs. Weston (Miss Taylor) puts it – who is the sole person in the world that Emma is accountable to. And what a person!

Mr. Woodhouse manages to combine the charm, neurosis, absurdity, and elegance that all co-exist in this father character who nevertheless might exist chiefly to showcase the power that Austen is portraying, as a contrast, in the character of Emma.

He can barely manage to eat or drink, is health obsessed, receives a visit from his doctor daily, refuses to travel, and overall is crippled by what appears to be overwhelming anxiety. Against all of this Emma not only subtly disregards his most unreasonable actions, but also Emma dishes up and pours wine over his diatribes at the dinner table – and in doing so she manages to exhibit care and attention to her father in a way that only increases the sense of her own autonomy and power. With such a father, as Claudia Johnson wonderfully points out, this landed Great House of England is entirely reliant on Emma’s judgment, agency, and attention.

Here's how Austen shows through a simple dinner party Emma’s simultaneous care and overpowering of her father, and her mastering of her household: “Emma allowed her father to talk —but supplied her visitors in a much more satisfactory style”.

Emma delivers – in a way that is sensible, caring and responsible (again, not only to her family but also to those that depend on the estate for their livelihood) and in a way that this father simply cannot. The purpose of Mr. Woodhouse is to show us Emma’s power, and her emerging goodness that grows throughout this novel. Thanks, Mr. Woodhouse. 

For extra credit: An affectionate father (Yes, there’s one hiding in Austen!)

We have neglected entirely to call to mind the horrific Mr. Price, father of Fanny Price, mostly because no day is a good day to think of this person, and it’s actually surprising that he even populates an Austen novel because unlike each of these other awfuls there is nothing funny about this man, with his drinking, his course jokes, and his hypothetical violent talk of the rope-end.

So we purposely leave off this person and instead return to Emma and Hartfield to look at a bonus father you might not have thought of for this listicle but who is so glimpsingly interesting - and that is John Knightley, brother of Mr. Knightley and brother-in-law to Emma.

In spite of his wonderful crankiness – “the folly of people’s not staying comfortably at home when they can!” -  we like him as a brother-in-law. But he’s also a long-suffering, young father. 

And interestingly, he is the subject of one of the few direct discourses on fatherhood in the pages of Austen. This discourse takes place in Emma, when Mr. Woodhouse and Emma are talking with Harriet Smith about an upcoming visit home by Isabella and her husband, John Knightley. It might be one of the longest pieces of dialogue that come from Mr. Woodhouse, who talks of his grandsons and his grandson Henry, his namesake, in this passage:

“They will come and stand by my chair, and say, ‘Grandpapa, can you give me a bit of string?’ and once Henry asked me for a knife, but I told him knives were only made for grandpapas. I think their father is too rough with them very often.”

 “He appears rough to you,” said Emma, “because you are so very gentle yourself; but if you could compare him with other papas, you would not think him rough. He wishes his boys to be active and hardy; and if they misbehave, can give them a sharp word now and then; but he is an affectionate father — certainly Mr. John Knightley is an affectionate father. The children are all fond of him.”

Funny enough, in this section of the book Mr. Woodhouse also complains of Knightley - our Mr. Knightley - playfully throwing these grandsons (Knightley’s nephews) in the air and nearly hitting their head on the ceiling. Because Mr. Woodhouse is an unreliable narrator we are instead left with a glimpse of Mr. George Knightley’s affection for his nephews, which gives us a little glimpse of his possible future as a father, a glimpse reinforced by his intimate discussion with Emma over their niece, “baby Emma.”  

So there we have it – in cranky John Knightley we have a father whose children are fond of him, and a promise of things to come for Emma and Mr. Knightley.

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So let’s end this thing on a positive note, and simply ask: What do all these individual portraits of fatherhood add up to? It seems that because of the complexity and subtlety of these portraits, and spread as they are across all the novels, it’s easy to overlook any kind of messaging or philosophical “take” that Austen’s portrayal of fatherhood would advance.

But advance it she nevertheless does, when we add it all up.

Professor Claudia Johnson says this brilliantly in Jane Austen, that what we have with these fatherhood cruelties is a “sustained body of detail that invites us to reconsider conservative political arguments which idealize familial love.”

Did Austen even want us to go around putting together all these details? For good reason, her brothers appear to not have invited this and in fact attempted to deflect any kind of summing up.

But sum up we will, 205 years later and counting. And we will continue to do the math here at the Austen Connection!

Did we miss any bad dads on your list? Or, is there another affectionate father, like John Knightley, in the pages of Austen we’re missing? Let us know any additions or any thoughts you have on this list!

Thanks for joining us for Father’s Day, friends. A shout out to the fathers in our lives here at the Austen Connection – We are fortunate to have fathers and “grandpapas” that are caring, involved, affectionate, and not at all like the Bad Dads of Austen.

Hoping you too have something to celebrate today, and if not – please know you are in excellent company through the stories, and sometimes the horrors, of Jane Austen’s heroes and the families they endure.

Cheers and here’s to finding your way toward love and affection, today and every day.

Yours truly,

Plain Jane

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