What's up with Knightley

A Jane Austen hero, Adam Smith, and the invisible hand

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Hello friends,

Maybe it’s not just magical thinking to feel that there are endless corridors and pathways and detours in the characters and plots of Jane Austen and as much as we travel them and study them and create maps to help us find our way through them, there is still so much to miss, to explore, and to discover.

And so much is in the details - details that when you encounter them you sense that something is going on but it’s hard to peg what it is. You’re in the hands of a narrator, guiding you through something, making you laugh, setting you back a bit, causing you to do a double-take even as you want to rush through to find out what’s going to happen.

Details like - to go no further than the novel Emma - Knightley’s propensity to walk to a dinner party rather than take a carriage, and why this disappoints Emma; Frank Churchill’s extravagant London haircut; Mrs. Elton’s playing at planning a party at Knightley’s; and also in a passage that seems uninteresting but in which Austen’s narrator sets out so much for us to unpack: Knightley’s calling Frank Churchill a “puppy.” 

Mr. George Knightley (played by Johnny Flynn in Autumn de Wilde’s 2020 film ‘EMMA.’) is an Austen hero who manages to be all at once proud and generous, scathing and kind, everywhere and elusive, and intimidating and humble. Jane Austen, and possibly influential 18th century philosopher Adam Smith, is speaking through him. Photo: Courtesy Focus Features

And then you come across a body of work written in 1759, Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. A book associated with Austen’s novels. A work that along with The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, provides the underpinnings of economic theory influencing everything that came after, from the American experiment in democracy, to Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication, and Karl Marx. 

Smith’s classic The Theory of Moral Sentiments is about some basic principles that he’s not always remembered for but perhaps should be brought back into the conversation: principles on how we treat each other, how our motivations influence our actions and the result of those actions, how those actions create an interconnectedness in our society - and how what we do to ourselves and each other affects ourselves and each other. And by describing these motivations and their impact on ourselves and on others Smith seeks to enquire into how we might map out those actions and motivations to describe best practices, or to map out a theory of moral sentiments, that will lead to better understanding, better action, and a better world. 

And this by an 18th century Scottish philosopher often called the Father of Modern Capitalism? Yep. And just like Austen who seems clearly influenced by him (possibly by way of Wollstonecraft who quotes him several times in her own work) he’s often given credit for lower-case-c conservative ideas that he is just as likely to have challenged as upheld. But what he was for sure doing - as is Austen - is forcing us to examine our actions as people and as a polity: what we do, why, and what it means for us all. 

It’s not difficult for readers of the Austen Connection to see how all of this might apply to Jane Austen’s characters, their motivations, the way they understand each other or not, and how all of their actions and reactions and the impacts of those actions affect their personal and familial and societal lives. 

So! We’re going to take few posts to look at Austen characters through the lens of Adam Smith! Are you in?! This will be more fun than it sounds - promise! 

Coming up we’ll tackle topics like Mean Mrs. Norris and Lazy Mary Musgrove, Decoy Heroes and Darcy vs. Wickham, Elinor in Hell, and because Adam Smith’s philosophies are associated with the economics sub-topic of Game Theory, we’re going to explore a study by UCLA economics Professor Michael Chwe, with a post we’re thinking of as Jane’s Got Game - how strategic thinking (or not) shapes Austen’s characters and their motivations.

And so we begin with an Austen hero who manages to be all at once proud and generous, scathing and kind, everywhere and elusive, and intimidating and humble.

Because like the best Austen characters: He’s complicated.

And so we begin with an Austen hero who manages to be all at once proud and generous, scathing and kind, everywhere and elusive, and intimidating and humble. Because like the best Austen characters: He’s complicated.

And as it turns out, reading Adam Smith can provide just a little peek through the keyhole and into the writing room of Jane Austen - it doesn’t answer everything, but it can provide a glimpse into some of the moral and motivational human behaviors that Austen is studying and experimenting with, through story.

So let’s look at three specific passages - all from Emma and Adam Smith - where Smith and Austen can be recited side by side to show what both are getting at when it comes to our conduct in a changing economic landscape, and how it impacts our relationships at home and abroad. 

First: Here’s a 30-second, seven-sentence download on what’s happening in the novel Emma for anyone who needs a refresher: Emma Woodhouse is a well-resourced 21-year-old living in the village of Highbury, on a nearby estate that sits adjacent to the estate of Donwell Abbey, owned by a young man named George Knightley. Emma’s older sister is married to Knightley’s younger brother, so while their families have presumably known each other for decades, they also have a direct family connection. Emma is quicker, more intelligent, and more energetic than everyone around her (excepting Knightley, of course) in the small rural village of Highbury - where she lives and rules with her hilariously hypochondriac father and the wise but passive governess-friend who helped raise her. A bored Emma sets about Highbury with the goal of matchmaking several couples, and plays at falling in love herself with a flirtatious, charming Frank Churchill, all the while missing some obvious hazards including a connection/engagement painfully playing out that is hidden in plain sight. Emma’s frustrations, privilege, and her machinations cause some damage to those around her, while her friend Knightley observes in disapproval and tries to redirect her, first kindly and then more assertively. In a key scene of the novel - at the Box Hill picnic - Emma is rude to a very vulnerable older spinster and family friend in Highbury; it’s a last straw for Knightley who briefly leaves town after telling her off; and it causes a major self-revelation for Emma about herself and the world she’s in, and also of course about love. And (spoiler) all live happily ever after, in love, mutual regard and assistance, and affection in Highbury.

Practiced politicians. And also puppies.

Adam Smith is an influential Scottish philosopher writing in the 18th century who is sometimes called the father of economics, and his big things are about: Sympathy, or how we use our imaginations to understand the desires and needs of others; Integrity or Benevolence, or how our conduct toward each other brings goodness back to ourselves as well as to others; and Justice, how we need to stand up, and go to work, for fairness to ourselves and others to create a stable, secure home and society. All of these things also require pride as opposed to vanity; praiseworthiness as opposed to mere praise; and the usefulness that benefits those around us as opposed to inconvenience that leads to a lack of prosperity for those around us. Smith delves into the things that motivate us - and it comes down to the need for love, recognition, and affection that we all have and how that need influences our actions and in turn impacts others.

These needs can cause us to understand needs in others, with the help of “the man in the breast,” as Smith awkwardly describes our conscience; but those needs can also cause us to seek recognition and love/sympathy through means that often become a destructive end, namely through: wealth, rank, power, and recognition.

Enter: Mr. Knightley and Frank Churchill. One is seeking praise; the other is seeking praiseworthiness. 

Here’s Smith on the difference.

“Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regard. She rendered their approbation most flattering and most agreeable to him for its own sake; and their disapprobation most mortifying and most offensive.

But this desire of the approbation, and this aversion to the disapprobation of his brethren, would not alone have rendered him fit for that society for which he was made. Nature, accordingly, has endowed him, not only with a desire of being approved of, but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of; or of being what he himself approves of in other men. The first desire could only have made him wish to appear to be fit for society. The second was necessary in order to render him anxious to be really fit. The first could only have prompted him to the affection of virtue, and to the concealment of vice. The second was necessary in order to inspire him with the real love of virtue, and with the real abhorrence of vice. In every well-formed mind this second desire seems to be the strongest of the two. It is only the weakest and most superficial of mankind who can be much delighted with that praise which they themselves know to be altogether unmerited.”

Alright, if we were ever wondering, we’re now beginning to see where Austen is coming from, with all this talk of “well-formed minds” and vice and virtue, right? 

Austen is illustrating, especially in the story of Emma, so much of what Smith is railing about here. 

First base for Smith is: Desire approbation and regard. Second base: Desire actually being worthy of approbation and regard. The gap between the two creates a space for Vanity.

Emma - who is praised for her painting ability by all except Knightley, famously the only one to point out her faults, has a strong enough mind to be uncomfortable or even disdainful of the praise from those around her, who don’t appreciate her strengths, which are not in painting or music. Or matchmaking.

Adam Smith does not write about women, by the way. They are almost entirely absent from his theories. But Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft before her, doesn’t need his permission to apply all of his philosophies to women and people identifying with and interested in women anyway. And neither do we.

Also, Frank Churchill: This guy is right out of the vanity department of Adam Smith. 

Charming! Callum Turner is Frank Churchill in Autumn de Wilde’s 2020 EMMA. Sporting a haircut right out of Adam Smith. Photo: Courtesy Focus Features.

Not only is Frank Churchill, who talks a good talk - or as Knightley exclaims, “What a letter the man writes!” - conspicuous in his approbation-seeking, he also like the best of Austen’s Decoy Heroes flakes out with the follow-through. He’s misleading and dishonest, and causes damage with his carelessness. 

Some people talk the talk and some people walk the walk. Austen heroes, and heroines, are big walkers in both senses. The Decoy (fake, superficial, but charming) Heroes and Heroines are big talkers.

Austen heroes, and heroines, are big walkers in both senses. The Decoy (fake, superficial, but charming) Heroes and Heroines are big talkers.

Here’s Knightley, the voice of reason in Emma, pointing this out, in one of their first arguments of the novel - I think it’s Argument number 2 in a string of arguments that punctuate the novel Emma - and it’s of course about Frank Churchill. Emma is taken by the Idea of Frank Churchill; meanwhile Knightley is unimpressed, because while Frank seems fashionable and friendly and charming and verbose, he just doesn’t show up, for his father, when he should. Even though Emma largely agrees (and thinks this to herself), she still engages in the argument - it’s a chance for her to find out more about herself and more about Knightley, a predicament that will lead to love. 

It’s a fun scene - early on setting up the difference of philosophies between these two people we know should be together, and also setting up a cultural, societal, and philosophical study that Austen is always doing along with everything else she’s doing:

So here we go: Knightley calls Frank “a very weak young man.”

Emma: “We shall never agree about him,” cried Emma; “but that is nothing extraordinary. I have not the least idea of his being a weak young man; I feel sure that he is not. … he is very likely to have a more yielding, complying, mild disposition than would suit your notions of man’s perfection. I dare say he has; and though it may cut him off from some advantages, it will secure him many others.”

Knightley: “Yes; all the advantages of sitting still when he ought to move, and of leading a life of mere idle pleasure, and fancying himself extremely expert in finding excuses for it. He can sit down and write a fine flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods … His letters disgust me.”

Emma: “Your feelings are singular. They [the letters] seem to satisfy every body else.” 

……

[Emma continues]

“My idea of him is, that he can adapt his conversation to the taste of every body, and has the power as well as the wish of being universally agreeable. To you, he will talk of farming; to me, of drawing or music; and so on to every body, having that general information on all subjects which will enable him to follow the lead, or take the lead, just as propriety may require, and to speak extremely well on each; that is my idea of him.”

“And mine,” said Mr. Knigtley warmly, “is, that if he turn out any thing like it, he will be the most insufferable fellow breathing! What! At three-and-twenty to be the kind of his company-the great man-the practiced politician, who is to read every body’s character, and make every body’s talents conduce to the display of his own superiority; to be dispensing his flatteries around, that we may all appear like fools compared with himself! My dear Emma, your own good sense could not endure such a puppy when it came to the point.” 

The “most insufferable fellow breathing!” OK, Knightley! So what we have going on in this argument is the best thing about the arguments between Emma and Knightley, which is that not only are they getting to know each other through intellectual combat, but also it’s what Austen herself does here, which is to put the Status Quo argument - praise for politicians! - in the mouth of Emma and to put a more radical argument in the mouth of the landed, patriarchal Mr. Knightley (disgusted by “the practiced politician”). And then she’ll (Austen) let Knightley win. 

And Emma as a story is relatively happy only because Frank gets lucky, and is able to circle back and at least attempt the appearance of an apology and better behavior, knowing that an apology is necessary and warranted. But we’ll get to this apology - which comes in a letter, which Knightley hilariously will annotate, giving us the Knightley POV in eerie detail. But first we need to talk about another downfall that the Vain are vulnerable to: Over-reaching. 

A Theory on Frank Churchill’s haircut

In Austen, every detail matters. And much of the time - still, after 200 years - we enjoy the struggle of figuring out what this author is doing with the clearly-intentional details being presented to us. It’s possible Adam Smith can answer for some of these details.

And one of the things we are seeing by reading Austen through a prism of Adam Smith is we can see Knightley holding back from the vanities and extravagances in both material possessions and also in social networks and in the display of these things.

We see this restraint, this declining of social extravagances and games, when he bluntly explains to the nosy, over-reaching Mrs. Elton that she does not need to plan his house party - it’s a blunt, intentional moment in this novel. And what is it for?! That’s what it’s for - Knightley is not playing. 

We see it in his declining to play and even disapproving of games that are played in this novel. We see it in his walking rather than taking a carriage. We see it in his stewardship of the land of his estate and his generosity to those who live off of it with him.

And we can also see it in Frank’s haircut.

Here’s what Smith says about how vanity can lead to extravagancies that seek to find what he calls “beauty” but which instead veer away from the truly beautiful, and useful.

Instead of seeking out convenience (Knightley’s word also), extravagances, and attention, go for equity and prudence. This will bring prosperity rather than pain to all who associate with you. 

Here’s Smith:

“The characters of men, as well as the contrivances of art, or the institutions of civil government, may be fitted either to promote or to disturb the happiness both of the individual and of the society. The prudent, the equitable, the active, resolute, and sober character promises prosperity and satisfaction, both to the person himself and to every one connected with him. The rash, the insolent, the slothful, effeminate, and voluptuous, on the contrary, forebodes ruin to the individual, and misfortune to all who have any thing to do with him.” (p. 218)

Which are you, Frank Churchill, Knightley seems to be asking: Are you prudent and equitable, are you promoting or disturbing the happiness of those around you? Are you useful or inconvenient?

And Smith goes further to give us a huge clue about a linguistic Austen question I’ve had - why does she talk so much in her novels of usefulness? Fanny Price is ridiculously useful. Anne Elliot at the Cobb and our “correct” heroines are all somehow useful. We discussed, in our post on bell hooks, Jane Austen, and a radical theory of love, that “usefulness” in Austen seems to signify “love.” And we continue to like that theory. And it may well also, it turns out, come from Smith! 

Here’s Smith on not only usefulness, but also beauty: “This beauty and deformity which characters appear to derive from their usefulness or inconveniency, are apt to strike, in a peculiar manner, those who consider, in an abstract and philosophical light, the actions and conduct of mankind.” 

In other words, our actions impact those around us. Are we useful to those who love us or are we inconvenient? Something to think about on a Sunday. (But go easy on yourself - it’s the weekend.)

These words to us today - usefulness and inconvenience, beauty and utility - sound small. But for Austen as well as Smith they are big. They are nothing less than Enlightenment philosophy.

So here we have Knightley arriving at the Coles’ mansion. He’s in a carriage, which pleases Emma. It’s another puzzling, brief but somewhat intense exchange between Knightley and Emma as Emma lectures Knightley about how he arrives without dignity - by walking! - and how he should be arriving in a carriage. And meanwhile as this scene/chapter opens Frank Churchill has had a haircut. These are details that are perplexing us 209 years later - and that have led critics through the centuries to mislead us into thinking that Austen writes a Comedy of Manners focused only on drawing-room dramas and domesticity. In fact, she’s echoing Smith with a serious, but novelized study on human behavior, connectivity, and society. And haircuts.

So at the beginning of Emma Vol. 2 Chapter 8, we have this perfect contrast in little things about Frank Churchill and George Knightley that seem small but that may represent something big: All that’s going on, on the surface, is that Frank has been to London for a haircut - extravagance. No real beauty or utility to see here. All extravagance and inconvenience not to mention vanity.

But here’s Emma rationalizing it. “He came back, had had his hair cut, and laughed at himself with a very good grace, but without seeming really at all ashamed of what he had done. He had no reason to wish his hair longer, to conceal any confusion of face; no reason to wish the money unspent, to improve his spirits. He was quite as undaunted and as lively as ever;” - and so on.

We should interject here to say: Austen is being ironic. It’s funny. And she’s also using her powers of technique - the innovative free, indirect discourse - to put us in the mind of Emma as she rationalizes, and to justify the haircut in a way that makes us as the reader skeptical about the justification!

So Emma rationalizes all this - an illogic we already know is beneath even her, and Knightley doesn’t even bother to respond as Emma continues: “... certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.” Wha?! “Mr. Knightley, he is not a trifling, silly young man.” If you say so, Emma.  

And three paragraphs later, finally, here’s Emma and Knightley arriving at the Coles, Emma spots Knightley arriving in his carriage and is pleased:

He [Knightley] thanked her, observing, “How lucky that we should arrive at the same moment for, if we had met first in the drawing-room, I doubt whether you would have discerned me to be more of a gentleman than usual. —You might not have distinguished how I came, by my look or manner.” [SMH. LOL.]

“Yes, I should, I am sure I should. There is always a look of consciousness or bustle when people come in a way which they know to be beneath them. You think you carry it off very well, I dare say, but with you it is a sort of bravado, and air of affected unconcern; I always observe it whenever I meet you under those circumstances. Now you have nothing to try for. You are not afraid of being supposed ashamed. You are not trying to look taller than any body else. Now I shall really be very happy to walk into the same room with you.

“Nonsensical girl!” was his reply, but not at all in anger.

This passage highlights one of our favorite things about Emma and Emma - and we have to say it again: that Austen puts the fallacious, elite arguments of the status quo and class snobbery in the mouth of our heroine, and leaves the examples of egalitarian practice to the landed Knightley. If this is Austen’s way of doing what Emma the character does - switching the voice of her arguments to more strongly make the point - it’s working on us still to this day. 

Knightley, annotating

And you’ve noticed, and we’ve talked about it here before, how Austen changes the pace of her narrative, as author Inger Brodey puts it*, at the endings of some of her novels. And while we are rushed suspensefully to an ending and “perfect felicity” some of the time we also often slow down, take a breath, and hang out with our hero and heroine while they conduct some post-game analysis. 

The post-game analysis is for instance where Darcy, in Pride and Prejudice, refers to himself as spoiled and reconsiders his privileged upbringing, and where Elizabeth describes herself as impertinent and reconsiders her own limitations and that of her family. 

In Emma, the post-game analysis comes in several conversations that are revealing of the author’s purposes, and one comes in a really kind of awkward and strange scene that completely stops the proceedings as we all sit down to read a letter. Not a love letter, not anything interesting in itself other than what it reveals about our Decoy Hero’s character, our Decoy Hero in this novel being the flaky, flirty Frank Churchill. 

In Emma, the post-game analysis comes in several conversations that are revealing of the author’s purposes, and one comes in a really kind of awkward and strange scene that completely stops the proceedings as we all sit down to read a letter. Not a love letter, not anything interesting in itself other than what it reveals about our Decoy Hero’s character, our Decoy Hero in this novel being the flaky, flirty Frank Churchill. 

But not only does this letter reveal this character we’re beginning to no longer care about, it also does a character reveal of Knightley, a character we now love.

Because Knightley agrees to sit and listen to this letter that Emma wants to read him - but not only that, he then proceeds to annotate the letter!

This is a letter, annotated and text-becoming-meta-text, as Austen so often does. So here’s the passage where Emma is reading Knightley a letter from Frank Churchill, wherein Emma feels gracious and forgiving of Frank for his carelessness and his treatment of her and his secret fiance Jane Fairfax. And just as we’re kind of going along with Emma and her forgiving feelings, here comes Knightley and his high Smithian ideals. Which are revealing.

It’s really sweet that at first Knightley doesn’t want to have his Emma time interrupted by reading Frank’s letter, but then he says if he’s going to read it, he’ll turn it into a conversation and a chance for intimacy - yes, you heard that right. Here’s Knightley:

“It will be natural for me,” he added shortly afterwards, “to speak my opinion aloud as I read. By doing it, I shall feel that I am near you. It will not be so great a loss of time; but if you will dislike it —

“Not at all. I should wish it.”

Mr. Knightley returned to his reading with greater alacrity.

So Knightley proceeds to read, and comment, and it’s awesome, and then we get this string-of-consciousness passage that I’d forgotten about. A reminder that Austen was truly experimenting with language in a way that Virginia Woolf if not James Joyce and the modernists to come would recognize, and the most notable passage of this might be Mrs. Elton’s confused musings while picking strawberries at Donwell Abbey. But a string-of-consciousness passage also belongs to Knightley and his broken thoughts after being in the mind of Frank Churchill and hearing Frank’s narration of his actions and his friendship with Emma. And it’s quite the rant - a reflective, baffled, stream-of-consciousness rant full of wisdom, strategic thinking, sympathy/empathy, and all the Things of Adam Smith! 

“When he had come to Miss Woodhouse, he was obliged to read the whole of it aloud — all that related to her, with a smile; a look; a shake of the head; a word or two of assent, or disapprobation; or merely of love, as the subject required; concluding, however, seriously, and after steady reflection, thus —

“Very bad—though it might have been worse. —Playing a most dangerous game. Too much indebted to the event for his acquittal. —No judge of his own manners by you. —Always deceived in fact by his own wishes, and regardless of little besides his own convenience. —Fancying you to have fathomed his secret. Natural enough! —his own mind full of intrigue, that he should suspect it in others. —Mystery; Finesse—how they pervert the understanding! My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?”

Did you spot the Smithian words “convenient” and “beauty” - and you may spot others - coming from Knightley? There’s also some other Smithian principles at play here such as the subjectivity of our morals, as Knightley finds Frank “deceived in fact by his own wishes” - some Enlightenment-era fact-checking going on there.

And in this annotation with Emma is a surprising moment - one pointed out by Michael Chwe in his book Jane Austen, Game Theorist** - where Knightley says something I had never noticed before about Frank’s treatment of Jane during their secret engagement:

“This is very bad. —He has induced her to place herself, for his sake, in a situation of extreme difficulty and uneasiness, and it should have been his first object to prevent her from suffering unnecessarily. —... He should have respected even unreasonable scruples, had there been such; but her’s were all reasonable.”

Talk about inconvenient. Thank you, Adam Smith; and thank you, Knightley: Frank should have accepted Jane’s requests, given her vulnerable situation, even if her requests were unreasonable. And hers were reasonable.

This is Austen annotating Knightley annotating Frank. This is Austen ventriloquizing as the great artist who’s in control of this story, in control of this world, and she’s telling you now. Thank U, Next.

This one sentence is full of rationality, reason, generosity, respect - so much in one sentence - and all in service to a vision of how we might treat each other, how we might treat family members, how we might treat a romantic partner, especially when the power is all on our side. 

This is Austen annotating Knightley annotating Frank. This is Austen ventriloquizing as the great artist who’s in control of this story, in control of this world, and she’s telling you now. Thank U, Next.

This one sentence is full of rationality, reason, generosity, respect - so much in one sentence - and all in service to a vision of how we might treat each other, how we might treat family members, how we might treat a romantic partner, especially when the power is all on our side. 

Jane acted well; Frank acted badly. Frank should have been led by Jane; but the opposite was happening. So the person with few options or resources was acting with courage, restraint, and integrity; while the person with many options and resources was acting with carelessness, and even as Knightley points out acting disrespectfully toward someone who - this post-game analysis makes clear - is superior. You’re inconvenient, Frank!

But the Big Thing going on this minute with Knightley in Emma is about - and again you can see the importance in the tone before understanding why it’s there - is a larger picture about interconnectedness. Adam Smith said it first. Economists and historians have deployed these theories to justify laissez-faire economics, taking it to mean that even when we act in self-interest, things have a way of working out in the markets to the advantage of everybody - and this self-interest mixed with mutual interest and mutual-impact is a force Smith referred to as the “invisible hand.” But what Smith is most concerned with is how this all works out morally, and societally, in our personal relations and how these moral underpinnings are extrapolated to impact our society at large. It’s not always how we remember Smith but nevertheless here Smith is, urging us to act in what he calls “sympathy” and with the needs, concerns, and motivations of others in mind:

“All the members of human society stand in need of each others assistance, and are likewise exposed to mutual injuries. Where the necessary assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship, and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy. All the different members of it are bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn to one common center of mutual good offices.”

Did we remember, friends, and fellow economists, scholars, historians, and analysts, that Adam Smith, the so-called Father of Capitalism, actually calls for affection, gratitude, and mutual assistance that bands us together through love?

Knightley - with his emphatic calls for mutual assistance and affection in Highbury embodies this - and if this is accidental it’s still interesting; but also it’s just possible Austen created Knightley intentionally to do just this, to embody Smithian principles.  

What Smith is most concerned with is how this all works out morally, and societally, in our personal relations and how these moral underpinnings are extrapolated to impact our society at large. It’s not always how we remember Smith but nevertheless here Smith is, urging us to act in what he calls “sympathy” and with the needs, concerns, and motivations of others in mind.

This proves what we always suspect: that Austen is not only creating stories, but that these stories are weighted with the heft of philosophical enquiries, economic models, and psychological studies. And probably a lot more that we haven’t even thought of, but we’ll likely - if we’re lucky as a world - spend another 250 years exploring and deciphering and making sense of it.

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And meanwhile, friends, we’re in it together!

Let us know - do the stories of Jane Austen speak to you in any way when it comes to our divisions, our politics, our mutual aid-or-not that we have going on in society, wherever you are today and wherever you are reading? Are you a Knightley fan but not exactly sure why and do these passages from Adam Smith influence your reading of Knightley, and Emma, and of Frank Churchill, or not? Any secret fans of Frank out there? (If so, you’re not alone - I’m sure Austen saw the appeal in these nuanced Decoy Heroes!) And what about decoy-heroine Jane Fairfax (who) Drops the Mic?! Let us know!

Meanwhile, we’ll be here, unpacking Austen and two-and-a-half centuries of conversations that have gone before us and the new conversations emerging. Have a beautiful Sunday, hope you are finding lots of health, wealth, and happiness of your own variety today.

Yours truly,

Plain Jane

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Your input needed - the Austen Train is coming:

Speaking of centuries of conversations: Jane Austen’s 250th birthday year is coming. It’s in 2025. We want to know what you think about something we are contemplating: the Jane Austen Global Bookclub! An international, Austen Connection-hosted read-along for Jane Austen’s 250th birthday year. The idea is to tackle all six of the published novels - one every two months, making our way through the calendar year of 2025 by reading All of Austen - together! Who’s in?!

The read-along would begin on/around  Sunday, January 12 with Northanger Abbey and go through to Sunday, Dec. 21 as we wrapped up the whole thing with Persuasion. Our read-along would also include a community of readers and dialogue, with regular new podcast episodes, regular live Zoom meetups, and possibly a Group Watch Party with a special cocktail to wrap up each read - and all would feature some of the Austen world’s most amazing co-hosts joining us, and of course lots of discussions, connecting our communities across the globe, as we talk about Jane Austen, how her stories connect to us today and connect us to each other.

This plan could change, and honestly we’re figuring out a way to fund this effort - but this is the outline of an initial plan so far! 

So: What do you think? Is this something you would sign up for? Would you like to tackle all the novels of Austen over the course of this 250th year - a year that will see a lot of Austen Madness and celebration - and would you like to do this in a read-along? 

We should say that for Austen Connection subscribers who don’t want to re-read every novel in this way, this Substack community will still include all the regular posts, podcasts, and more - so there will be plenty of things to tap into without actually re-reading on the schedule. It’ll be a moving Austen train that people can jump on and off at any time, and enjoy the scenery and discussion along the way. 

But we want to hear from you first - let us know if you’d be up re-reading the Austen novels in a Group Read, and/or if you’d rather skip all the re-reading and just tap into the discussions here occasionally, or none of the above! 

Cool links and community

• The Theory of Moral Sentiments, by Adam Smith. 

• Emma, by Jane Austen. And EMMA. A 2020 film by Autumn de Wilde, starring folk-musician Johnny Flynn as Knightley and Furiosa Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma.
  Here’s several minutes of Knightley walking in a Smithian way and arguing about flaky Frank also in a Smithian way:

• *The Price of Happiness, by Inger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey - is a new release coming this week - Tuesday, June 11th. And, stay tuned: Dr. Brodey took some time to chat with the Austen Connection podcast - it’ll land in your inbox soon. 

• **-Jane Austen, Game Theorist is a 2013 book by Michael Chwe. Fascinating discussion by UCLA economist Chwe who reads Austen totally differently and highlights parts of Austen that had completely got by me. 

• And here’s a YouTube vid featuring Chwe with Austen and Mary Shelley scholar Anne Mellor:

• An entire podcast episode about Frank’s Haircut - from my brilliant, funny podcast friends at The Thing About Austen - Enjoy!

• More on Emma from the Austen Connection - putting some of these earlier posts up for grabs in case this massive post isn’t enough!: Jane Fairfax drops the mic, Emma is about power, and a fave: Emma’s arguments. Enjoy.

• Shout out to Substack writer and author

  Henry Oliver
  who raised a question on Substack Notes asking for the Jane Austen that was influenced by Adam Smith - and I was immediately determined to dive in to that question. Henry Oliver’s Substack is The Common Reader.

• Finally: “Emma” as Furiosa. “To get home, Furiosa fought the world.” Sounds like Fanny Price to me.

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