Mirrors to One Another

Ryle and others have long persuaded us that Jane Austen was a virtue ethicist. But was she an Aristotelian virtue ethicist? Eva Dadlez, in her convincing and beautifully crafted monograph, asks us to judge otherwise: Hume, she says, not Aristotle, provides the theoretical background we need to understand Austen's virtue ethics. Of course there is a better chronological fit. They belong to the same age, with Hume being just early enough for his writings and ideas to have been widely disseminated by the time Austen was writing. Dadlez is not concerned with proving that Austen had read Hume and agreed with his views, but rather with showing that Hume's virtue ethics are a much better fit with Austen's novels than Aristotle's or anybody else's are. A better fit in what sense? Here Dadlez has to dip into the rich and contentious debate on ethical criticism: can literature have anything to do with moral theory, and if so, what? She avoids opening a can of worms by focusing on one point only, that novels can serve as thought‐experiments for moral theories, and therefore encourage moral reflection of a certain kind. Novels that do this contribute to our moral education by illustrating the kind of consequences our actions can bring about, how they can affect our lives and the lives of those around us. Austen, she argues, is especially suited for this because she presents us with non‐idealized versions of people who are like ourselves and like people we know, and who are engaged in everyday activities, nothing grand, but just the kind of things in which the effect of character is shown. (How you behave to a Miss Bates is in some ways more telling about who you are than how you behave in exceptional circumstances – it is in those less guarded, more private moments that true character shows.)

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