Why Jane Austen is Absolute Proof of the Existence of God

Jane Austen’s nephew lovingly imprisoned “dear aunt Jane” in a fortress that he called a memoir, guarding her “sweet temper,” “loving heart,” “humble mind,” and “modest simplicity” from the rapidly changing world.

The sketch accompanying the memoir shows an Austen with large lustrous eyes, a half-smile on her lips, and rows of feminine lace on her cap and gown, a far cry from its prototype, a sketch done by her favorite sister, Cassandra, showing a thin-lipped, beady-eyed woman in austere clothing.

But what of Austen’s own voice?

She praises disagreeable people because “it saves me the trouble of liking them.”

Commenting on the carnage of the Peninsular War she calls it a “blessing that one cares for none of them.”

Most shocking is her report about the premature birth of a stillborn child. She conjectures that the child’s mother went into labor “some weeks before she was expected, owing to a fright—I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband.”

Was Jane Austen a flawed human being or a seer who explored the human heart with sensitivity and wisdom?

Yes.

Surely her six masterpieces were inspired by a divinity transcending her human limitations.

Just as Shakespeare abandoned his family for a theatrical career in London, leaving his wife only his “second-best bed” in his will.

Just as Spenser’s delicate religious allegory exists side by side with praise for Lord Grey’s slaughter of the Irish.

Just as Ezra Pound wrote Nazi propaganda.

In our own lives too, we see this doubleness.

My colleague in the English Department who can be incredibly insensitive to students’ feelings, yet who nevertheless has performed some of the kindest deeds imaginable for these same students.

Or the checker at the supermarket who takes time to comment on my cooking plans or even asks about a brand of an item that I have bought and whether it is good or not because she’s been thinking of trying it.

Or the black man who sprints across Starbuck’s parking lot to see if I injured myself when I fell and tore the knee out of my trousers. Racial and economic barriers fell before his compassion.

These may be people whose political views I would abhor, whose social values might sicken me, yet their emotional generosity argues an inner spirituality immune to superficial beliefs.

In this way, balancing the human and divine, we are all like Jane Austen.