Authority and Instability: Investigating Jane Austen’s View of the Church and Clergy in Pride and Prejudice

Abstract

The Church of England, the greatest Anglican establishment and the symbol of Great Britain's imperialism, has been the juncture of English history and literature throughout history. Although, after industrialization, the British society went toward a religious reformation in the Victorian era, some historians consider the early nineteenth century England as the 'Golden age' of England's ecclesiastical imperialism. Jane Austen, in her six published novels, has scrutinized the true essence of the Church of England from her specific glasses of sharpness. So, with reference to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, this paper engages in questioning whether her works, as famous literary works of the nineteenth century which satirically depict the original social context of the time, influenced the social mind toward the Victorian reformation. In Pride and Prejudice, Miss Austen doubts the power and real position of the church and shows her disdain for religion through the foolish narrow-minded characterization of the story's clergyman: Mr. William Collins. The present study aims to illuminate the true essence of The Church of England during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century according to what Jane Austen has depicted in her novel Pride and Prejudice. Hence, this paper first probes into the religious climate of the pre-Victorian era, then it investigates Jane Austen's role, as one of the greatest writers of the age, in Victorian religious reformation, and lastly, the study aims to conclude how the British society led to the decline of religion and ecclesiasticism in the modern age.