George Knightley as a GOP Moderate

 Northam chastises Paltrow in "Emma"

Knightley (Northam) chastises Emma (Paltrow)

David Brooks of The New York Times makes an extended reference to Jane Austen in a recent column that unintentionally gives us insight into why socially moderate Republicans are being marginalized within today’s GOP. Brooks thinks we have a social problem with politeness, but I’m going to argue that the issue is actually one of power: there is a clash in the Republican Party between those who have power and want to keep it vs. those who don’t and want it. To make my point, I will be embarking on a discussion of how Jane Austen handles issues of class.

First to the Brooks article. Lamenting, as he often does, the decline of civility in our political life, Brooks complains about those people who “don’t suffer fools gladly.” Instead of flaunting one’s superiority over fools, he asks, why can’t we follow Edmund Burke’s lead and practice good manners:

 Smart people who’ve thought about this usually understand that the habits we put in practice end up shaping the people we are within. “Manners are of more importance than laws,” Edmund Burke wrote. “Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.”

Brooks then talks about Mr. Knightley chastising Emma after she has been rude to the foolish, and lower class, Miss Bates:

If Miss Bates were rich or smart or your equal, maybe this rudeness would have been tolerable, Mr. Knightley tells her, but “she is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born to; and, if she live to old age, must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed!”

Notice where the example puts Brooks: he, like Emma, is above the Miss Bateses of the world but, unlike those who suffer fools ungladly, he is polite to them.

I have no problem with Mr. Knightley scolding Emma for her manners—I raised my own kids to be polite—but I don’t think we should be naïve about what is at stake here. Of all Jane Austen’s novels, Emma is the one that is most shaped by class anxiety. By behaving badly, Emma is not only being a jerk. She is putting class privilege, both her own and that of Mr. Knightley, at risk.

Think about it for a moment. The only reason that Emma is able to lord it over the rest of her village is because of her birth and inherited wealth. Meanwhile, there are a whole host of characters of lower birth that would like to have what she has. There is Mr. Elton, the rector who wants to marry her. There is Mrs. Elton, daughter of a Bristol “merchant” (possibly a slave trader), who struggles with Emma over who will be preeminent in Highbury society. Emma’s governess, Miss Taylor, marries up. Jane Fairfax, daughter of a lower-class military man, marries up. The illegitimate Harriet, “spoiled” by Emma so that she becomes dissatisfied with what should be her lot in society, threatens to usurp Emma’s rightful place as Mrs. Knightley (or so Emma thinks). With the ideas of the French Revolution still floating in the air, seemingly calm Highbury is a potential cauldron of social unrest.

The landed gentry, the Knightleys and Emmas, cannot ultimately stem the tide. Merchant and industrial wealth are well on their way to supplanting landed wealth, as we will see in Austen’s next novel where self-made navy men move into estates that impoverished baronets have been forced to rent out. As the economic landscape changes and land declines in value, the gentry have only their aura of superiority to fall back on. By lowering herself with an insensitive joke, Emma threatens to throw away this advantage. Therefore, another member of her class must set her right.

By the end of the novel, social order has been restored: Emma marries Knightley while Harriet marries someone closer to her own social class and no longer consorts with her former patron. Because class boundaries in England were never as rigid as those in 18th century France, some class mobility is allowed, but those who rise must do so humbly and quietly so as not to shake things up (Jane, Mrs. Weston). Those who are nakedly ambitious, on the other hand, become the objects of Jane Austen’s satiric scorn (the Eltons). The crisis has passed. For now.

But there’s a chance that, one day, the Mrs. Eltons will stop paying homage to the gentry. That’s what’s happening in our own time.

Think of Knightley and Emma as establishment Republicans in the David Brooks mold. They are admirable and think that, if they minister to the poor and treat their inferiors politely, society as it should be (which is to say, society with them in charge) will stay the same. To them, showing proper respect  to “inferiors” is a way of maintaining the status quo.

Brooks, however, is not a politician but someone living a good life who doesn’t have to engage in any dirty work to keep it going. Those establishment Republicans who need to get voters to the polls realize that they are in the minority and could be outvoted. Therefore, they make alliances, most famously with white working class voters, whom they rile up with wedge issues. Don’t raise rates on our income or tax our inheritance or take away our special loopholes, they say. Look rather at those other people, closer to your class, who are fighting for the same scraps your are. Take out your anger on shiftless welfare cheats and illegal immigrants and gay rights activists and anti-gun, pro-abortion liberals. Vote for us and we’ll let you share the power table with us—only somehow we’ll keep making money whereas your issues will never become law. (Oh, all right, we’ll let the automatic weapons ban lapse.)

This strategy has been working fairly well since the 1980’s.  But now rightwing populists—Sarah Palin is a pretty good candidate for a modern-day Mrs. Elton—have stopped acting polite. Sure, they still vote Republican when faced with the prospect of a liberal black president, but they’ve got a taste for power—or at least disruption—and are willing to sink the country’s credit rating if they don’t get more respect. They barely listened to Mitt Romney, even though they were impressed that he made tons of money. They certainly don’t listen to David Brooks.

As middle class incomes stagnate and wealth discrepancy grows, genteel politeness is no longer keeping these people in line. Instead, we get one Congressman shouting out “you, lie” at a State of the Union address and other members (I’m particularly thinking of Alan Watts and Michele Bachman) all but accusing the president of treason. We have rightwing commentators accusing the Secretary of State of faking it when she concusses and develops a blood clot.

In Emma, Mrs. Elton seeks to impress Highbury with accounts of how her brother-in-law owns the latest in carriages, a barouche landau, and will one day visit them to show it off. Luckily for Emma and Mrs. Knightley, he never comes and they are able to continue to run Highbury uncontested. By Thomas Hardy’s novels at the end of the century (think Alec D’Urberville) , he’s the guy in charge.

No wonder the world of Downton Abbey looks so good to us at the moment.

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