Jane Austen on Wisdom and Wit

[ljwrites]

Wisdom is better than Wit, & in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.

-- Jane Austen

This quote, from one of Austen's letters, was introduced in Tony Tanner's 1966 introduction to the Penguin Books edition of Mansfield Park, as part of an explanation of the book's themes and symbolism and why it is so different from her beloved earlier works. It's certainly even more poignant coming from a woman who loved wit as much as Austen did, as Tanner pointed out. Look at her ironic slyness in this very sentence, envisioning Wisdom as "getting the last laugh" over Wit when laughter is generally thought to be the province of the latter.

Comments

[loopy777]

I dunno, I see wisdom as the knight errant and wit as the loyal squire. The former is more effective with the aid of the latter.

[ljwrites]

I think that's exactly what Jane herself was doing in that quote, and arguably with her body of work: putting wit to the service of wisdom. Wisdom without wit can be plodding and uninteresting. Wit without wisdom is unmoored and hollow. Like you I believe they need each other and depend on each other.

[minoanmiss]

*reads and contemplates*

[ljwrites]

Coincidentally I think of you and your post about physical books when I read Mansfield Park, because my copy is a physical book that means a great deal to me. Also I brought up the Tao Te Ching in another comment but the theme of MP is very close to Lao Tzu's wuwei, principled inaction. Fanny is often pilloried for being an inactive protagonist who does nothing, and I'm like... well, why is that a bad thing? Isn't it better to do nothing than to do wrong, which just about every other character in the novel does? (She also does a great deal of emotional control and emotional labor for those around her, but that's a subject of another rant.)

[minoanmiss]

You are a wonderfully thinky person. :)

[ljwrites]

I have "overthinker" in my header for a reason XD