This week, I reread Jane Austen’s Persuasion – which I enjoyed way more than my first read of it and devoured during my daily commute.

I’ve always paid attention to how Jane Austen wrote about members of the church, since she is famously the daughter of a genteel country clergyman. They get incorporated a lot into her works, and at least three of the love interests/heroes are clergy. I also appreciate the fact that she writes about them as human beings first, rather than their professions, because their characters are not always at par. In fact, I think most of them are never as good as they ought to be, and that’s a pointed observation towards a group of people she must have known very well.

So, to rank major clergymen characters in Austen:

1. Edward Ferrars from Sense and Sensibility – OK. I personally think Edward here is a little weak. I don’t understand what attracted him at all to Lucy Steele, because she’s so clearly not a good noodle (although maybe that’s because we are reading it from Elinor’s POV). I always thought Elinor deserved better than him, simply because of his failure to explain the whole truth and sort matters out for himself.

2. Mr. Collins and George Wickham from Pride and Prejudice – I had to include both. Wickham was studying to take holy orders, but he’s such a cad – imagine if he actually ended up pursuing the profession. *shudders* Collins is a little better, but he’s so odious and condescending that I should hope my parish to never be led by a person like him.

3. Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey – I think my best beloved Austen clergyman is Tilney. He’s a genuinely good guy who knows what love entails, and isn’t afraid to pursue it. Of course, he has his flaws. He rebukes Catherine without thinking that maybe she has a point about his parents: his father might not be a monster in a horror novel, but he did treat his wife terribly. Tilney realises this in the end, I think.

4. Mr. Elton from Emma – Collins is at least odious at front. Elton is a snake of a vicar. He isn’t quite the villain (I think Emma herself is the villain in her story) but he comes very close to it. Him and the wife he eventually got deserved each other for being mean-spirited people. The poor people of Highbury.

5. Edmund Bertram from Mansfield Park – Oop, Edmund very nearly fell into temptation with Mary Crawford. Pity Edmund for making mostly correct decisions except where it may have mattered the most. I’m one of the rare people who do love Fanny Price (because how can they expect her to be as sparkling as Lizzy Bennet when she’s basically a subservient charity case in her Aunt’s care??). It was mortifying for Fanny (and for me!) to watch Edmund be so blind.

6. Charles Heyter from Persuasion – A name not familiar to many, because Charles Heyter only serves the purpose of getting together with Henrietta Musgrove, leaving the playing field for Captain Wentworth open for Louisa Musgrove (and lowkey a Miss Anne Elliot, yeehaw). Charles Heyter shows more of the circumstances of clergy rather than a character, although he seems like a good dude too. Whatever, he’s one of three Charles’ in this book.

I haven’t read through Sanditon, and I don’t recall any clergymen in Lady Susan, but I think there was a shift in how Austen characterized her leading men. From mostly genteel suitors who were landowners, clergy, or soldiers, she changes her view in Persuasion, where the good men are the productive members of the Navy – who are informed about the world and well-travelled. These are people who worked hard to get to the top of their profession, and it does look like a great compliment to Austen’s brothers and their friends who were in the Navy at the time as well. Though they don’t get much screen time until Persuasion came along, I think she made their roles here count.

I love getting trapped in Austen’s world and her time, even just for a little while. You can feel the shifts and the changes in how she thought women ought to be viewed, and even if she’s a rector’s spinster daughter from the 1800s, she writes about real people and real characters so that even a girl from the South East Asia in the 2000s can still relate to her.

Even though a lot of the criticism directed at her is that her worldview is stuck in the ball rooms of her time, I think it’s these pictures of real human beings from the mind of a wickedly funny, observant, wine aunt single woman are what make reading Austen a truly extraordinary gift.