This summer, three things have dominated my thought life:
- Reports that Adam Sandler officiated Taylor Swift’s wedding at Madison Square Garden.
- All things World Cup, primarily Erling Haaland, a Norwegian soccer player who millions of people (myself included) became momentarily obsessed with.
- The Other Bennet Sister, a charming Jane Austen–inspired miniseries.
The World Cup is over and Taylor Swift’s wedding has faded behind newer headlines, so the third item on my list has inspired the most thought.
The Other Bennet Sister (based on a book of the same name) follows the story of Mary Bennet after Pride and Prejudice. The show is a joy to watch: Mary is funny, charming, smart, and curious, and the characters who play an important role in her own character arc manage to have depth and likability while still being flawed and fumbling, as real people are. But alongside Mary’s journey of self-discovery, the miniseries offers a disappointing (and misguided) thesis: “Our happiness is in our own hands.”
Mary is offered this admonition amid a conversation with the depressed and despondent vicar, Mr. Collins, who shares with her that he has taken up a study of Aristotle’s philosophy of happiness: what it is and how one might find it. It was a very interesting moment in the show … and one that made me want to pull out my red card.
The scene:
Mr. Collins: What I have discovered seems to suggest that it is only through self-knowledge that genuine happiness is experienced. I think it is only when we have examined and understood our strengths and weaknesses and been honest about what we truly desire from life, only then do we have any chance at all of attaining happiness.
Mary: So what Aristotle is saying is: our happiness is in our own hands?
Mr. Collins: Yes. I think so, yes.
While I am not a philosopher or an academic, it seems as though Mr. Collins and Mary have made a shortsighted conclusion (or at least one that Jane Austen might’ve dismissed as such) to Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s seminal scholarship on what it means to live well. While Aristotle does extol the necessity of self-knowledge in the pursuit of happiness, he also says that man cannot be the source of his own happiness. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle takes a whole chapter to discuss the importance of human relationships for man to not just survive but thrive:
It is also disputed whether the happy man will need friends or not. It is said that those who are supremely happy and self-sufficient have no need of friends; for they have the things that are good, and therefore being self-sufficient they need nothing further, while a friend, being another self, furnishes what a man cannot provide by his own effort. (NE. Book IX.9)
In his book Happiness and Contemplation, which is itself a commentary on Nicomachean Ethics, German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper says, “Happiness is essentially a gift; we are not the forgers of our own felicity” (p. 25). Sounds quite different from what Mary Bennet or Mr. Collins are scripted to believe, doesn’t it? But grace doesn’t make universally compelling television, I suppose.
After Mr. Collins and Mary’s discussion about happiness, the story continues to depict Mary admirably forging a path towards her own felicity. In many ways, Mary is to be admired in her resolve; she must and does learn to reject passivity and resist harmful and false narratives that cloud her judgment about both herself and others. She also resists the temptation to rely on the pursuit of knowledge as her sole source of identity and happiness. However, Mary is only able to do any of this because other people (people who truly love her as she is) intervene emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and physically.
While it is tempting to credit Mary’s happiness with her resilience or resolve, she cannot and does not actually accomplish any of this alone. Rather, it is because of the kind, compassionate, protective, encouraging, and healthy relationship Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner forge with Mary and she with them. The Gardiners’ hospitality makes it possible for Mary to proceed into this fuller life; they literally welcome her into their home, their humor, and their love, sharing generously and without expectation. It is by their hands that Mary, who is very wounded by years of her mother telling her she is a disappointment to her, begins to have clarity and charity for herself and others. Through these means, the Gardiners (and **cough cough** others) encourage Mary toward not only a better self-concept but also a happier and healthier existence.
While Mary Bennet has a key role in embracing and accepting the encouragement and affection of those around her, it is much too simple to say that her happiness comes by her own hands. It is by freely given love that Mary grows up and glows up. While Mary certainly has an existential glow-up by the end of the series, it should be accredited not to her newfound self-knowledge or self-acceptance but to grace. It is by grace that Mary Bennet was worthy of love even before she loved herself, and it is by grace that she is able to receive and give love in the end.
While I have my qualms with the miniseries, one thing The Other Bennet Sister does very well is depict one of the great gifts of human relationship: The Gaze. The Gaze is a powerful thing, containing both great and grave capability and potential. Endless movie plots, song lyrics, and classic poetry center on The Gaze, and even the Bible depicts its power; the gaze of Lot’s wife turned her into salt, and Jesus warns us that a lustful gaze is the equivalent of adultery. A loving gaze, however, has a sort of holy tenderness to it. It is more than a look — it is a kind of knowing. The Gaze contains something a mirror can never show us.
It is very moving to witness Mary Bennet being caught in another person’s loving gaze, even more so because of how we’ve watched her be looked upon with disgust by others, including her own mother. I won’t spoil some of the key plot points of the show, but we are shown, not told, how others feel about Mary. And it is a lovely thing to watch.
Another person’s ability to gaze upon us with love and then remind us that we are, in fact, lovely — the image and glory of God who are “fearfully and wonderfully made” — is a means of grace. While watching these moments play out in poetry or film or even our lives is undeniably beautiful, what is even greater is to consider that as believers, this is how God gazes upon us! Whose gaze is more steady, more loving, more knowledgeable, more understanding, more kind, more truthful, more gracious, than that of God’s?
Consider the story of Jesus’s baptism:
As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:16–17).
Every baptism is gazed upon by God with great power and great gentleness and great love. This is not a Jane Austen romance or a Taylor Swift song or a philosophical proposition: this is a historical reality, and this is our reality too. What is even more amazing to consider is that God’s gaze is also generative. As it turns out, “We love because he first loved us” is what makes any and all human flourishing possible. What we need to flourish is to believe that God really does love us. How do we do this? Well, we can begin by listening to a voice from heaven saying words that have always been true: you are a beloved child of God.
The good news is that flourishing is not in our own hands; it’s in God’s. And the good news is that all glow-ups begin with grace.
