In The Wealth of Nations Smith sets out the competing advantages and disadvantages of joining the Army and Navy. Smith thinks of the returns to these choices on the personal, social, and financial level.
The contempt of risk, and the presumptuous hope of success, are in no period of life more active than at the age at which young people choose their professions. How little the fear of misfortune is then capable of balancing the hope of good luck, appears still more evidently in the readiness of the common people to enlist as soldiers, or to go to sea, than in the eagerness of those of better fashion to enter into what are called the liberal professions.
So many passages of Smith can be read as illuminating context alongside Jane Austen’s novels. Many of them even sound like they could have been written as commentaries on her work, even though Wealth of Nations was only published the year she was born, and Theory of Moral Sentiments earlier still. In this passage, we are reminded of Captain Wentworth whose fear of misfortune did nothing to balance his hope of good luck.
Captain Wentworth had no fortune. He had been lucky in his profession; but spending freely, what had come freely, had realized nothing. But he was confident that he should soon be rich: full of life and ardour, he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that would lead to everything he wanted. He had always been lucky; he knew he should be so still.
Although she is fully a novelist, we can see Austen thinking like a Smithian social scientist when she goes onto describe the effect of Wentworth’s young hopes on Lady Russell.
Such confidence, powerful in its own warmth, and bewitching in the wit which often expressed it, must have been enough for Anne; but Lady Russell saw it very differently. His sanguine temper, and fearlessness of mind, operated very differently on her. She saw in it but an aggravation of the evil. It only added a dangerous character to himself. He was brilliant, he was headstrong. Lady Russell had little taste for wit, and of anything approaching to imprudence a horror. She deprecated the connexion in every light.
Compare Smith evaluating the relative social merits of the Army and Navy.
The great admiral is less the object of public admiration than the great general; and the highest success in the sea service promises a less brilliant fortune and reputation than equal success in the land. The same difference runs through all the inferior degrees of preferment in both. By the rules of precedency, a captain in the navy ranks with a colonel in the army; but he does not rank with him in the common estimation.
No wonder Sir Eliot is so snobby about Admiral Croft renting his house. The good Admiral is not merely non-aristocratic, but comes from the socially inferior military service. Remember Anne’s small outburst in the Navy’s defence.
“The navy, I think, who have done so much for us, have at least an equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts and all the privileges which any home can give. Sailors work hard enough for their comforts, we must all allow.”
This is a moment of great defiance, akin to Fanny challenging her uncle about the slave trade at his own dining table. What Anne understands, which Sir Walter is indifferent towards, is that the Navy is a “lottery”, to use Smith’s word (her word is “lucky” and she uses it twice about Wentworth in one paragraph). While many sailors do very well, many do not.
Though their skill and dexterity are much superior to that of almost any artificers; and though their whole life is one continual scene of hardship and danger; yet for all this dexterity and skill, for all those hardships and dangers, while they remain in the condition of common sailors, they receive scarce any other recompence but the pleasure of exercising the one and of surmounting the other.
This echoes in the famous closing lines of the novel, of course, where Austen puts the emphasis onto the Navy wives left behind.
She gloried in being a sailor’s wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its national importance.
The Navy wife has to live with the lottery of life and the lottery of fortune too. As Smith says, “The distant prospect of hazards, from which we can hope to extricate ourselves by courage and address, is not disagreeable to us, and does not raise the wages of labour in any employment.”
Here is my previous post about The Wealth of Nations.
Persuasion; I love it because it is the Somerset (where I live) novel. Austen uses her delicate touch to remind us of the social changes afoot, and Anne's decision to distance herself from a dying nobility reflects this.
I also love the misdirection when Austen tempts us to think that Anne will become romantically involved with Benwick, but they have a friendship built on a mutual interest in poetry.
Austen truly is one of the greatest writers in the English language. Thank you for your articles.
So interesting, thank you! Do you know if Austen ever read Adam Smith?
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I hope it's not rude to question one small point you made in passing in this lovely article -- but it seems to me that Fanny is *not* defying her uncle when she brings up the slave trade. Edmund seems to think Sir Thomas is flattered by the question! He says "it would have pleased your uncle to be inquired of further." And rather than acting like she's just poked a bear, Fanny's concern is that her question was *so* pleasing to Sir Thomas that it made her cousins look bad for not asking it themselves! She says "I thought it would appear as if I wanted to set myself off at their expense, by shewing a curiosity and pleasure in his information which he must wish his own daughters to feel".
As strange as it seems, I get the sense that Sir Thomas doesn't feel implicated in the slave trade in a way that would make this a bold question. George E. Bouloukos argues convincingly that Sir Thomas perceives himself as the benevolent aristocrat whose involvement on his plantation checks the abuses of lowlife slave traders and overseers -- that he would contrast himself to the slave trade rather than identify himself with it, hence being capable of enjoying this line of questioning (from "The Politics of Silence: Mansfield Park and the Amelioration of Slavery").
Not to say that Jane Austen agrees that Sir Thomas doesn't share in the guilt -- her judgement of him is one of the things I always wonder about when I read this novel! Would love to hear your take on this if you ever have time!