Lack of Mental Fortitude

I thought an interesting moment in the novel is in chapter 9 when the Crawfords and Bertrams are in the chapel at Sotherton. First Miss Crawford speaks of how if people could skip church they would have "jumped with joy," and how if they went to church their "heads full of something very different." She believes people should be left to their own devices because she thinks nobody like church. Little does she know that Edmund will be ordained. This is another example of Miss Crawford's incredible self-centeredness similar to the issue of the harp pointed out by Kate's post. If Miss Crawford does not like religion, nobody does, apparently. But there is something more, it shows here incredible lack of mental fortitude. Here Edmund chimes in and I believe this is one of those moments I can hear Austen speaking through her character's voice. He says, "The mind which does not struggle against itself under one circumstance, would find objects to distract it in the other, I believe..." (112). This is an interesting moment in a conversation about religion that has nothing to do with religion but rather the mind. Miss Crawford thinks in easier situations she could perhaps focus on something and Edmund/Austen insults her distractedness. I am finding that this novel is full of distractable people with very little to fill their days. they are always doing one thing or another but never really focusing and this causes lazy people with lazy minds. A perfect example of this is after the tour of Sotherton, where they literally spent all day just perusing their friend's enormous house and nothing else, Miss Sotherton says, "there is nothing in the course of one's duties so fatiguing as what we have been doing this morning--seeing a great hose, dawdling from on room to another--straining one's eyes and one's attention--hearing what one does not understand--admiring what one does not care for" (120). If the hardest thing that Miss Crawford has to do is admire her friend's ridiculous wealth and it fatigues her so, she should find something better to do with her mind. Austen is critiquing this society that when people reach the top they get to just laze about and never improve themselves.