Archdeacon Rachel Mann shared this Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4 this morning, 17th March 2025.
I begin today with an invitation to play the game ‘Guess Who?’: ‘Vanity was the beginning and the end of his character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did,’ and he gave to himself ‘his warmest respect and devotion.’
No, I am not speaking of any number of people, including some world leaders or influencers, who might be noted for their self-regard but of Sir Walter Eliot, one of Jane Austen’s immortal characters from my favourite of her novels, Persuasion. In holding it up as Austen’s best, I am in agreement with the novelist Colm Toibin who has just chosen it as his favourite in celebration of the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth.
Austen’s picture of Sir Walter, a man who spends his time looking at the Book of Baronetage for reassurance about his identity, reminds me that for all her focus on love, she is a novelist interested in character. Her eye for the flaws of human beings is timeless.
Sir Walter might seem an exceptional case, but vanity is an abiding human issue. The Book of Ecclesiastes, one of the Bible’s books on wisdom, suggests that vanity is not just conceitedness but a kind of emptiness. Its speaker, perhaps King Solomon himself, famously begins by saying, ‘Vanity of vanities … all is vanity.’ In the biblical tradition, vanity has implications not just of self-regard but of emptiness. Those who pursue it will find they are not satisfied and will only hunger for more. Whether it be a fictional character like Sir Walter or a contemporary politician, the book of Ecclesiastes suggests that, ultimately, self-obsession is a highway to dissatisfaction.
Austen’s Persuasion offers a worked-out example which counters Sir Walter’s self-regard. The love between his daughter Anne Eliot and Captain Wentworth is that of a couple who have known loss and disappointment. Anne was persuaded by her family to break off the engagement in her youth because Wentworth lacked social position. But neither Anne nor Wentworth become self-obsessed. Austen shows that, ultimately, they discover in their quiet consistent regard for one another a way out of vanity.
It is, for me, a relationship which echoes Jesus’s challenge to vanity offered when he says that his followers should love God with all their hearts and love their neighbours as themselves. It is not offered as kindly advice, but as a reminder that in giving deep attention to God and other people it is possible to find a flourishing life. Vanity may be unavoidable. However, for me, to remember its essential emptiness is a potent corrective to giving in to it.