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ALASDAIR MCINTYRE CLAIMS THAT THE TELOS of Austen’s heroines is “a life within both a particular kind of marriage and a particular kind of household of which that marriage will be the focal point” (239)—that their end is a good home. If he is right, we must pity Fanny Price, who “feels homesick even when she is at home” (Brown 57). 1 Such homesickness implies two quite different senses of “being at home”: that of simply being where one lives or is from, and that of comfortably belonging where one is, and thriving there. Fanny is always homesick because she never quite belongs. Although we do not find such chronic homesickness in Austen’s other heroines, we find something related—a recognition that being at home, in the second sense, is a great good to be sought or preserved. After describing the “intense desire” for home and its role in Austen’s novels, I will outline the common elements of the good homes she portrays: security, character, and comfort, including the social comfort of participating in relationships based on mutual love and respect. While the importance for Austen of many of the elements I will describe has not gone unnoticed, to my knowledge it has not been emphasized that Austen portrays all of them, together, as elements of a good home. Doing so will allow us to expand upon MacIntyre’s understanding of the home as telos; I will also consider criticisms of his interpretation that argue that marriage and household, specifically, are not portrayed by Austen as necessary ends. I will in the end argue for a revised, as well as expanded, version of MacIntyre’s thesis about the telos as portrayed in Austen’s novels, which may be provisionally stated as follows: it is the finding of one’s place in a good home, comprising marriage and household or some other community and place that can play a similar role in one’s life.
The “intense desire” for home
We may begin with the oft-homesick Fanny Price, taken at the age of ten from her first home into the household of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram. Her assimilation there is difficult, and it is easy to understand why she might feel homesick in her new home. Before receiving Fanny,...