Throughout her literary career, Jane Austen devoted much of her care to illuminate a variety of the standard that her male characters have about their work, providing us with an index to their personal and social merits, which in turn allows us to engage in judicious moral evaluation of her male characters. A man’s profession for Austen is where individual virtues and social responsibilities intersect, and the proximity between the two is the very test by which to judge whether he is a socially responsible and morally respectful person. Examining Austen's critical rethinking of ‘men in their work,’ therefore, this study aims to explore Austen's historical insight into the idea of the profession and its profound social implications as portrayed in her male characters. The question of the profession and its growing importance is led to a brief look into the wide-ranged changes in the social structure and the concomitant shift of the old gentlemanly ideal at the turn of the century. The profession has its long history evolved over more than a century in early modern England, and Jane Austen’s male characters illuminate the dynamics of the social and economic changes displayed in the term. Much discussed ‘unfeudal tone’ of Austen’s later novels comes from such changes depicted in Austen’s heroes as in George Knightley, Enmund Bertram and Frederick Wentworth who seem to depart from her earlier ones. In her representation of morally flawed landowners such as John Dashwood, Henry Crawford, and Sir Walter Elliot, moreover, Austen not only criticizes individual characters but also questions the moral basis of the social privileges they enjoy. Austen’s literary representation of the profession in its early conception serves as a “genesis” of the Victorian profession, but her insight goes even deeper to warn her contemporaries that the new idea needs vigorous reexamination tested against the old ideals.

Throughout her literary career, Jane Austen devoted much of her care to illuminate a variety of the standard that her male characters have about their work, providing us with an index to their personal and social merits, which in turn allows us to engage in judicious moral evaluation of her male characters. A man’s profession for Austen is where individual virtues and social responsibilities intersect, and the proximity between the two is the very test by which to judge whether he is a socially responsible and morally respectful person. Examining Austen's critical rethinking of ‘men in their work,’ therefore, this study aims to explore Austen's historical insight into the idea of the profession and its profound social implications as portrayed in her male characters. The question of the profession and its growing importance is led to a brief look into the wide-ranged changes in the social structure and the concomitant shift of the old gentlemanly ideal at the turn of the century. The profession has its long history evolved over more than a century in early modern England, and Jane Austen’s male characters illuminate the dynamics of the social and economic changes displayed in the term. Much discussed ‘unfeudal tone’ of Austen’s later novels comes from such changes depicted in Austen’s heroes as in George Knightley, Enmund Bertram and Frederick Wentworth who seem to depart from her earlier ones. In her representation of morally flawed landowners such as John Dashwood, Henry Crawford, and Sir Walter Elliot, moreover, Austen not only criticizes individual characters but also questions the moral basis of the social privileges they enjoy. Austen’s literary representation of the profession in its early conception serves as a “genesis” of the Victorian profession, but her insight goes even deeper to warn her contemporaries that the new idea needs vigorous reexamination tested against the old ideals.