Read Jane Austen For Dummies Online
Authors: Joan Elizabeth Klingel Ray
Jane Austen For Dummies (28 page)
It may be hard to believe, but in spite of all the roadblocks and difficulties that society placed in the way of a young lady and gentleman getting to know each other, engagements still happened.
The one time when a couple was allowed to be alone together was when the gentleman proposed to his lady. In
Pride and Prejudice,
Mrs. Bennet hurries Kitty out of the room so that Collins has a clear and open field for attacking Elizabeth with his proposal of marriage (PP 1:19). I use the word “attacking” advisedly, because Collins's proposal is trite and cliché-filled, using the proposal he had designed for Jane to propose to Elizabeth after Mrs. Bennet tells him that Jane is already spoken for (in her dreams at this point of course!). (He probably used most of the same speech to Charlotte when he proposed to her two days later!)
Later in the novel, Mrs. Bennet is at it again: She clears the drawing room of her other daughters so that Bingley and Jane can be in a proposable situation, and her plan works: Bingley proposes to Jane, and she accepts (3:13).
In Austen's novels, the proposals offered by the heroes tend to be plainspoken and honest: in other words, the exact opposite of Collins's proposal. When the heroes propose, they do not kneel on one knee, nor do they give engagement rings in her novels â though engagement rings go back to the 15th century. (But the history of engagement practices is for another
For
Dummies
book!) Consider Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth: “âIn vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you'” (PP 2:11). While his fourth sentence about his ardent love for her is pretty romantic, his first sentence, while sincere, candid, and concise, hardly conveys sentiments that will win the lady. He has been struggling against his love and admiration for her. But at least he's honest. Darcy's second proposal to Elizabeth is much better, as well as concise “âIf your feelings are still what they were last April [when she rejected his insulting proposal], tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged . . . â“ (PP3:16). Likewise in
Emma,
when the heroic, gallant Mr. Knightley proposes to the heroine, he begins, “âI cannot make speeches, Emma. . . . If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more'” (E 3:13).
But one passionate love speech does appear in Austen's work, and that is in
Persuasion.
Captain Wentworth expresses his passion in a secret letter to Anne “I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope” (P 2:11). Wow! Yes, Wentworth is breaking the “no letter unless you're engaged” rule. But this is a desperate man who is unwilling to risk losing, for the second time, the woman he loves!
With the lady's acceptance, the next step is for the gentleman to secure her father's approval. Proper marriages had the approval of both the bride's and groom's parents. Obviously, after seeing the young man at all those balls asking his daughter to dance twice, coming to dinner, playing cards with her and her parents, and so on, Dad isn't going to be too surprised to hear the request for her hand. If the young lady's father was deceased, the fiancé could make the request for her hand to her mother, brother, uncle, or guardian.
A short and direct “conference” between Bingley and Mr. Bennet seals the deal in
Pride and Prejudice
(3:13). And when Darcy, having Elizabeth's acceptance, meets with Mr. Bennet, he emerges from her father's library smiling (3:17).
Austen never tells us of any gifts exchanged between her heroine and hero either before, at the time of, or after the engagement. But she does show us the social “no-no” of unengaged couples exchanging gifts. In
Sense and Sensibility,
Marianne accepts Willoughby's gift of a horse, which Elinor immediately tells her she must reject, though her disapproval is couched more in the language of the expense of keeping a horse than the gift's outright impropriety.
A man's offering a lady to whom he is not yet engaged a gift always goes sour in Austen
. Mansfield Park
's Henry Crawford, with the help of his sister, gives Fanny Price a gold necklace “prettily worked” to hold the amber cross that William, her brother, had given to her (MP 2:8). Notice that Henry works it so that Mary is the actual giver, thus enabling him to circumvent the “no gifts” rule. But his plan backfires: The ring of the cross will not fit the ornate necklace (MP 2:9). The most elaborate gift given in an Austen novel is
Emma
's Frank Churchill's anonymous present of a very fine forte-piano (or pianoforte, the predecessor of the modern piano) to Jane Fairfax. The source of the gift puzzles everyone in the book because no one knows of Jane and Frank's secret engagement. But Frank can speak cryptically about the instrument in a way that only Jane understands. For example, he says in front of Emma and Jane that sending the pianoforte, along with sheet music, to Jane “âshews [the gift] to have been so thoroughly from the heart. . . . True affection only could have prompted it'” (E 2:10). When Jane hears this, she immediately blushes and forms “a smile of secret delight.” Emma, misled into thinking that the instrument was sent by the man who married Jane's friend, of course, misreads the object of Jane's smile, even though the gift is compromising because the engagement is not known.
Breaking an engagement, once approved by the parents, was a sticky issue. A gentleman, who was engaged at the age of 21 or over, didn't break an engagement. But if he was a minor and had been taken in by a female fortune-hunter, the Court traditionally sided with the young man's family and released him from the engagement. A young woman, however, whatever her age, could break the engagement, though it was still a serious thing to do. Jane Austen, herself, accepted at age 27 a proposal from an old family friend, Harris Bigg Wither, and then ended it early the next morning. While this caused temporary embarrassment to Jane, especially as Harris was the younger brother of her dear friends, Catherine and Alethea, she was not going to marry a man she did not love just because he was rich. And as to break-ups, she told her niece that “it is no creed of mine . . . that such sort of Disappointments kill anybody” (Letter, November 18â20, 1814). For more information on marriage and divorce, head to Chapter 7.
Marrying: A Serious Business for Jane Austen and Her Characters
In This Chapter
Discovering the ins and outs of marriage
Revealing the practices of unmarried people
Succumbing to failure: Knowing when to divorce
M
arriage was a paradox in Austen's day â a paradox because marriage ideally secured a woman's financial security and social importance even as marriage meant her legal and financial rights simply went from her father to her husband. She had no rights of her own.
This chapter takes you through the whirlwind process of planning a wedding, stopping here and there to explore why women chose to marry, what the premarital business arrangements were; why men chose to marry; how women prepared for their weddings; what the Church of England wedding service involved; why couples eloped; and what happened when marriages went sour. Have you caught your breath yet?
This chapter examines marriage in Austen's day, which was financially necessary for almost all women and desired by most men. Because Austen lived in a world with neither pensions nor insurance and no career opportunities for women, the couple had much to consider in terms of money. This sounds crass, but it was necessary to ensure the fiscal stability of both the bride and groom. Couples and their parents entered premarital legalities to effect this stability. Austen mentions such legal agreements as “marriage settlements” and “articles” casually in her novels because she expects her contemporary readers to know what she's talking about. Read this chapter, and you will, too.
Because a lady had virtually no individual rights or options, legal or financial (like having a career to support herself), she had to attract a good husband. What was a good husband? He was a gentleman who could support her as a member of the gentry, as well as one who was not cruel. (Remember: She has no rights!) The gentleman, if he's smart, wants a wife who will bring him both money and sons. Notice the use of the word “attract” in the first sentence. He's doing the asking.
Jane Austen explains the roles and motivations of men and women in the marriage relationship through the hero of
Northanger Abbey,
Henry Tilney. He likens marriage to a country dance, saying that “âin both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both, it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each'” (1:10). The advantages he speaks of are financial as well as personal, as the following sections explain.
Pride and Prejudice
would be a very different novel if Jane Austen was writing it today. Yes, the romance and witty repartee between its heroine and hero, Elizabeth and Darcy, would still be there. But Elizabeth Bennet would not be in the same weak financial position that limits her choices in the novel.
Today a woman as clever and bright as Elizabeth Bennet from
Pride and Prejudice
would be in law school, heading to a well-established firm with a six-figure salary in view. The modern Elizabeth might wait to marry or not marry at all; after all, romance aside, she could certainly support herself quite well, and in today's world, she would have her own legal identity. But in Austen's day, financial and legal security for Elizabeth and her sisters only came with one option: marriage.
Women of the Bennets' class â the landowning gentry class on whom Jane Austen focuses her authorial attention â had no rights to speak of and no occupation open to them, no matter how smart, clever, diligent, and well-read they were. (See Chapter 2 for a discussion on social class.) This was true for Austen's female characters, as well as for Austen herself.
It's worth repeating that a daughter's legal identity belonged to her father; and a married woman's legal identity was secured by identifying her with her husband. This role identity was both good and bad.
Good:
The husband protected the wife and secured her place in society. It was better to be married with a house of your own than to be a spinster responsible for running a brother's household.
Bad:
The wife could virtually do nothing without her husband's approval â enter a contract, buy property, write a will. Legally, then, a married woman ceased to have her own existence.
Marriage also secured the woman's financial place. A gentry woman's finances, pre-marriage, were, of course under her father's care and control. If she was lucky, her parents' marriage also secured some money for her, usually from her mother's side, when she came of age. But unless her mother's parents were extremely rich, the young woman didn't get that much money from her mother. In order to live the gentry life to which she was accustomed, she needed to marry a man who could give her the lifestyle she had with her parents or an even better one. In
Pride and Prejudice,
Elizabeth Bennet's sensible and kind Aunt Gardiner seriously advises her niece on connecting herself with Mr. Wickham â and on marriage in general (2:3).
In Austen's novels, readers come across many female characters who are looking for financial security through a good marriage. While they are gentry women, they don't have much money of their own. What they have is the result of arrangements made by their parents for them and/or by their husbands for them at the time they married. Because the bulk of an estate normally went to the eldest son or nearest male heir, the women in the family were left with comparatively little.
For example, in
Sense and Sensibility,
the widowed Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters do not inherit the great Dashwood estate, Norland, because the owner, Uncle Dashwood, suddenly changes his will and leaves it to his grandnephew. He does this for two reasons: The grandnephew is cute, and he will carry on the Dashwood surname, keeping Norland in Dashwood hands.
So the four Dashwood women now must live on £500 annually (SS 1:2). Now while this does not put them on the street, this sum doesn't give them the life they lived at Norland Park, a beautiful and spacious gentry estate with a large house attached to it. They must move to a cottage with moderate rent. And their social life is limited to where their feet can take them because they can't afford a carriage and horse. A visit to London is out of the question financially, unless a friend covers their expenses. And their chances of landing a financially stable marriage are lessened by the daughters each having a dowry of only £1,000, their Uncle having given each girl that amount (and their inability to get out often to meet people).
At the other extreme, a wealthy heiress needed to take great care in choosing a spouse. Unless someone (a father, brother, uncle, or other male in the position of guardian) was really looking out for her finances, all of her money went to her husband. And if he was an irresponsible man, the more pity for her. Fearing a fortune-hunter in Wickham, relatives of a young heiress, Miss King, remove her from his presence purview because they fear that he's interested in her only because she has £10,000 (PP 2:2). If he took her off and married her, that money could become his to do with as he wishes. Lucky Miss King to have such observant relatives!
How much money would the Dashwood ladies have today?
While converting money from Austen's time to ours and then from British pounds to U.S. dollars is always a contentious question, I've found a Web site that helps: “How Much Is That Worth” at
www.eh.net/hmit/ppowerbp/
. Accordingly, I entered £500, the Dashwood ladies' annual income, for the year 1811 (when
Sense and Sensibility
was published) and asked what its purchasing power would be in British pounds for the year 2004: The answer was £24,162 and 41 pence. I then found that in July 2004, £1 was worth $1.94. Multiply £24,162 and 41 pence by $1.94 and the result is $46,875.05 in 2004. Keep in mind that prices were much lower in 1811: The Dashwood ladies have a cottage at a very moderate rent; they have two maids and a man servant, whose pay would have been quite low; they have neither carriage nor horse; the four Dashwoods probably have limited wardrobes; and they appear to get quite a bit of food from Sir John Middleton, on whose estate they live. This amount would allow them to live in a minimally genteel way.
In Austen's day, marriages weren't forced. Not that this didn't happen, but this type of forced marriage â where parents prearranged things for monetary reasons and assumed the bride would eventually learn to love, or at least endure, her husband â was getting more and more rare.
In fact, literature â both novels and plays â that stressed marrying for love helped change society! Even in the decades before Austen wrote, literature was showing that couples marry more happily when love brings the couple together. So no more of that Montague-Capulet stuff from
Romeo and Juliet
!
Austen's novels always show the heroines marrying for love. But being the smart young women that they are, they also never marry without money. Women had to be careful whom they chose to marry. Because all of the wife's rights were controlled by the husband, a poor choice in a husband could mean his spending all her money frivolously, unwisely, and selfishly.
In Austen's day, single women who weren't wealthy were scorned as spinsters, so marriage conveyed status for a woman â whether or not she liked her husband. If a gentry woman found herself unlucky in securing a husband in England, she could take a huge step: travel by ship in a hazardous journey to a British colony where lonely European men awaited wives. A frequent site for this journey was India. Jane Austen knew about this option personally because her father's sister, Miss Philadelphia Austen, did just this.
Traveling to India in 1752 at the age of 22 by herself on board the ship
Bombay Castle,
Philadelphia arrived in Madras seven months after departing from England. After being there for six months, she married an English surgeon, Tysoe Saul Hancock, who was 20 years older than she was. He worked for the East India Company. They had a daughter, Elizabeth, who was born in Calcutta. Thirteen years after leaving England, Philadelphia Hancock, her husband, and daughter sailed to England, arriving in the summer of 1765. Jane's father went to London to reunite with the sister he hadn't seen for over a decade and to meet his brother-in-law. But in 1768, Tysoe Hancock had to return to India to make enough money to support the lifestyle he and his wife had adopted in England. Not only did he fail in this endeavor, but he never saw his wife and daughter again. It has been suggested that Philadelphia's voyage to India and marriage to Hancock had been prearranged by some of her family members. But arranged or not, her experience doesn't sound like a very happy one.
Philadelphia's story stayed with young Jane Austen, who being born in 1775, never met her uncle Tysoe. Jane uses the story of her Aunt Philadelphia in her unfinished fiction,
Catharine; or, The Bower.
The 16-year-old writer includes a character, Cecilia Wynne, whose parents' deaths left her poor. As a result, Cecilia is “obliged to accept the offer of one of her cousins to equip her for the East Indies.” Cecilia's experience sounds much worse than Philadelphia's: “Her personal Attractions had gained her a husband as soon as she had arrived at Bengal, and she had now been married. . . . Splendidly, yet unhappily married. United to a Man of double her own age, whose disposition was not amiable, and whose Manners were unpleasing. . . .” (MW 194). Unfortunately, because marriage was the accepted means of securing a young woman's future and her place in society, the experiences of both Philadelphia and Cecilia weren't unusual.
One didn't have to travel to India to marry without love. In
Pride and Prejudice,
Charlotte Lucas asserts her reasons for marrying Mr. Collins. At the age of 27, Charlotte obviously worries about ending up a spinster without any place of her own. She tells Elizabeth, “âI am not romantic. . . . I never was. I ask only a comfortable home'” (1:22). So she marries the very unpleasant Mr. Collins, relieving her younger brothers “from their apprehension of Charlotte's dying an old maid.” And of course, if Charlotte hadn't married, as time went on, her brothers would have had to support her and perhaps even bring her into their homes. Charlotte recognizes that marriage “was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small-fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want” (1:22).
