The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (30 page)

Can Jane Austen’s skeleton keys really still work for us today? We tend to think that Jane Austen characters inhabit a simpler, more unitary culture than ours. Maybe her ladies and gentlemen already had so much in common—they were all living in the same world, sharing the same beliefs and interests and entertainments—that they could afford to pay attention to these fine distinctions. Things are more complicated for us. We just
know
that a vegan in a Che Guevara T-shirt simply isn’t going to connect with a Tea Partier waving one of those “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, no matter how principled they both are, what great tempers they have, and how capable they both are of passion.

Well, first of all, Jane Austen’s characters don’t all live as much in one same world as you might assume. Anne Elliot’s delight in the naval world that opens up to her when she meets Captain Wentworth’s friends isn’t all that different from what a lot of us have experienced when a guy we liked introduced us to what seemed like an exciting new scene—new music, new style, new politics. And think about Mary Crawford, coming from the sophistication and convenience of London to Mansfield. At first she’s put off by the inconveniences and limitations of life in the country. It’s a real culture shock. But in the end she’s charmed by the intimacy of a country neighborhood—by a really different way of living.

Speaking of Mary Crawford, we see her doing just what we do, grouping people together by profession and social group and assuming that it’s natural to find your mate among your own kind: “Sir Thomas Bertram’s son is somebody; and now, he is in their own line. Their father is a clergyman and their brother is a clergyman, and they are all clergymen together. He is their lawful property, he fairly belongs to them.” But that’s Mary
Crawford’s shallow way of looking at people. If you want to be a Jane Austen heroine, try seeing beyond the categories we too often freeze people into, to the principles, feelings, sense, temper, and other qualities that make up their “real character.”
⁵¹

Turning from Mary Crawford to her brother Henry: to state the obvious, he’s not the ideal lover from Jane Austen’s perspective. In fact, he’s a classic failure. He doesn’t get the girl, and it’s entirely his own fault. But when he tells his sister Mary that he loves Fanny Price, his catalogue of her excellences is still superior to what a lot of us have heard from the men who’ve loved us—because Jane Austen has him talk about Fanny in the very same terms she expects us to use to evaluate our romantic prospects. First Henry raves about her physical beauty, her “face and figure.” Then he expatiates on her “temper,” which “he had good reason to depend on and praise. He had often seen it tried. Was there one of the family, excepting Edmund, who had not in some way or other continually exercised her patience and forbearance?” Next Henry moves on to Fanny’s capacity for passion—finding evidence in her love for her brother, as we’ve seen, that “her affections were evidently strong.” Then he gets to the subject of Fanny’s “understanding,” which is “beyond suspicion, quick and clear”; “and her manners”—“the mirror of her own modest and elegant mind.” Finally, Henry takes a stab at praising Fanny’s principles, her “high notion of honour,” the “integrity” that he’ll be able to depend on.

Wouldn’t you love to know a man was talking about you like that? It beats “she’s so great for me” all hollow. And the difference isn’t just Jane Austen’s fabulous language. It’s that Henry
sees
Fanny (her “charms”
and
her “character”) as valuable in herself. He’s thinking what a glorious girl she is; his hopes for happiness are grounded in the knowledge of her excellence. If the dignity of a Jane Austen heroine requires—and our happiness depends on—treating our “fellow creatures” as we want to be treated, then it’s incumbent upon us, too, to value the men in our lives according to their real worth.

Sure, for each of us, some of Jane Austen’s skeleton keys are going to be more important than others. Principles and temper are non-negotiable. No
amount of charm, intelligence, or passion is going to make you happy with a man who is brazenly dishonest or treats you in a really ugly way. But beyond the non-negotiable categories, there’s scope for our preferences and our own personal idiosyncrasies. Even there, though, it can’t hurt to do our best to balance what seems overwhelmingly important to us with different qualities that Jane Austen sees are important, but that we’d naturally tend to overlook—if she weren’t there to remind us.

The whole arrange-your-own-marriage project that Jane Austen’s novels are the crown and culmination of is about young women’s somehow being able to manage or sublimate youth’s naturally extreme passions and preferences (my own nearly exclusive value for intelligence in my youth,
⁵²
for example, or another woman’s pursuit of passion without regard for principle in a man) and take responsibility for making their own matches. Note that this is the very responsibility that used to be lodged in the more mature hands of these same young women’s parents. But Jane Austen didn’t think you have to be older and wiser to do a good job of weighing a man’s character and judging him a good or a bad match. As a matter of fact, she suspected that age often subtracted more idealistic adherence to principle than it added maturing experience.
⁵³
Jane Austen thought it was quite possible to add balance and maturity to your decision-making without losing youthful idealism and passion. But she expected you to weigh the man’s character in every interesting aspect, to measure his real quality. Don’t let her down!

How to Recognize Men Who Are
“Just Not That into You”

 

 

SO JANE AUSTEN PROVIDES US WITH AN ELABORATE array of really useful criteria for choosing the right man. The obvious snag: you can pick all you want, but what if the guy you pick doesn’t pick you? Henry Tilney tells Catherine Morland that marriage is just like dancing because the “man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal.” That’s not true about dancing any more. But it’s still too close for comfort when it comes to love.

Jane Austen heroines do evaluate their romantic prospects according to her criteria, but they spend at least as much time worrying about whether the man they’ve chosen is going to choose them. And as with most aspects of romantic relationships, Jane Austen’s characters have a useful (and long-ago-forgotten) vocabulary for discussing this question. A Jane Austen heroine knows it’s her job to determine a man’s “intentions”—the very same task, actually, that the authors of
He’s Just Not That into You
urge women to take on to succeed at love. (The popularity of which advice is
some evidence that after nearly drowning in the intervening waves of Romanticism and reaction, women are ready to try Jane Austen-style realism again.)

“What, Sir, are your intentions toward my daughter?” The question reeks of Victorian melodrama. You can envision the scene: the family patriarch—or perhaps the heroine’s older brother, complete with a handsome set of mutton-chop sideburns—demands that the mustachioed villain declare his intentions, or cease annoying the innocent young girl with his poisonous attentions.

That’s
not
Jane Austen’s scene. Her heroines don’t sit there like china dolls and let their male relatives run interference for them. The question of men’s “intentions” is a live one in every Jane Austen novel. But in her world, it’s a job for
the heroine herself
—not for her male guardian—to gauge the “intentions” of the men in her life. For better or for ill, no Victorian patriarch is going to come crashing through the tropical foliage in the conservatory demanding a clarification of the man’s motives and plans with respect to her. She’s going to have to figure them out on her own, as best she can. Jane Austen makes it clear that her heroines’ happiness will often depend on how well they manage this crucial job.