The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (54 page)

7
Elizabeth: “My dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though it is Charlotte Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity.”

8
“Mrs. Weston was the object of a regard, which had its basis in gratitude and esteem. Harriet would be loved as one to whom she could be useful. For Mrs. Weston there was nothing to be done; for Harriet every thing.”

9
For a high-quality example, see F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.”

10
Apart from everything else squirm-worthy about Emma’s behavior, don’t miss that she glosses Harriet’s highly ambivalent statement of her intentions as “now that you are so completely decided.”

11
Or, in this case, as a farmer’s wife. “And as for Harriet, I will venture to say that she cannot gain by the acquaintance. Hartfield will only put her out of conceit with all the other places she belongs to. She will grow just refined enough to be uncomfortable with those among whom birth and circumstances have placed her home.”

12
At least, it’s obvious to Mr. Knightley.

13
Distinctions based on wealth and “rank” were more important in her day than now. Or at least their importance was more openly acknowledged back then. We’re not like Sir Walter and Miss Elliot, with noble cousins like Lady Dalrymple
and Miss Carterert to suck up to, on one hand, and a Mrs. Clay—a lowly employee’s widowed daughter who’s willing to make it her full-time job to suck up to us—on the other.

14
“[Reginald] is less polished, less insinuating than Manwaring, and is comparatively deficient in the power of saying those delightful things which put one in good humour with oneself and all the world.” Lady Susan doesn’t want
ever
to deal with other people as equals. She busily manipulates everyone, and then she relaxes by enjoying other people’s flattery.

15
That’s even in trivial things, like her height. Harriet’s not as smart as Emma is. She’s got only a very basic education, and she’s very unsophisticated.

16
“Every body had supposed they must be so fond of each other.”

17
As Emma tells Harriet: “We are always forced to be acquainted whenever she comes to Highbury.”

18
But a friendship between Emma and Jane Fairfax wouldn’t be unequal in the opposite direction. It’s not that Emma could do nothing for Jane. As a matter of fact, she could benefit her in ways that no one else in Highbury can. Emma is Jane’s only chance at really “equal society” when she’s staying with her relatives—someone she could talk to on her own intellectual level. Jane spends what must be monotonous days with her
very
talkative aunt, good-natured but not very bright, and her old grandmother who’s “almost past every thing but tea and quadrille.” And, more and more as the novel goes on, Jane is forced to spend time with the awful Mrs. Elton, a vain, stupid woman who patronizes Jane and presumes to arrange her future.
That
relationship is a much uglier version of what Emma is up to with Harriet. Mrs. Elton is incapable of recognizing Jane Fairfax’s real superiority, not to mention any limits that good manners might suggest to what extent she should plan Jane’s life out for her. Mrs. Elton thinks she is doing Jane Fairfax as much a favor by finding her a job that Jane has explicitly and repeatedly said she doesn’t want, as by giving her a ride in her carriage.

19
With absolutely no basis in fact; it’s all straight out of Emma’s over-active imagination.

1
Cheryl Wetzstein, “Hopeless Romantics Yearn for Soul Mates: Study Finds Their Bliss Won’t Last,”
Washington Times,
September 6, 2010,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/6/hopeless-romantics-yearn-for-soul-mates/print/
, reporting on W. Bradford Wilcox and Jeffrey Dew, “Is Love a Flimsy Foundation? Soul-mate versus Institutional Models of Marriage,”
Social Science
, vol. 39, issue 5, September 2010, pp. 687–99.

2
Harriet Smith, “a good-tempered, soft-hearted girl, not likely to be very, very determined against any young man who told her he loved her,” is not Jane Austen’s ideal woman. Nor is Lydia Bennet, who “had wanted only encouragement to attach herself to any body.”

3
Or possibly for two types, what C. S. Lewis calls “a terrestrial and an infernal Venus.” C. S. Lewis,
The Screwtape Letters with Screwtape Proposes a Toast
(HarperCollins, 2001), p. 108.

4
Thus Anne defends Captain Benwick against the imputation that his “soft sort of manner” betrays a lack of “spirit,” but she doesn’t mean “to represent Captain Benwick’s manners as the very best that could possibly be.”

5
Even his commentary on the weather makes “her feel that the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker,” something that’s true about her own conversation, too—as when, for
example, Elizabeth explains how her sisters were educated, or parries Lady Catherine’s rude question about how old she is.

6
“Had he married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still more respectable than he was:—he might even have been made amiable himself.... But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself;—more narrow-minded and selfish.”

7
John agrees with Fanny that the three thousand pounds that might make all the difference to his sisters’ marriage prospects is better not separated from the enormous fortune their son will inherit: “The time may come when Harry will regret that such a sum was parted with. If he should have a numerous family, for instance, it would be a very convenient addition.” Interestingly, in light of the “Friendship, the School of Love” principle, Fanny Dashwood picks her friends on exactly the same impulse as she seems to have picked her husband: “As for Lady Middleton, [Fanny Dashwood] found her one of the most charming women in the world! Lady Middleton was equally pleased with Mrs. Dashwood. There was a kind of cold-hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually attracted them; and they sympathised with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanour, and a general want of understanding.”

8
Even before he met his bride, Mr. Elton thought quite a lot of himself. But she inspires him to hitherto-unseen outbursts of touchy wounded pride and rude put-downs of other people, including his cruel public snubbing of Harriet Smith at the ball at the Crown—which the Eltons celebrate with “smiles of high glee” at each other.

9
That’s how Robert ends up with both his brother’s inheritance and his brother’s fiancée—and how Lucy (that fiancée) ultimately does find herself in possession of the fortune that was her aim in engaging herself to Robert’s brother Edward in the first place.

10
“It was impossible for any one to be more thoroughly good-natured or more determined to be happy than Mrs. Palmer. The studied indifference, insolence, and discontent of her husband gave her no pain: and when he scolded or abused [verbally insulted, that is; Jane Austen doesn’t mean physically abused] her, she was highly diverted. ‘Mr. Palmer is so droll!’ said she, in a whisper to Elinor. ‘He is always out of humour.’”

11
“He was not an ill-tempered man, not so often unreasonably cross as to deserve such a reproach; but his temper was not his great perfection.”

12
When John Knightley rides to the Westons’ house for a dinner engagement in the carriage with Emma, instead of his wife, Emma is “not ... equal to give the
pleased assent, which no doubt he was in the habit of receiving, to emulate the ‘Very true, my love,’ which must have been usually administered by his traveling companion” in response to his intemperate expressions of righteous indignation against Mr. Weston—for having a dinner party that requires John Knightley to go out in bad weather and miss seeing his children after dinner.

13
“She was a woman who spent her days in sitting, nicely dressed, on a sofa, doing some long piece of needlework, of little use and no beauty, thinking more of her pug than her children, but very indulgent to the latter when it did not put herself to inconvenience, guided in everything important by Sir Thomas, and in smaller concerns by her sister.” Jane Austen’s description of Lady Bertram’s accomplishments during her husband’s extended absence in the West Indies pretty much sums up her life’s work: “She had done a great deal of carpet-work and made many yards of fringe.”

14
Partly because he had “formed her mind” as well as “engaged her affections.”

15
“I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers had better be unlike; I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in the manners, in the inclination for much or little company, in the propensity to talk or be silent, to be grave or to be gay. Some opposition here is, I am thoroughly convinced, friendly to matrimonial happiness,” says Edmund in the throes of love for Mary Crawford.

16
Fanny thinks, of Mary Crawford, “She might love, but she did not deserve Edmund by any other sentiment. Fanny believed there was scarcely a second feeling in common between them; and she may be forgiven by older sages for looking on the chance of Miss Crawford’s future improvement as nearly desperate, for thinking that if Edmund’s influence in this season of love had already done so little in clearing her judgment, and regulating her notions, his worth would be finally wasted on her even in years of matrimony.”

17
“Could [Henry Crawford] have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman’s affections, could he have found sufficient exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and tenderness of Fanny Price, there would have been every probability of success and felicity for him. His affection had already done something. Her influence over him had already given him some influence over her. Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt that more would have been obtained, especially when that marriage had taken place, which would have given him the assistance of her conscience in subduing her first inclination, and brought them very often together. Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward, and a reward very voluntarily bestowed, within a reasonable period from Edmund’s marrying Mary.”

18
“It is not by equality of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question. It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most devotedly, that has a best right to a return. There I build my confidence. By that right I do and will deserve you.”

19
Henry really
sees
and notices Fanny in a way that Edmund may never get around to doing. Listen to Henry describing her to his sister: “Attending with such ineffable sweetness and patience to all the demands of her aunt’s stupidity, working with her, and for her, her colour beautifully heightened as she leant over the work, then returning to her seat to finish a note which she was previously engaged in writing for that stupid woman’s service, and all this with such unpretending gentleness, so much as if it were a matter of course that she was not to have a moment at her own command, her hair arranged as neatly as it always is, and one little curl falling forward as she wrote, which she now and then shook back, and in the midst of all this, still speaking at intervals to
me,
or listening, and as if she liked to listen, to what I said.”