In preparation for Valentine's Day this year, and to commemorate some of my favorite books by a beloved author, I've decided to write a series of blog posts exploring love in Jane Austen's books.
Today, Jane is mostly known as the author of Pride and Prejudice, and for good reason: it is without question her most popular work, and it's film adaptions probably spawned the whole genre of modern Romantic Comedy.
What strikes me when I read her books, though is her distinct narrative voice. She isn't just telling a story, she's also giving a social commentary and it's a lot of fun to read about the people of her day, and notice the ways people have--or haven't--changed over the years. Even in her polite, restrained society people were delightfully eccentric
When it comes to romance, one of the fascinating things about Jane's writing is how pragmatically she approaches the subject. Ms. Austen is under no delusions when it comes courtship: It is, at it's most fundamental level, a business transaction; and that's not something to be feared or resented, but understood, utilized, and celebrated. As long as you understand the process, and understand your own worth (your assets and liabilities), you too can successfully invest in the marital economy!
Jane Austen's stories are less about finding "The One" and more about finding the relationship that works for you.
One of my very favorite of Austen's books is "Northanger Abbey". Like most of Austen's stories, it's primarily a coming of age tale. This one is about a girl named Catherine Morland. She's a small town girl and she goes to the Big City with some of her parent's friends.
Now, Austen goes at lengths to explain to us that Cathy Morland is an Ordinary ™ teenager girl.
She has no tragic backstory, she's not particularly "accomplished" (which is on olde timey way of saying "talented"), she's not particularly intellectual because even though she loves to read she mostly just reads for fun, and she's a bit naive (or as Austen puts it: as "ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is").
She loves her family, and her friends, she's sociable and she loves to read about romance and adventure.
She expects people to be like the friends and family she's grown up with, and she expects the adventures in her life to be like the ones in the books she reads.
I have to put a bit of a disclaimer here:
If I had read the book first, I don't know that I would have found Catherine to be such an endearing character as I do. But I watched the 2007 BBC adaptation of the book first, and the actorss for Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney just nailed it for me. If I hadn't watched that first, I probably would have assumed she was a bit dim, but Felicity Jones' performance is so eager, and sincere, and pure...it's not hard to see why someone like Henry Tilney might have
These actors really communicate the subtleties in Austen's narrative. So especially if you're not familiar with old timey-wimey writing, I recommend watching it first.
Here's a excerpt of the chapter where Catherine Morland is schooled in the rules of courtship by her date:
"We have entered into a contract of mutual agreeableness for the space of an evening, and all our agreeableness belongs solely to each other for that time. Nobody can fasten themselves on the notice of one, without injuring the rights of the other. I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or marry themselves, have no business with the partners or wives of their neighbors."
Catherine calls bull; obviously shocked by how seriously her date takes courtship:
"But they are such very different things! [...] People that marry can never part, but must go and keep house together. People that dance only stand opposite each other in a long room for half an hour."
^^I'm right with Catherine on this one, but then her partner starts making this analysis of why he thinks that way, and you realize he kind of has a point:
"You will allow, that in 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; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty, each to endeavour to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere [...] In one respect, there certainly is a difference. In marriage, the man is supposed to provide for the support of the woman, the woman to make the home agreeable to the man; he is to purvey, and she is to smile. But in dancing, their duties are exactly changed; the agreeableness, the compliance are expected from him."
Catherine's partner is a bit of a smartalek, but it also seems like he's a big jaded with the pretense involved in courtship: You're just trying to get to know each other, but you kind of have to put up a facade of "niceness" as well. His whole banter with Catherine, here, is pretty much his own weird way of asking:
"Are you hanging around with me because you like me, or are you just being 'nice' ?"
When you look at it in that light, it seems like his extravagant way of talking is really just him screening people. I don't think he's consciously putting up walls or anything, but he is testing people to see if they're willing to put up with his personality...or if he has to be "nice" around them.
As it turns out, Catherine isn't deterred by his weirdness, in fact she really seems to enjoy it. And as the story goes on, he comes to value Catherine's sincerity and regard more and more.
One of the most fascinating, albiet not conventionally romantic, aspects of this book is when Austen as Narrator steps in to explain how their relationship developed:
"Though Henry was now sincerely attached to her, though he felt and delighted in all the excellencies of her character and truely loved her society, I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought."
Then she adds (somewhat sarcastically):
"It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine's dignity; but if it be a new as in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own."
- Bonus:
- "Hey Girl" Meme (courtesy of theotherausten)
It's OK to tell a guy you like him!
Henry Tilney wasn't thinking of marriage when he went to that dance party in Bath, he was just a guy trying to get a hotel room for an awkward family reunion. But he hit it off with this girl, and because she wasn't playing by the courtship "rules", they now get to experience "perfect happiness" together.
