Jane Austen For Dummies (31 page)
Read Jane Austen For Dummies Online
Authors: Joan Elizabeth Klingel Ray
Divorce, which was granted by an Act of Parliament, was very expensive, very public, and very shameful almost always for the woman.
The double standard was alive and well in Jane Austen's day. A husband could sleep around, but his wife couldn't divorce him for his adultery. An adulterous husband could commit the act and even if discovered, just get on with his life. His wife had no legal recourse. On the other hand, if the wife committed adultery, her husband could divorce her. In the divorce proceedings, the wife wasn't permitted to testify on her own behalf. And society and the press branded her a slut. The divorced woman lost her social rank and privileges, and her husband gained sole custody of the children â frequently meaning that she never saw them again. If she was lucky, she had a small allowance on which to live.
Sense and Sensibility
's Eliza Brandon, a divorced woman because of her adultery (never mind that her husband committed adultery first), winds up in the poor house. When Maria Bertram Rushworth commits adultery in
Mansfield Park,
her husband divorces her, and her father sends her to live “in another country,” meaning not abroad, but rather to another county or borough in England, “remote and private” (3:17).
A woman could take action in one instance: spousal abuse. A woman couldn't bring her husband to court for committing adultery or for beating her, but if the husband did both â
and
beat her to a pulp â then she did have a shot at divorcing him, assuming she could crawl to court. Because divorces were very expensive, informal separations were cheaper alternatives.
Wily Females and Seductive Males
In This Chapter
Putting on the charm to find a mate
Using flirting as a means to an end
Winning your spouse the right way
M
any readers have long thought of Jane Austen as the sweet spinster writer whose novels carry you away back to the more innocent times of “Merry Olde England” â if there ever was such a place! Some readers still do, and that's fine. As Karen Joy Fowler premises in her delightful novel
The Jane Austen Book Club,
all Austen readers have their own Jane Austen.
Austen was a shrewd observer of the world in which she lived, and a writer of realistic social comedies. (For more on her realistic writing, see particularly Chapter 16.) While she was certainly a moral writer, she was well aware of how young men and women behaved, especially when it came to behaving toward each other when the scents of romance and money were in the air. (See Chapter 7 for info on money and marriage.) Because Austen wrote novels about the relationships between young men and women, it was only natural for her to throw sexual flirtation and even seduction â real or attempted â into her books, though sexual acts, of course, occurred off-stage. Austen used the words “by a Lady” as the byline for her first published novel,
Sense and Sensibility
. The word “Lady” connotes not only her social place as a member of the gentry, but also, like today, moral, courteous behavior and demeanor.
As a realistic writer, she knew that wily females and seductive males could work their arts on many people. She even told her sister that she had a “very good eye at an adulteress” (Letter, May 12â13, 1801). And she can write about one, too! (For more information on the gentry and class structure, see Chapter 2; for information on moral versus immoral behavior in Austen's day and novels, see Chapter 13.) This chapter explores Austen's characters as crafty females, male and female flirts, and male seducers.
Every work of fiction presents a conflict: within a character, between characters, or between a character and society. Writing about courtship and the emotional growth of her heroes and heroines, who range between 16 (Marianne in
Sense and Sensibility
and Lydia in
Pride and Prejudice
) and 36 (Mr. Knightley in
Emma,
and Colonel Brandon in
Sense and Sensibility
), Austen is bound to have some of them personally deal with or witness others dealing with wily females or seductive males as a crucial part of their courtships and learning experiences. Sometimes, the conflict extends beyond the hero or heroine to other characters in the novel.
Young ladies needed a dowry if they expected to marry well or even marry at all. (Chapter 7 explains the whole courtship process and the importance of dowries.) But with or without a dowry, young ladies could be extremely flirtatious in order to get their man. Having just turned 20, Austen, herself, wrote facetiously to her sister about how she and Tom Lefroy behaved at a ball doing “everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together” (Letter, January 9â10, 1796).
While Jane Austen was youthfully flirtatious, she certain wasn't a wily man-hunter. Yet she has several crafty females in the novels who win or try to win men with “youth and beauty.”
The phrase “youth and beauty” comes from
Pride and Prejudice,
where it's revealed how the apparently incompatible Mr. and Mrs. Bennet ever wound up together: he “had been captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour, which youth and beauty generally give” (PP 2:19).
Take a look at the following examples of youthful and beautiful women snagging their men in Austen's novels:
Miss Gardiner (later Mrs. Bennet, and likely named Jane, as eldest daughters were frequently named for their mothers, just as Jane Austen's sister Cassandra was named for her mother) from
Pride and Prejudice:
Miss Gardiner must have had a good share of beauty: Her eldest daughter Jane, who's beautiful, and Elizabeth, who's “very pretty” must have inherited their looks from their mother, for Mr. Bennet is never described as being anything like
Persuasion
's Sir Walter Elliot, who having been “remarkably handsome in his youth” is “at fifty-four . . . still a very fine man” (P 1:1). While Miss Gardiner had the beauty and high-spiritedness to attract Mr. Bennet, she had a dowry of £4,000. Granted, this purse is more than each of her daughters will have. But it's still not big-time money, and so you know that Mr. Bennet wasn't looking at Miss Gardiner's finances when he became attracted to her. And to get her man, Miss Gardiner had to be shrewd, as well as beautiful.
Mrs. Crawford in
Mansfield Park:
Mrs. Crawford, the wife of Admiral Crawford, isn't as lucky as Mrs. Bennet. Whether Mrs. Crawford attracted her naval husband with youth and beauty is unclear, but his turning to other women when he and his wife don't get along is his choice of comfort. He has a mistress and undoubtedly has enjoyed the favors of many a woman. This implication shows one example of how a man dissatisfied in his marriage as Mr. Bennet is deals with his marital unhappiness. But Mr. Bennet “was not of a disposition to seek comfort . . . in any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice” (PP 2:19). Instead, luckily for Mrs. Bennet, her husband turns to books and sarcasm for solace.
Lady Bertram in
Mansfield Park:
Lady Bertram also attracted her husband, a baronet with a country house and estate, by being “handsome,” plus having “luck” (MP 1:1). At the time of their courtship, she was considered £3,000 “short” â in terms of her dowry â of making this great match. The spoiled and lazy Lady Bertram must have captivated Sir Thomas with her looks. For she never displays even a hint of spiritedness or wit â or she expended it all in flirting with him during their courtship!
Jane Fairfax in
Emma:
Jane Fairfax is a “remarkably elegant” young woman with “pleasing beauty” (E 2:2). Indeed, Jane is so elegant that it's hard to believe she was ever flirtatious. Though so poor that she's the only one among Austen's young women to have to consider a career as a governess, she has beauty and elegance enough to attract Frank Churchill, heir to great wealth, and captivate him. They manage to continue their courtship secretly in Highbury, with Frank finding any excuse to stop by Mrs. Bates's (Jane's grandmother's) house, where Jane is staying, although there's absolutely no sign that they're using this as “The Bates Motel,” as I once heard it described! For as Jane confesses when the engagement is made public, the secrecy has been very hard on her, causing her to be in conflict with herself for having to play the hypocrite. (For the plight of the governess, see Chapter 9.)
Austen's
Lady Susan,
written in 1794, is a stunning read because, in the novella (short novel), she presents a character, Lady Susan, who displays all the characteristics of sociopathy. Selfish, vain, guiltless, and loveless, Lady Susan Vernon is known as “the most accomplished coquette [flirtatious woman] in England.” Still a beauty in her late 30's, she manipulates younger men with her skills in language, making herself look the victim of others' schemes. Nearly winning the hand of the young heir Reginald De Courcy by her flirtatious, poor-me strategies, she winds up with another young man, the “contemptibly weak” (in Susan's view) and rich Sir James Martin, whom she is able to win away from a much younger woman. Sociopaths usually are victorious over the naïve and weak; indeed, they can even manipulate the smart and strong. Sir James didn't have a chance!
