The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (26 page)

Take the absurd Charlotte Palmer in
Sense and Sensibility
, whose unfailing good humour is the perfect complement to the ostentatious rudeness of her husband. “Mr. Palmer is just the kind of man I like,” says Charlotte. And in a strange way the Palmers
are
ideally suited to each other: “Charlotte laughed heartily to think that her husband could not get rid of her; and exultingly said, she did not care how cross he was, as they must live
together.”
¹⁰
As Elinor observes, Mr. Palmer’s “contemptuous treatment of every body, and his general abuse of every thing before him...were not likely to attach any one to him except his wife.”

And Jane Austen shows us the same phenomenon in the case of less absurd characters as well. It’s quite realistic that a couple can seem perfect for each other precisely because their differences provide more scope for both of them to relax into their own faults. John Knightley, Mr. Knightley’s younger brother, is a basically decent human being. But he doesn’t have the best temper in the world.
¹¹
And it isn’t at all improved by the fact that he has married Isabella Woodhouse, a nervous and compliant person who assumes that her husband is right about everything and sympathizes with all his bursts of impatience, however unreasonable.
¹²
Think of the Bertrams, too. Could Lady Bertram be quite as appallingly lazy as she is
¹³
if Sir Thomas weren’t such a take-charge kind of man?

The author of
Pride and Prejudice
clearly grasped the appeal of the opposites-attract kind of match. But she didn’t think it was a sure recipe for happiness. Look at the romantic double plot of
Mansfield Park
. The book’s happy ending—the marriage between Edmund Bertram and Fanny Price—is definitely
not
that kind of match. Edmund and Fanny are as alike as two peas in a pod.
¹⁴
And the match between them comes about only because two different classic opposites-attract matches fall apart, 1) between the stolid Edmund and the sparkling Mary Crawford, and 2) between mousy Fanny and Mary’s brilliant brother Henry. When Edmund finally falls in love with Fanny at the end of the book (she has been in love with
him the whole time), Jane Austen tells us, “Having once set out, and felt that he had done so, on the road to happiness, there was nothing on the side of prudence to stop him or make his progress slow; no doubts of her deserving, no fears from opposition of taste, no need of drawing new hopes of happiness from dissimilarity of temper.” Of course that reference to “drawing new hopes of happiness from dissimilarlity of temper” describes exactly what Edmund was doing when, infatuated by Mary Crawford, he tried to talk himself into believing that their completely opposite personalities made them ideally suited to each other.
¹⁵

Jane Austen actually makes a good case for the possibilities inherent in these opposites-attract matches that never come to pass
.
She goes out of her way to tell us that Fanny is wrong to be sure Mary Crawford would always be unworthy of Edmund.
¹⁶
And then she paints a really enticing picture of what might have happened between Fanny and Henry Crawford if Edmund had married Mary. Jane Austen points out that Fanny’s principles would have made her do her best to stifle her love for Edmund once he was married. And further, that she’d naturally have been thrown together more with Henry, whose character and whose love for her—while both are far from perfect—do hold out some intriguing possibilities.
¹⁷

Henry once claims that he deserves Fanny not because he’s perfect like her (or like he, being in love with her, thinks she is), but because he appreciates her perfection better than anyone else does.
¹⁸
There’s truth in his claim. We’re happy at the end when Edmund finally notices Fanny and gives her her heart’s desire. But there’s something disappointing about the foreclosed possibilities of Henry’s love for Fanny. Edmund will be the star of
their
marriage; it’ll be more about her adoration of him than his of her. We know Edmund comes to love Fanny. But does Edmund ever appreciate her in the way the brilliant Henry Crawford does?
¹⁹
You can’t see Edmund bringing Fanny out of her shell the way Henry plans to.
²⁰
Edmund will let her stay a mouse. A blissfully happy mouse, and a mouse who will grow in confidence over time, but still a mouse.

But with Henry, Fanny might have suddenly blossomed; she might have been transformed. As might Henry with Fanny. We actually get to see Fanny beginning to change Henry’s life for the better. Because of her, he’s taken a new interest in managing his estate. He has actually begun to assume some
responsibility for the many human beings who depend on him. Henry hasn’t overnight become a model landlord like Mr. Darcy, but he has taken a first crucial step toward applying his impressive intellect and energy to the benefit of his fellow man—something it has never occurred to him to try before. We can imagine that a marriage between Fanny and Henry might have been a more really transformative, Darcy-and-Elizabeth kind of match than the marriage that actually takes place, between Fanny and Edmund.

That’s why some readers have always wished
Mansfield Park
would end differently. Critics like Lionel Trilling have pointed out that dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Bertram would not be the most entertaining evening imaginable. And Jane Austen’s sister (and best friend) Cassandra begged her to let Henry marry Fanny.
²¹
Jane wouldn’t do it. In Jane Austen, the real characters of the individual people involved always weigh more heavily than the chemistry between them—whether it’s the “just my type” or the “opposites attract” kind of chemistry. Whatever may be true about investments, past performance really
is
the best indicator of future results when it comes to human beings. Henry destroys his chances (and Fanny’s) for an especially exciting and transformative marriage by slipping back into the womanizing habits that made Fanny think returning his love would be unwise.
²²
Jane Austen shows us the potential that Henry and Mary Crawford hold out for Fanny and Edmund, but also the risk. Later—in contrast to his earlier hopes built on the shaky foundation of “dissimilarity of temper” between Mary and himself—Edmund is sure he’s on “the road to happiness” because he knows that Fanny’s “mind, disposition, opinions, and habits wanted no half concealment, no self deception on the present, no reliance on future improvement. Even in the midst of his late infatuation, he had acknowledged Fanny’s mental superiority [to Mary Crawford]. What must be his sense of it now, therefore?” Edmund’s
prospects for happiness are solidly grounded in Fanny’s real excellence as a person,
²³
not just in the fact that the two of them share so much.

So what does Jane Austen’s take on romantic suitability boil down to? Well, you can be happy with someone very different from you, as Elizabeth is with Mr. Darcy. Or you can be happy with someone almost exactly like you, like Fanny with Edmund. There may be more room for personal growth and transformation from stretching to meet the other person in the Elizabeth-Darcy kind of match—and thus more sparkle and excitement, at least at first.

But don’t forget, life is full of other challenges, and so is love. If personality differences between you and your man don’t provide enough challenge to make you stretch and grow, then life as you live it together will throw up hurdles. No need to fear that you’re missing out. The obstacles that you meet will heighten the value of your relationship, provide ample opportunity for both of you to push yourselves, and add drama and excitement to your love—as long as both of you are the kind of people capable of rising to the occasion.
²⁴
Whatever differences there are between the “just my type” and the “opposites attract” kinds of matches are completely swamped by the gaping chasm between the happy matches grounded in the real excellence of both people’s characters (however like or unlike they are) and the unhappy matches people make when they’re so caught up in who’s good “for them” that they forget to look for somebody who’s really good.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of how to evaluate men if we want to avoid that Romantic dead end, let’s consider one last reason that Jane Austen puts less stock than we do in how especially suitable the guy is to you, and more in evaluating the guy you’re interested in as an independent individual. Somehow, Jane Austen’s genius showed her something that we can easily observe from our greater experience.
²⁵
When you fall for a guy and you’re “perfect for each other,” then all the things you share—the music you listen to together, the places you spend time, the way you kiss—seem
like they belong uniquely to your unique relationship. The things you’re discovering together are the very essence of what’s between the two of you; you wouldn’t have found them otherwise. Or so it seems. But we all know somebody whose boyfriend (or, worse, husband) has turned out to be taking another girl to a place she thought was their special place, or doing with the other girl the exact something she thought had unique meaning to their relationship—and been hurt by it, the way in
Spider-Man 3
, MJ is upset when Peter kisses another girl from hanging upside down: “That was
our
kiss.”
²⁶

That’s exactly the way Marianne Dashwood feels—only it’s much worse, because it’s so much more than a kiss—when she finds out that before he even met her, Willoughby seduced, impregnated, and abandoned Eliza, apparently employing all the charming warmth and energy that made Marianne fall in love with him too. Confessing his past to Elinor, Willoughby himself actually compares the two relationships in a very revealing way:

The difference between Willoughy with Eliza and Willoughby with Marianne isn’t some special magic unique to his love affair with Marianne. Both relationships seem like love at the time—to the women, and even to Willoughby himself, though in Eliza’s case only “for a very short time.” The real difference turns out to be no more and no less than the difference between Eliza (with her violent passions and weak understanding) and Marianne (with her “infinitely superior” mind).

The fact is, so much of what
seems
like the unique spell between the two of you really boils down to just him, and just you. What really matters is
what kind of human beings you are, which determines what each of you is going to be like with any person you love. Which makes it
really
important to look at what any guy is actually like, rather than to be hypnotized by the magic between the two of you.

To us recovering Romantics, it feels a little flat at first to think that the apparently unique spark between you and a man is mostly just what he’d bring to any relationship, plus what you’d bring to a relationship with any man. But really it means that Jane Austen’s kind of love is about
love
. It’s more about
actually knowing and valuing the other person—
appreciating him for what he uniquely is, and being really seen, celebrated, and treasured by him for what you are—than it is about a chemical reaction that’s quite common even between people who aren’t destined for permanent happiness.
²⁷

Or to put it another way, you could say the chemical reaction
²⁸
is an even more thrilling one precisely when the ingredients being mixed—the two people involved—are of a more powerful quality. If you want the most truly exciting adventure in love, you don’t short circuit the process by going straight for the cheap, easy reaction. You hold out for the kind of fireworks you can get when really potent explosive material is involved: Mr. Darcy-grade TNT, not just cheap Wickham-style sparks.

That’s the lesson Elizabeth Bennet learns from her mistakes. She discovers that “gratitude and esteem” for Darcy’s real superiority as a human being are “good foundations of affection.” Better, in fact, than the instant affinity she felt for Wickham. Jane Austen editorializes, “If the regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged—nothing can be said in [Elizabeth’s] defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment.”
With Wickham, Elizabeth fell right into easy intimacy with a guy who was “her type” without thinking first about whether he was really a man worth her time. They clicked immediately: she noticed right away how entertaining he was, and how good he made her feel. She never thought,
Is he somebody I can admire, respect, and trust?
—at least, not until long after she should have been raising those questions in her mind.