The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (31 page)

Where
are
the overbearing patriarchs in the lives of Jane Austen heroines? Well, that’s an interesting question. They’re fading into the past.
¹
Jane Austen’s women are able to run their love lives quite independently, free of oppression or even guidance. Jane Austen, in fact, resorts to a variety of character choices and ingenious plot devices—hustling fathers and uncles off the stage or putting them out of action before the romantic adventures begin
²
—to maneuver her heroines into the position where they have sole responsibility for reading the signals that the men in their lives give off.

Why does Jane Austen go to such lengths to arrange things so that her heroines are on their own when it comes to their love affairs? Well that’s the kind of novel she was writing! The whole point of the “novel of manners,” as invented by Samuel Richardson, improved by Fanny Burney,
³
and perfected by Jane Austen, is to show a young woman dealing with men
on her own
, without oversight by her parents and guardians—either their oppressive interference
or
their helpful advice. The idea is to watch the heroine pick her way through the minefield of courtship using nobody’s wit and wisdom but her own. So parents, and especially overbearing patriarchs, have to be gotten out of the way.
⁴

These plot devices are all in aid of fast-forwarding the changes that were happening in real-life marriage and courtship in Jane Austen’s day, and putting women’s new responsibility for their own romantic choices under a microscope. That way Jane Austen’s readers, who really did have more power to arrange their own marriages than previous generations of women, would have a model for making use of the newly increased independence they actually had (even if their fathers hadn’t died, retreated to their libraries, or sailed off to the other hemisphere). The question her whole society was trying to decide—by trial and error, but also by working out the theory in books like Jane Austen’s novels of manners—was this: Can young women make better marriages for themselves than their families can arrange for them? If so, how?

Jane Austen sometimes lets slip a hint that maybe her heroines’ parents
ought
to take a more active role in their children’s love lives.
⁵
But by hook or by crook, Jane Austen heroines
are
on their own in their romantic deliberations. And that’s lucky for us. Because we’re living in a real world that’s as free of parental interference in women’s choices as Jane Austen’s fictional one is. Our fathers don’t have to be in the West Indies to be out of our hair; it’s taken for granted by everyone that
we’re
going to be fully responsible for making our own matches.

Jane Austen knew all about men who just aren’t “that into you.” In fact, she took it as a given that a very large proportion of male “admiration”
doesn’t amount to the kind of serious interest that a woman’s looking for from a man—at least, the kind that she’s looking for when she’s seriously interested in him. If you’re 100 percent sure you’ll be content with a man’s “having no design beyond enjoying the conversation of a clever woman for a short period,” then by all means enjoy his transient admiration. But if you’re hoping for love, you need to ask yourself what, if anything in particular, he intends by any attention he’s paying you. Ask it early and often.

It’s almost second nature to Jane Austen’s female characters to practice this kind of discernment. In
Northanger Abbey
, Catherine’s bosom friend Isabella keeps rushing her to stake emotional claims on Henry Tilney, and Catherine keeps reminding Isabella (and more important, herself) that those claims aren’t yet warranted by proofs of his attachment: “I do not suppose that he ever thinks of me.” Henry
is
beginning to think of her—some. But her progress in thinking of him is certainly more rapid,
⁶
and it’s wise of her to remember that what happens between them will depend on what’s going on in his head, as well as her own. When Elizabeth Bennet meets Darcy’s cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, he clearly likes her, and she enjoys his company, too. But she soon learns that he has “no intentions at all” towards her—when he tells her frankly that very few younger sons like himself “can afford to marry without some attention to money.”

When Jane Austen’s women don’t remember to discern men’s intentions, they’re sorry. Elizabeth, flattered by Wickham’s attention,
⁷
never asks herself what
Wickham
thinks
he’s
doing, getting so close to a woman he obviously can’t afford to marry. It’s only later that she guesses, “His behaviour to herself could now have had no tolerable motive; he had either been deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying his vanity by encouraging the preference which she believed she had most incautiously shown.”

Julia Betram misses even more obvious red flags. Both Julia and her sister Maria have fallen for Henry Crawford. But then Henry goes to his
own country house to hunt for two weeks. “He went for a fortnight—a fortnight of such dullness to the Miss Bertrams as ought to have put them both on their guard, and made even Julia admit, in her jealousy of her sister, the absolute necessity of distrusting his attentions, and wishing him not to return.” Meanwhile, we see Mary Crawford protecting her heart and pacing her relationships by paying attention to the very same tell-tale signs that Julia is ignoring—a man who has been paying her a lot of attention has left town and doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to come back and enjoy more of her company. When Tom Bertram goes off to a racing meet and Mary’s presence at Mansfield isn’t enough of a magnet to get him back at all soon, she reasonably concludes that he’s not getting serious about her.
⁸
Of course, it’s easier for Mary to be prudent—her interest in Tom is mostly mercenary!

It would be harder for Julia because she’s really falling for Henry. But it’s not impossible. That’s the trick—the amazing trick that Jane Austen’s successful heroines pull off: being prudent in real love. That’s what you have to do to find your happy ending: not lose your head entirely even when you’re falling head over heels in love. It’s part of that tricky balance between a prudence that’s too calculating and a passion that’s too abandoned and Romantic.

When Jane Austen’s women fail to ask themselves about a man’s intentions, it can be because they are, in the true Romantic style, spending too much time thinking about their own feelings. You can be so busy asking if he’s “The One” capable of fulfilling all your fantasies that you fail to realize that what you ought to be asking is whether
you’re
“The One” from
his
point of view. Have you grabbed his attention just for the moment, or is he thinking about you as a woman who’s going to change his life? In
Sense and
Sensibility
, we’ve got the classic case. What Dusty Springfield sings is quite likely to turn out to be true: “hold him and kiss him and squeeze him and love him.... And after you do, you will be his.”
⁹
The more interesting question, though, is will
he
be
yours
? After all, Willoughby is clearly “The One” who captures Eliza’s heart and alters her life forever. But she isn’t “The One” from his point of view. Eliza ends up pregnant and abandoned while he pursues Marianne.

But Marianne isn’t “The One” for him either—or at least he doesn’t see that she is until it’s too late. If Marianne had noticed that Willoughby’s “intentions” were lagging behind her hopes and plans and slowed the pace of their relationship, he might possibly have come to see her that way in time. But Marianne, caught up in the throes of her Romantic love story, doesn’t ask the most obvious questions about Willoughby. What are his intentions? Why hasn’t he said straight out that he loves her? Why has he left the neighborhood without saying when Marianne will see him again? Even if he’s not in a financial position to marry now, why is he hesitating to enter into an engagement? If he really loved Marianne, wouldn’t he be eager to put their relationship on a more secure footing—both for his own sake and for hers? Marianne knows very well—or she
would
know, if she thought about it for two seconds—that if it were
her
role to propose an engagement by declaring her love to Willoughby, she wouldn’t hesitate for a second. If he really feels the same way she does, what’s he waiting for?

It’s Marianne’s sister Elinor who ends up asking those awkward questions.
¹⁰
Which isn’t surprising. It’s always easier to see these obvious, upsetting things about other people’s
relationships than about our own. That’s the truly remarkable thing that Jane Austen gives us in her heroines who find happy endings: women who consider it their responsibility to notice the uncomfortable things—the kind of things friends or parents find it easier to notice—about their
own
relationships, and to ask the painful questions that those others would ask. (If they thought it would do any good. They usually don’t, because they’re sure we won’t listen. And they’re usually right.)

Elinor cares enough about her sister to ask those painful questions, and to take a stab at interfering, but it doesn’t do much good.
¹¹
We’ve all seen it in real life, too. Perhaps you’ve tried gently asking a good friend awkward questions about her relationship, or pointing out to your sister some obvious indicator of disengagement in the behavior of a man she was dating. What’s extraordinary is that Elinor also does a pretty good job of asking these same awkward questions about her
own
relationship.

When Elinor and Edward are staying in the same house in the period of time after her father’s death, he pays her a lot of attention and they get close. But he doesn’t follow that attention up by telling her he loves her. So Elinor tries not to pin her hopes on him.
¹²
Elinor can imagine a good reason for Edward to go slow; he’s financially dependent on his mother, who’s not going to approve of his marrying a girl without status or a large fortune. But Elinor doesn’t embrace that reason as a blanket excuse for Edward—the way her mother and sister resort to Willoughby’s financial difficulties to excuse all his inconsistent behavior to Marianne. When Edward pays Elinor less particular attention as time goes on, she worries. When he’s not enthusiastic about the prospect of visiting her family in their new home, she considers that she may have exaggerated his interest in her. When he does visit but acts depressed the whole time, she wonders what’s going on. And especially when he can’t explain why he needs to end his visit, but he decides to leave anyway, she knows there’s reason to doubt him. She sees that there’s no creditable explanation for his pulling back from her, his failure to declare his love, and his other odd choices—odd choices, at least, if you start from the premise that he hopes to marry her.

Elinor is biased in favor of Edward, and of the possibility that he’s in love with her. Obviously she’s in love with him, and she can’t help giving him the benefit of the doubt at least a little more than she does Willoughby.
¹³
But she manages to pull off the essential task of discerning Edward’s intentions from his behavior—at least to the extent of internalizing some warning that prepares her for the truth. When Lucy reveals that Edward has been secretly engaged to
her
all along, Elinor is devastated, but she doesn’t quite fall apart. Elinor’s preparation for the horrible news is of a piece with her dignity as a successful Jane Austen heroine. She certainly bears up better under the shock than the totally blindsided Marianne. We’ll do well to take Elinor for our model in keeping our eyes open and maintaining a realistic picture of a guy’s intentions toward us.

What signs do Jane Austen’s heroines look for? What in a man’s conduct betrays his intentions?

Well, sometimes a guy makes it easy. There are men like Colonel Fitzwilliam (“in person and address most truly the gentleman”) who deliberately make it clear that they’re not going to let their admiration of you develop into a real attachment. But failing that sort of notice, you’re going to have to analyze what a man says and does for signs about his “intentions.” And there are some universal indicators, applicable in almost every case.

There’s the degree to which his attention and his memory are preoccupied by you, and by what you’ve shared. When Elizabeth finally sees Bingley again, months after he left Jane and Netherfield, she’s delighted “to find his memory so exact” about the date on which he last saw Jane: “It is above eight months,” he tells Elizabeth. “We have not met since the 26
^th
of November, when we were all dancing together at Netherfield.”

Then there’s the indicator that Julia Bertram (like the women in
He’s Just Not That into You
) ignores at her peril—if he doesn’t make it a point to go out of his way to see you; if he seems to have a great time when he’s with you, but he doesn’t call; if he’s obviously much less anxious than you are about “when will I see you again?” then you’d be wise to pace yourself, like Catherine Morland, by reminding yourself that he may not be thinking about you in the way that you’re thinking about him. Anne Elliott draws exactly the right conclusion from the facts that Captain Wentworth knew
perfectly well where to find her for the past seven years, and that he hasn’t done anything about it.
¹⁴