The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (40 page)

But Elizabeth objects: Charlotte’s advice is suited only to a woman who’s “determined to get a rich husband, or any husband.” Jane can’t be sure yet of her own feelings, or of Bingley’s deserts. And she’s not “acting by design.”
¹³

What exactly is wrong with Charlotte’s advice? She does see things that Elizabeth misses. Charlotte notices as it’s happening that Bingley probably doesn’t see how much Jane cares for him, while Elizabeth realizes only later “that Jane’s feelings, though fervent, were little displayed, and that there was a constant complacency in her air and manner, not often united with great sensibility.” And Charlotte understands more clearly than Elizabeth does the potential for a mismatch between the rate at which the guy’s falling in love and the speed at which you are responding to him. What Charlotte doesn’t have is Jane Austen heroine-style dignity and Jane Austen
heroine-level respect for men as autonomous human beings. Charlotte’s deliberate manipulations are not Jane Austen’s preferred method for dealing with men.
¹⁴

Jane Austen heroines are really scrupulous about doing anything even remotely manipulative vis à vis men.
¹⁵
Why are Jane Austen’s heroines so reluctant to act “by design”? It’s not just about fear of exposing themselves to ridicule by tipping other people off to how interested they are in a certain man.
¹⁶
Emma’s quite ashamed of her scheming,
¹⁷
even though it was all for Harriet, so it doesn’t carry any danger of revealing Emma’s own romantic interests. It makes her blush because she sees, in retrospect, that her attempts at manipulation were “adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple.” It’s like Mr. Knightley warned Emma at the very beginning of her matchmaking: this kind of scheming is neither a proper nor a delicate use of a woman’s time—or of a man’s, for that matter; think of Henry Crawford and our pickup artists. Manipulation is indelicate because it involves manhandling other people’s feelings. And it’s not proper because it’s not your place to decide when or with whom other people fall in love. That applies to Emma’s scheming about Harriet and Mr. Elton just as much as it applies to “Rules”-style tricks we’re tempted to use to “fix” or “catch” any man we’re interested in.
¹⁸
However much you want him to love you, you have to respect his right to decide freely. Otherwise you’re half way to Lady Susan Vernon’s complete disrespect for men: “It is undoubtedly better to deceive him entirely; since he will be stubborn, he must be tricked.” She gets what she wants out of guys most of the time, but what she wants isn’t worth having: because she is entirely without respect for any man, Lady Susan is incapable of real love.

Jane Austen heroines take pride in being honest, and they want to “be paid the compliment of being believed sincere.” But we’ve already seen that honesty is not enough to make things work between men and women. And somehow you can’t see a Jane Austen heroine ever acting like Audrey Raines in
24
, telling Jack Bauer she thinks she’s falling in love with him 1) after they’re already having sex, and 2) before he’s said anything about loving her. The kind of honesty that Jane Austen heroines are proud of does
not
mean being forthcoming abut their feelings to guys who haven’t yet said they love them.

In fact, Jane Austen’s heroines spend quite a lot of energy concealing their feelings. Because if we’re totally straightforward about our intentions, and men tell us theirs up front, too, that mutual honesty is no foolproof recipe for happy love. We’re still all too likely to be caught in the gap between the male and the female psychology of love. We’ll outpace him in commitment, or we won’t be able to keep ourselves from assuming that what we share means the same thing to him as to us. We’re still going to freight what we do with him with import for the future that he won’t necessarily feel. A woman with a policy of total honesty is all too likely to end up wondering, like Marguerite Fields, why she’s so much more interested in permanence than any of the guys she hooks up with. So what
is
the right method for dealing with men? If manipulating guys is beneath your dignity, and honesty won’t make you happy, what can you do?

Fortunately, there’s a third option: The choices aren’t just either manipulate his feelings or else be totally frank about your own. There’s also prudent reserve, maintaining emotional distance until there’s a good reason to get close, pacing yourself so you don’t get ahead of the guy. You don’t have to choose between letting it all hang out and scheming to catch a husband like a “Rules Girl.” Jane Austen’s way means applying
self
-control, rather than attempting to control the emotions of other people whose autonomy you ought to respect. You, after all, are the one person on earth whose feelings you have the right to control.

All the peculiar rules that Jane Austen heroines take seriously—never write him a letter until you’re engaged, don’t go riding around the countryside and dining at inns with young men,
¹⁹
never let a suitor give you big expensive presents, don’t let him take you on a tour of a house he expects to inherit if you haven’t been introduced to its present owner
²⁰
—are simply particular applications, appropriate to a different time and place from ours, of the underlying principles that Jane Austen heroines apply to their love lives. Most of the little, specific rules no longer apply today. (Do
not
wait for a proposal of marriage before you’re willing to text a guy.) But the bigger principles absolutely do apply, as much now as they did two centuries ago: Don’t offer a guy “unsolicited proofs of tenderness” that are “not warranted” by a “preceding” commitment. Remember that what you enjoy together may mean something different to him from what it means to you.
Wait till he’s all in before you dive in yourself. Pace yourself carefully until you can be sure you’re not getting out ahead of him.

Sometimes Jane Austen heroines do fall very thoroughly in love before the men commit themselves.
All
of them, at one point or another, find themselves to a degree in love and “in some doubt of a return” of love from the man. But they never simply tell the guy, à la Audrey Raines. And they don’t set about trying to ensure he falls in love, either. If a Jane Austen heroine sees a mismatch between how fast or how deeply she and the man she’s interested in are falling in love, she addresses it first where she has control and has a right to control. She thinks of managing her own expectations rather than just putting her feelings and desires out there, or manipulating the man. Instead of dreaming up schemes to speed him up, she slows herself down.

We twenty-first-century women know all about sex, a subject Jane Austen hardly mentions. It’s axiomatic today that to be a gentleman instead of a jerk, a guy has to be willing to slow himself down sexually, to pace himself in the act of making love—in order to accommodate a woman’s typically slower sexual response. In comparison, we’re pretty clueless about love. Jane Austen, who knew all about love, understood that a woman often needs to slow down her emotions and hopes for the future, to pace the speed at which she’s falling in love, in order to accommodate a man’s typically slower speed of emotional attachment. In Jane Austen, self-control is empowering. It’s not about being a repressed woman who has no “voice,” who doesn’t know she can go all out for what she wants. Jane Austen heroines understand exactly what they want. But they know that grabbing doesn’t get you love.

The kind of pacing, careful distance, self-control, and self-knowledge that happy Jane Austen heroines maintain doesn’t just protect you from unnecessary heartbreak—though it definitely will help there. Elinor, Elizabeth, Fanny, Emma, Catherine, and Anne all seriously contemplate the possibility that they won’t get the happy ending they’re aching for with every
fiber of their beings. Elinor does her best to mentally prepare herself for Edward’s marriage to Lucy Steele.
²¹
Elizabeth considers the possibility that family pride and Lady Catherine’s influence may keep Darcy from proposing again and decides, “If he is satisfied with only regretting me,” giving her up out of motives she can’t respect, “when he might have obtained my affections and hand, I shall soon cease to regret him at all.” Fanny reminds herself continually that her feelings for Edmund aren’t justified by his for her.
²²
Emma realizes that Mr. Knightley may never love her—that he may even marry Harriet Smith—and does her best to prepare herself for the worst. Catherine resists Isabella’s attempts to persuade her to let her happiness depend on Henry Tilney before there’s any reason to think that Henry is seriously interested in her. Anne, who is older and already has significant experience with heartbreak under her belt, sees that she may lose Wentworth again. Contemplating that possibility, she chooses always to love him, whether or not she ever gets to be happy with him; she’d rather live without love than ever accept another man.
²³

Each in her different way, these six ultimately happy Jane Austen heroines are to some extent prepared for all events. Following the real, original rules of courtship, they’ve kept some distance between themselves and the men who haven’t decisively committed to them yet. If the men never make that commitment, Jane Austen heroines’ mental peace and “tranquillity” stand a better chance. (Which is not to be sneezed at. Heartbreak, self-loathing, and clinical depression are still no joke, even with our chemical antidepressants, helpful therapists, and the various other advantages of modern medicine that by and large—though not always—keep even Marianne-level lack of self-care from seriously endangering our physical health.)

But the rules aren’t just about avoiding misery. The real, original rules actually
set you up for a happy ending.
That’s how Jane Austen heroines get there. By keeping some distance from the men they’re coming to love—neither forcing early emotional intimacy by premature honesty, nor rolling up their sleeves and presuming to play puppeteer with a man’s feelings—Jane Austen heroines free up more room for themselves to maneuver in. They retain a freedom of action and a liberty of choice that we’ve lost. Remember the grand civilizational project that Jane Austen was engaged in? (That she was in fact the zenith and acme of!) European society in her day was figuring out how women could be sufficiently emancipated to choose their own husbands—without losing their peace of mind and, worse, their freedom to the first man who asked for their love, and missing their chance at happily ever after. This is the project that Jane Austen brought to perfection by fine-tuning the way in which a woman can protect
herself
, rather than relying on her parents, or the patriarchy, or anybody else in the world to make her choices for her. The self-control Jane Austen heroines engage in is protection against more than heartbreak. Following the real, original rules for dealing with men is the way Jane Austen heroines preserve their freedom to choose (or refuse) a man who’s chosen them—instead of miserably waiting around to see whether the man they’ve
already
committed themselves to will ever eventually get around to choosing them.

Look at two different ways of getting married in Jane Austen novels. First, there’s her heroines’ way of finding permanent happiness in love. The heroine gets to know a man she finds attractive. He pays her attention. Maybe it will turn out to be the kind of attention you expect from a man who’s seriously interested in you. Or maybe it’s really just polite interest, gallantry, cousinly affection, or friendship. You do your best to figure out his feelings, and your own. Complications ensue. (Perhaps the man’s father prematurely and mysteriously sends you home from your visit to the family’s abbey; or the guy turns out to be secretly engaged already; or you angrily refuse his proposal under a series of misconceptions about his character, and only afterwards discover that he’s perfect for you. The possibilities are endless.)