The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (59 page)
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Authors: Elizabeth Kantor
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30
Not general superiority—Jane Austen is not fighting the battle of the sexes here—but superiority in this one aspect of our lives.
Not general superiority—Jane Austen is not fighting the battle of the sexes here—but superiority in this one aspect of our lives.
31
There’s nothing unprincipled or predatory about Reginald; he’s the innocent victim of Lady Susan Vernon’s deliberate scheme to revenge herself on his sister.
There’s nothing unprincipled or predatory about Reginald; he’s the innocent victim of Lady Susan Vernon’s deliberate scheme to revenge herself on his sister.
32
Or, if he’s of bad character, like Henry Crawford, when he’s away from the girl he loves for even a few days. In Henry Crawford’s story, we actually get to see Anne’s “so long as you have an object” principle at work in the case of a man who is
not
among “those who resemble” Captain Harville. Mary Crawford is probably right that if Fanny had accepted Henry “they might now have been on the point of marriage, and Henry would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object”—i.e., to get entangled with Maria again. (Mary’s likely also right that his thing with Maria would have wound down to “a regular standing flirtation, in yearly meetings at Southerton and Everingham”—a prospect that Fanny regards with a horror Mary Crawford can’t possibly understand.) Henry leaves Portsmouth full of the woman he loves and preoccupied with the serious responsibilities for his tenants that she’s inspired him to pay new attention to. But when he ceases, only for a few days, to “have an object” in the form of Fanny actually in his presence daily to court and admire, love and pursue, then he’s subject again to impressions as they come along, living in the present, letting momentary impulses—to help his sister make a social splash... to subdue Maria’s pride by making her want him again—put Fanny, love, and responsibility out of his head, just long enough to wreck everything.
Or, if he’s of bad character, like Henry Crawford, when he’s away from the girl he loves for even a few days. In Henry Crawford’s story, we actually get to see Anne’s “so long as you have an object” principle at work in the case of a man who is
not
among “those who resemble” Captain Harville. Mary Crawford is probably right that if Fanny had accepted Henry “they might now have been on the point of marriage, and Henry would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object”—i.e., to get entangled with Maria again. (Mary’s likely also right that his thing with Maria would have wound down to “a regular standing flirtation, in yearly meetings at Southerton and Everingham”—a prospect that Fanny regards with a horror Mary Crawford can’t possibly understand.) Henry leaves Portsmouth full of the woman he loves and preoccupied with the serious responsibilities for his tenants that she’s inspired him to pay new attention to. But when he ceases, only for a few days, to “have an object” in the form of Fanny actually in his presence daily to court and admire, love and pursue, then he’s subject again to impressions as they come along, living in the present, letting momentary impulses—to help his sister make a social splash... to subdue Maria’s pride by making her want him again—put Fanny, love, and responsibility out of his head, just long enough to wreck everything.
33
“To His Coy Mistress.”
“To His Coy Mistress.”
34
Or having theirs catered to, for that matter. See Davy Rothbart, “He’s Just Not That Into Anyone: Even, and Perhaps Especially, When His Girlfriend Is Acting like the Women He Can’t Stop Watching Online,”
New York
[magazine]
,
January 30, 2011,
http://nymag.com/news/features/70976/
.
Or having theirs catered to, for that matter. See Davy Rothbart, “He’s Just Not That Into Anyone: Even, and Perhaps Especially, When His Girlfriend Is Acting like the Women He Can’t Stop Watching Online,”
New York
[magazine]
,
January 30, 2011,
http://nymag.com/news/features/70976/
.
35
As I happened to do one morning when my son was about two years old. Having grown up in a very female environment—my sister and I (no brothers) were raised by our divorced mother, and she sent us to a girls’ school, where she also taught—I was just beginning to get that up-close-and-personal understanding of raw male psychology that you can’t get any other way than by raising a little boy.
As I happened to do one morning when my son was about two years old. Having grown up in a very female environment—my sister and I (no brothers) were raised by our divorced mother, and she sent us to a girls’ school, where she also taught—I was just beginning to get that up-close-and-personal understanding of raw male psychology that you can’t get any other way than by raising a little boy.
36
Brizendine, op. cit., pp. 14–19. The original research was conducted by Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge, who also points out that “the higher the baby’s level of fetal testosterone, the less eye
contact the child makes at 12 months old. And also the slower they are to develop language at 18 months old.” And “The MacArthur infant vocabulary scales report different norms for boys and girls at age 12 months precisely because girls[’] vocabularies are bigger than boys[’] from that age, and remain bigger over the next 24 months. Many independent studies show that girls on average also make more eye contact, and play with different kinds of toys to boys, from as early as 12 months old.” “The Assortative Mating Theory: A Talk with Simon Baron-Cohen,”
Edge.org
, April 6, 2005,
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/baron-cohen05/baron-cohen05_index.html
.
Brizendine, op. cit., pp. 14–19. The original research was conducted by Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge, who also points out that “the higher the baby’s level of fetal testosterone, the less eye
contact the child makes at 12 months old. And also the slower they are to develop language at 18 months old.” And “The MacArthur infant vocabulary scales report different norms for boys and girls at age 12 months precisely because girls[’] vocabularies are bigger than boys[’] from that age, and remain bigger over the next 24 months. Many independent studies show that girls on average also make more eye contact, and play with different kinds of toys to boys, from as early as 12 months old.” “The Assortative Mating Theory: A Talk with Simon Baron-Cohen,”
Edge.org
, April 6, 2005,
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/baron-cohen05/baron-cohen05_index.html
.
37
A fictional but telling example: “‘Don’t you understand how Cho’s feeling at the moment?’ [Hermione] asked.
A fictional but telling example: “‘Don’t you understand how Cho’s feeling at the moment?’ [Hermione] asked.
“‘No,’ said Harry and Ron together.
“‘Well, obviously, she’s feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she’s feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can’t work out who she likes best. Then she’ll be feeling guilty, thinking it’s an insult to Cedric’s memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she’ll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can’t work out what her feelings toward Harry are anyway, because he was the one with Cedric when Cedric died, so that’s all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she’s afraid she’s going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she’s been flying so badly.’
“A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, ‘One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.’” J. K. Rowling,
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
(Scholastic, 2003), p. 459.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
(Scholastic, 2003), p. 459.
38
“Fanny was the only one of the party who found anything to dislike, but since the day at Sotherton, she could never see Mr. Crawford with either sister without observation, and seldom without wonder or censure; and had her confidence in her own judgment been equal to her exercise of it in every other respect, had she been sure that she was seeing clearly, and judging candidly, she would probably have made some important communications to her usual confidant [Edmund, that is]. As it was, however, she only hazarded a hint, and the hint was lost.” Lost because Edmund is clueless about what Henry Crawford’s up to.
“Fanny was the only one of the party who found anything to dislike, but since the day at Sotherton, she could never see Mr. Crawford with either sister without observation, and seldom without wonder or censure; and had her confidence in her own judgment been equal to her exercise of it in every other respect, had she been sure that she was seeing clearly, and judging candidly, she would probably have made some important communications to her usual confidant [Edmund, that is]. As it was, however, she only hazarded a hint, and the hint was lost.” Lost because Edmund is clueless about what Henry Crawford’s up to.
39
“‘I rather wonder Julia is not in love with Henry,’ was [Mrs. Grant’s] observation to Mary.
“‘I rather wonder Julia is not in love with Henry,’ was [Mrs. Grant’s] observation to Mary.
“‘I dare say she is,’ replied Mary coldly. ‘I imagine both sisters are.’”
40
Which is especially noble of her, considering that she’s still in love with Wentworth herself!
Which is especially noble of her, considering that she’s still in love with Wentworth herself!
41
Besides personal experience and the testimony of world literature, see Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher,
The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially
(Doubleday, 2000), especially chapter 6, “With My Body I Thee Worship: The Sexual Advantages of Marriage.” Even if all that men really wanted from women was just sex, marriage would still be in their interests, considering the frequency of sex and men’s higher levels of physical satisfaction in marriage. I was recently talking to a friend at the office (a divorced guy) about the high level of hostility between men and women today. I’m more intimately familiar with the bitterness women feel toward men, but men are angry too. Angrier than they used to be, I think. If I put something up on Facebook about the difficulties men and women have connecting—or, worse, look at “pickup artist” blogs—I see a cascade of hostile comments from resentful, mostly divorced men, excoriating modern women as, essentially, frigid gold-digging layabouts. So I was asking my friend (who is not this kind of woman-bashing jackass) to theorize about the reasons for the increased bitterness. His insight was based on his observation that men tend to want sex from women more than we want it from them. It’s true that a man has a better chance of getting a woman into bed today than a few decades ago. But the same modern dispensation essentially extends the negotiations on this issue over a much longer period of time. The bargaining between men and women—to eventually reach some kind of stable arrangement in which he is assured of getting at least some definite portion of what he wants from her, and she gets some fixed percentage of what she wants from him—goes on for longer. For decades altogether, as negotiations break down in break-ups and divorces, and both partners move on to try again with somebody else.
Besides personal experience and the testimony of world literature, see Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher,
The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially
(Doubleday, 2000), especially chapter 6, “With My Body I Thee Worship: The Sexual Advantages of Marriage.” Even if all that men really wanted from women was just sex, marriage would still be in their interests, considering the frequency of sex and men’s higher levels of physical satisfaction in marriage. I was recently talking to a friend at the office (a divorced guy) about the high level of hostility between men and women today. I’m more intimately familiar with the bitterness women feel toward men, but men are angry too. Angrier than they used to be, I think. If I put something up on Facebook about the difficulties men and women have connecting—or, worse, look at “pickup artist” blogs—I see a cascade of hostile comments from resentful, mostly divorced men, excoriating modern women as, essentially, frigid gold-digging layabouts. So I was asking my friend (who is not this kind of woman-bashing jackass) to theorize about the reasons for the increased bitterness. His insight was based on his observation that men tend to want sex from women more than we want it from them. It’s true that a man has a better chance of getting a woman into bed today than a few decades ago. But the same modern dispensation essentially extends the negotiations on this issue over a much longer period of time. The bargaining between men and women—to eventually reach some kind of stable arrangement in which he is assured of getting at least some definite portion of what he wants from her, and she gets some fixed percentage of what she wants from him—goes on for longer. For decades altogether, as negotiations break down in break-ups and divorces, and both partners move on to try again with somebody else.
42
See Leonard Sax,
Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men
(Basic Books, 2007), especially chapter 6, “End Result: Failure to Launch.”
See Leonard Sax,
Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men
(Basic Books, 2007), especially chapter 6, “End Result: Failure to Launch.”
43
See Kimmel, op. cit., especially chapter 2, “‘What’s the Rush?’: Guyland as a New Stage of Development.”
See Kimmel, op. cit., especially chapter 2, “‘What’s the Rush?’: Guyland as a New Stage of Development.”
44
See “When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America (The State of Our Unions: Marriage in America 2010),” the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia,
http://www.virginia.edu/marriageproject/pdfs/Union_11_12_10.pdf
.
See “When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America (The State of Our Unions: Marriage in America 2010),” the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia,
http://www.virginia.edu/marriageproject/pdfs/Union_11_12_10.pdf
.
45
See Mark J. Perry, “‘Man-cession’ Worsens; Male (10%)-Female (7.6%) Jobless Rate Gap of 2.4% Is Highest in History,”
Carpe Diem: Professor Mark J. Perry’s Blog for Economics and Finance
, May 8, 2009,
http://mjperry.blogspotcom/2009/05/man-cession-worsens-male-10-female-76.html
.
See Mark J. Perry, “‘Man-cession’ Worsens; Male (10%)-Female (7.6%) Jobless Rate Gap of 2.4% Is Highest in History,”
Carpe Diem: Professor Mark J. Perry’s Blog for Economics and Finance
, May 8, 2009,
http://mjperry.blogspotcom/2009/05/man-cession-worsens-male-10-female-76.html
.
46
See Brizendine, op. cit., pp. 14, 36.
See Brizendine, op. cit., pp. 14, 36.
47
As the relationship experts, we’re responsible for taking both our own special vulnerabilities and their particular blind spots into account in the course of maneuvering our way to a happy ending.
As the relationship experts, we’re responsible for taking both our own special vulnerabilities and their particular blind spots into account in the course of maneuvering our way to a happy ending.
48
“It was the highest satisfaction to her, to believe Captain Wentworth not in the least aware of the pain he was occasioning.”
“It was the highest satisfaction to her, to believe Captain Wentworth not in the least aware of the pain he was occasioning.”
49
Emma, who is confident way beyond the bounds of her real expertise, and who exaggerates feminine intuition and female prerogatives in this area, being the obvious exception that proves the rule.
Emma, who is confident way beyond the bounds of her real expertise, and who exaggerates feminine intuition and female prerogatives in this area, being the obvious exception that proves the rule.
50
She has been grounded and resilient while he was stubborn and brittle, doing the take-my-ball-and-go-home thing.
She has been grounded and resilient while he was stubborn and brittle, doing the take-my-ball-and-go-home thing.
51
As Jane Austen says of Fanny and Edmund.
As Jane Austen says of Fanny and Edmund.
52
All of which suggests a question: If women are the relationship experts, if that’s what we bring to the table, then what unique contribution does the man make to a happy match? Well, there’s a certain restless, inventive masculine energy that Jane Austen captures in her portrayal of the navy men in
Persuasion
, with their life of “exertion” “continual occupation and change.” That hasn’t really altered with women’s advance into the realm of “profession, pursuits,” and “business” that were men’s province alone in Jane Austen’s day. There’s definitely something to Camille Paglia’s argument that if the human race were 100 percent female, “we’d still be living in grass huts.” See
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
(Yale University Press, 1990), p. 38. And doing beautifully coordinated cooperative subsistence farming, no doubt, but still subsistence farming.
All of which suggests a question: If women are the relationship experts, if that’s what we bring to the table, then what unique contribution does the man make to a happy match? Well, there’s a certain restless, inventive masculine energy that Jane Austen captures in her portrayal of the navy men in
Persuasion
, with their life of “exertion” “continual occupation and change.” That hasn’t really altered with women’s advance into the realm of “profession, pursuits,” and “business” that were men’s province alone in Jane Austen’s day. There’s definitely something to Camille Paglia’s argument that if the human race were 100 percent female, “we’d still be living in grass huts.” See
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
(Yale University Press, 1990), p. 38. And doing beautifully coordinated cooperative subsistence farming, no doubt, but still subsistence farming.
But there’s also something valuable in men’s obsession with sex—itself a special case of that restless male energy—which is just as strong as our passion for relationships. When it comes to happy love, you can argue that for men, just as for women, the aspect of their character that looks most like a weakness in the worst of circumstances (wherever men and women are preying on each other’s vulnerabilities, using and discarding each other, and failing to give each other what makes them both happy) is in the best of circumstances a great strength and resource for truly mutual happy endings. My grandmother used to say that she knew she wanted to marry my grandfather (in 1936!) because he was the first man she wanted to sleep with—as presumably he knew he wanted to marry her because she was the first woman he wanted to commit to.
The conventional wisdom today is that it was a disaster when, up through the repressed 1950s, people got married “just so they could have sex.” That’s why Caitlin Flanagan reports, in that article for the
Atlantic
(see chapter 5
above) that one of the tidbits of wisdom her mother suddenly sprang on her—in her well-meaning but ham-fisted 1970s feminist-era attempt to reverse the repressed sexual socialization of an earlier era and free the teenaged Caitlin to have a woman’s sex life without having to take on irreversible adult commitments—was “Never marry a man because you want to have sex with him. Just have sex with him.” You can see the horror story her mother was proactively trying to rescue her from; she didn’t want her daughter trapped in marriage in her teens or early twenties to a guy she’d realize she didn’t love or even like all that much, once she woke up from being hypnotized by the sexual magnetism of the first guy who appealed to her in that particular way.
Atlantic
(see chapter 5
above) that one of the tidbits of wisdom her mother suddenly sprang on her—in her well-meaning but ham-fisted 1970s feminist-era attempt to reverse the repressed sexual socialization of an earlier era and free the teenaged Caitlin to have a woman’s sex life without having to take on irreversible adult commitments—was “Never marry a man because you want to have sex with him. Just have sex with him.” You can see the horror story her mother was proactively trying to rescue her from; she didn’t want her daughter trapped in marriage in her teens or early twenties to a guy she’d realize she didn’t love or even like all that much, once she woke up from being hypnotized by the sexual magnetism of the first guy who appealed to her in that particular way.
But that’s not what was going on with my grandmother. It wasn’t a question of sex appeal overwhelming her good judgment about whether a man was really the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. It was something much healthier than that (and ultimately very successful, leading to one of the longest and happiest marriages I’ve known). It was about a guy being so right for her altogether that she could love him with a passion that transcended anything she’d felt for any man before. I’ve read my grandmother’s diary from long before she met my grandfather. It’s obvious that it came quite naturally to her to have crushes on guys and fantasize about the future. She went through her adolescence in a way that seems quite familiar. Like women in general—like us—she was a natural at relationships. But something about her relationship with the man she would marry pushed her into territory that didn’t come so naturally to her. As bizarre as it seems, maybe there’s some sense in which men come to sex more naturally than women, just as we find it easier to fall in love than they do.
But what does this Depression-era story really have to do with us? It would be a rare woman today, to put it mildly, who had never wanted to have sex with a man until she met her husband. My grandparents’ lives are ancient history at this point. But you can still see vestiges of the same dynamic in more recent times. Remember how, near the beginning of
When Harry Met Sally
, Billy Crystal infuriates Meg Ryan by claiming that she hasn’t ever had really great sex? He can tell because she prefers Victor Laszlo to Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
. Then, when Harry and Sally meet again later, she prefers Humphrey Bogart and can’t even remember that she ever thought any different. What has happened in the interval, apparently, is that she
has
had great sex. Only it didn’t turn out as well for Sally as it did for my grandmother. The guy who showed Sally how great sex could be—who inspired her to enjoy something she had to stretch to learn—wasn’t inspired
by
her
to jump the bounds of what came naturally to
him
, and want love and commitment and permanence. He went on for a few years, content to have his views still bounded by the present, enjoying living with and making love to her, without freighting it all with future significance. Meanwhile, long-term love was becoming increasingly important to Sally—eventually an urgent need that ruined her enjoyment of their present pleasures: she realized that being able to have sex on the kitchen floor without the kids walking in wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. After living together for years, Sally wanted marriage and a family, and he didn’t. They broke up, and in short order he found a different woman who
did
, somehow or other, inspire him to want the very things that Sally wanted but couldn’t get him to want with her: lasting love, long-term commitment, marriage.
When Harry Met Sally
, Billy Crystal infuriates Meg Ryan by claiming that she hasn’t ever had really great sex? He can tell because she prefers Victor Laszlo to Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
. Then, when Harry and Sally meet again later, she prefers Humphrey Bogart and can’t even remember that she ever thought any different. What has happened in the interval, apparently, is that she
has
had great sex. Only it didn’t turn out as well for Sally as it did for my grandmother. The guy who showed Sally how great sex could be—who inspired her to enjoy something she had to stretch to learn—wasn’t inspired
by
her
to jump the bounds of what came naturally to
him
, and want love and commitment and permanence. He went on for a few years, content to have his views still bounded by the present, enjoying living with and making love to her, without freighting it all with future significance. Meanwhile, long-term love was becoming increasingly important to Sally—eventually an urgent need that ruined her enjoyment of their present pleasures: she realized that being able to have sex on the kitchen floor without the kids walking in wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. After living together for years, Sally wanted marriage and a family, and he didn’t. They broke up, and in short order he found a different woman who
did
, somehow or other, inspire him to want the very things that Sally wanted but couldn’t get him to want with her: lasting love, long-term commitment, marriage.
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