The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (63 page)
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Authors: Elizabeth Kantor
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4
As a little girl, Jane Austen registered an imaginary marriage for herself in the official book her father kept for the parish to “Henry Fredrich Howard Fitzwilliam”—presumably a cousin to Mr. Darcy.
As a little girl, Jane Austen registered an imaginary marriage for herself in the official book her father kept for the parish to “Henry Fredrich Howard Fitzwilliam”—presumably a cousin to Mr. Darcy.
5
Today novelists, and educated people in general, have ceded all that interesting territory to the expert social scientists. Now we have scientific experts breathlessly announcing such astonishing discoveries as “Study: Women Drawn to Men with Muscles.” (No kidding, “Study: Men Drawn to Women with Muscles,”
Life Two
, July 11, 2007, reporting on research published by U.C.L.A. graduate student David A. Frederick in the
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
,
http://lifetwo
. com/production/node/20070711-study-women-drawn-to-men-with-muscles. Other groundbreaking research I’ve seen reported reveals: Boys and girls actually
are
different; children tend to do better with married parents; toddlers who exhibit superior self-control grow up to succeed as adults; and parents can actually affect whether their children try illegal drugs or not—they’re less likely to if you tell them not to!) Or, even more annoying, the experts tell us that beauty boils down to an epiphenomenon of the evolutionary imperative: men find younger women more attractive only because of their superior reproductive potential. The pain we feel when our partner is unfaithful is just our selfish genes talking: we care only because the affair could distract him from contributing to the support of a child of ours and so make it less likely that that child will reach sexual maturity and transmit our genes to future generations. Right.
Today novelists, and educated people in general, have ceded all that interesting territory to the expert social scientists. Now we have scientific experts breathlessly announcing such astonishing discoveries as “Study: Women Drawn to Men with Muscles.” (No kidding, “Study: Men Drawn to Women with Muscles,”
Life Two
, July 11, 2007, reporting on research published by U.C.L.A. graduate student David A. Frederick in the
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
,
http://lifetwo
. com/production/node/20070711-study-women-drawn-to-men-with-muscles. Other groundbreaking research I’ve seen reported reveals: Boys and girls actually
are
different; children tend to do better with married parents; toddlers who exhibit superior self-control grow up to succeed as adults; and parents can actually affect whether their children try illegal drugs or not—they’re less likely to if you tell them not to!) Or, even more annoying, the experts tell us that beauty boils down to an epiphenomenon of the evolutionary imperative: men find younger women more attractive only because of their superior reproductive potential. The pain we feel when our partner is unfaithful is just our selfish genes talking: we care only because the affair could distract him from contributing to the support of a child of ours and so make it less likely that that child will reach sexual maturity and transmit our genes to future generations. Right.
6
She could joke about the morals of her stories, as at the end of
Northanger Abbey
when she “leave[s] it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.” And she made fun of crude, proto-Victorian attempts at moralizing literature, as in her sarcastic “Plan of a Novel, according to hints from various quarters”: The heroine of that imaginary crowd-sourced work was to be “a faultless character herself—, perfectly good, with much tenderness and sentiment, & not the least Wit.” Jane Austen aimed higher, at stories that displayed “the most thorough knowledge of human nature” in all its “varieties,”“wit,” and “humour.” But she still expected women to learn from her novels, and to want to be like her heroines.
She could joke about the morals of her stories, as at the end of
Northanger Abbey
when she “leave[s] it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.” And she made fun of crude, proto-Victorian attempts at moralizing literature, as in her sarcastic “Plan of a Novel, according to hints from various quarters”: The heroine of that imaginary crowd-sourced work was to be “a faultless character herself—, perfectly good, with much tenderness and sentiment, & not the least Wit.” Jane Austen aimed higher, at stories that displayed “the most thorough knowledge of human nature” in all its “varieties,”“wit,” and “humour.” But she still expected women to learn from her novels, and to want to be like her heroines.
7
We’re unique in the animal kingdom in the extraordinarily long time it takes members of our species to mature. Ducks and horses learn to walk the day they’re born. Frogs know how to be frogs without seeing their parents’ example. But human beings take years to become competent adults, and all the time we learn by copying other human beings. And even when we’ve reached maturity, we can’t
stop learning by imitation. Just look at our fashions, in everything from clothes to music to kitchen counters.
We’re unique in the animal kingdom in the extraordinarily long time it takes members of our species to mature. Ducks and horses learn to walk the day they’re born. Frogs know how to be frogs without seeing their parents’ example. But human beings take years to become competent adults, and all the time we learn by copying other human beings. And even when we’ve reached maturity, we can’t
stop learning by imitation. Just look at our fashions, in everything from clothes to music to kitchen counters.
8
As Edmund Bertram says, “The manners I speak of might rather be called conduct, perhaps, the result of good principles.”
As Edmund Bertram says, “The manners I speak of might rather be called conduct, perhaps, the result of good principles.”
9
Still far from rich, but more prosperous than their parents and grandparents.
Still far from rich, but more prosperous than their parents and grandparents.
10
A skill in some ways even more important then than today because travel was ruinously expensive and all communication at a distance was written communication.
A skill in some ways even more important then than today because travel was ruinously expensive and all communication at a distance was written communication.
11
“Samuel Richardson,”
Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature
, January 1, 2009,
www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2507200387.html
. The claim is about Richardson’s later novel
Sir Charles Grandist
, but I would argue that it applies to
Pamela
.
“Samuel Richardson,”
Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature
, January 1, 2009,
www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2507200387.html
. The claim is about Richardson’s later novel
Sir Charles Grandist
, but I would argue that it applies to
Pamela
.
12
Of the six Jane Austen novels,
Pride and Prejudice
has a story the most like Richardson’s original plot. Elizabeth Bennet marries a man enormously richer and more important than herself, and she succeeds with him because of the same qualities that Mr. B was surprised to find in Pamela: sound principles, intelligence, and self-command (all in a degree most unexpected in a girl from her background—remember how Darcy says of Elizabeth and Jane that they have conducted themselves “so as to avoid any share of the like censure” as their mother, younger sisters, and sometimes even their father deserve for their “total want of propriety”), in combination with a kind of teasing sauciness that a man in his position is unused to from any woman. But instead of needing all her self-command, intelligence, and skill with the English language to fight off her lover’s physical attacks, Elizabeth needs these same qualities to win through to her happy ending despite the appalling rudeness and vulgarity of relatives (both hers and Darcy’s) and to come to terms with her own conscience.
Of the six Jane Austen novels,
Pride and Prejudice
has a story the most like Richardson’s original plot. Elizabeth Bennet marries a man enormously richer and more important than herself, and she succeeds with him because of the same qualities that Mr. B was surprised to find in Pamela: sound principles, intelligence, and self-command (all in a degree most unexpected in a girl from her background—remember how Darcy says of Elizabeth and Jane that they have conducted themselves “so as to avoid any share of the like censure” as their mother, younger sisters, and sometimes even their father deserve for their “total want of propriety”), in combination with a kind of teasing sauciness that a man in his position is unused to from any woman. But instead of needing all her self-command, intelligence, and skill with the English language to fight off her lover’s physical attacks, Elizabeth needs these same qualities to win through to her happy ending despite the appalling rudeness and vulgarity of relatives (both hers and Darcy’s) and to come to terms with her own conscience.
Even though the drama is more psychological and less physical, the basic pattern Richardson invented is there—and in all the novels, not just
Pride and Prejudice
. The scene in
Sense and Sensibility
when the scheming Lucy Steele tells Elinor Dashwood all about her own secret engagement to the man she knows Elinor loves is very much like a scene from
Pamela
. Jane Austen’s novels are all about a woman making her way through the minefields of courtship, with all the attendant misunderstandings between the sexes, unaccountable interference by third parties, and mixed motives on the woman’s own part. Whatever the crises they face, Jane Austen’s heroines manage them with the same weapons that recommended Pamela to Mr. B, and that Richardson thought would recommend her story to a public interested
in self-improvement: self-control in difficult circumstances, remarkable verbal skills, intelligence and integrity applied to social difficulties—though on an exponentially more sophisticated level than in
Pamela
.
Pride and Prejudice
. The scene in
Sense and Sensibility
when the scheming Lucy Steele tells Elinor Dashwood all about her own secret engagement to the man she knows Elinor loves is very much like a scene from
Pamela
. Jane Austen’s novels are all about a woman making her way through the minefields of courtship, with all the attendant misunderstandings between the sexes, unaccountable interference by third parties, and mixed motives on the woman’s own part. Whatever the crises they face, Jane Austen’s heroines manage them with the same weapons that recommended Pamela to Mr. B, and that Richardson thought would recommend her story to a public interested
in self-improvement: self-control in difficult circumstances, remarkable verbal skills, intelligence and integrity applied to social difficulties—though on an exponentially more sophisticated level than in
Pamela
.
13
Richardson was accused of prurience; there’s a famous parody of
Pamela
by the author of
Tom Jones
, making explicit all the nastiest implications you can read into Richardson’s book.
Richardson was accused of prurience; there’s a famous parody of
Pamela
by the author of
Tom Jones
, making explicit all the nastiest implications you can read into Richardson’s book.
15
The French Enlightenment viewed convention, tradition, and every kind of authority handed down from the past with hostility. Voltaire’s motto was “
écra-sez l’infâme
”
—
crush the infamous thing! By which he meant the whole weight of the absolute French monarchy and the established Catholic Church (all “superstition” to Voltaire). In other words, he wanted to eradicate every vestige of traditional authority that stood in the way of re-making the world according to the dictates of reason. Mankind would never be free, Voltaire insisted, until the last king was strangled with the entrails of the last priest. And of course when the French Revolutionaries got the chance to build a new world from scratch, they really did try to throw out every vestige of received wisdom from the past—down to the names of months and the days of the week. They invented entirely new ones, from nature and reason alone. Their lasting legacy to us: the metric system. (Which was actually standardized by a committee appointed by Louis XVI—previous versions had been mooted by scientists as early as the seventeenth century—but adopted by the French Republic along with the new Revolutionary calendar in 1793, the year of the Terror. The metric system’s origin in the pre-Revolutionary Enlightenment period in France is something it shares with much of the Revolution’s intellectual content.)
The French Enlightenment viewed convention, tradition, and every kind of authority handed down from the past with hostility. Voltaire’s motto was “
écra-sez l’infâme
”
—
crush the infamous thing! By which he meant the whole weight of the absolute French monarchy and the established Catholic Church (all “superstition” to Voltaire). In other words, he wanted to eradicate every vestige of traditional authority that stood in the way of re-making the world according to the dictates of reason. Mankind would never be free, Voltaire insisted, until the last king was strangled with the entrails of the last priest. And of course when the French Revolutionaries got the chance to build a new world from scratch, they really did try to throw out every vestige of received wisdom from the past—down to the names of months and the days of the week. They invented entirely new ones, from nature and reason alone. Their lasting legacy to us: the metric system. (Which was actually standardized by a committee appointed by Louis XVI—previous versions had been mooted by scientists as early as the seventeenth century—but adopted by the French Republic along with the new Revolutionary calendar in 1793, the year of the Terror. The metric system’s origin in the pre-Revolutionary Enlightenment period in France is something it shares with much of the Revolution’s intellectual content.)
16
Enlightenment-Era Englishmen thought quite a lot about civilized versus primitive human existence. They pondered which elements of their culture were natural, and which were unique to their civilization. By Jane Austen’s day, Europeans had had three centuries since the discovery of America to compare themselves with the Homeric culture of the peoples they found living there. The discovery set them thinking about their own culture in a more critical way. (For some early examples of this line of inquiry, see Michel de Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals,” 1580; Sir Walter Raleigh’s
The Discovery of Guiana
, 1596; and William Shakespeare’s
The Tempest
, 1610–1611.) But in Jane Austen’s youth it was a minority view, and not a typically English one, to prefer the primitive to the civilized—though the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the great champion of the pro-primitive, pro-natural, anti-civilization point of view, was certainly growing.
Enlightenment-Era Englishmen thought quite a lot about civilized versus primitive human existence. They pondered which elements of their culture were natural, and which were unique to their civilization. By Jane Austen’s day, Europeans had had three centuries since the discovery of America to compare themselves with the Homeric culture of the peoples they found living there. The discovery set them thinking about their own culture in a more critical way. (For some early examples of this line of inquiry, see Michel de Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals,” 1580; Sir Walter Raleigh’s
The Discovery of Guiana
, 1596; and William Shakespeare’s
The Tempest
, 1610–1611.) But in Jane Austen’s youth it was a minority view, and not a typically English one, to prefer the primitive to the civilized—though the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the great champion of the pro-primitive, pro-natural, anti-civilization point of view, was certainly growing.
Edmund Burke (Jane Austen was not a fan—she took the side of Warren Hastings, a family friend, in the impeachment trial that Burke masterminded against Hastings—but here Burke is expressing moderate Anglo-American Enlightenment views that she shared) in his
Reflections on the Revolution in France
defended civilization and tradition against the Rousseauian back-to-nature impulses of the French revolutionaries: “All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.
Reflections on the Revolution in France
defended civilization and tradition against the Rousseauian back-to-nature impulses of the French revolutionaries: “All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.
“On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order.”
Jane Austen’s characters share Burke’s preference for the civilized over the merely natural. Consider Mr. Darcy’s put-down of Sir William Lucas on the subject of dancing. Everyone in the neighborhood knows Darcy scorns to dance with mere acquaintances, preferring to pass an evening in intelligent conversation with his intimate friends. Sir William attempts to persuade him to think otherwise: “What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy!” he exclaims. “There is nothing like dancing after all. I consider it as one of the first [first in importance, he means, not earliest] refinements of polished societies.” To which Darcy replies, “Certainly, sir; and it has the advantage also of being in vogue amongst the less polished societies of the world. Every savage can dance.”
17
Mrs. Elton suggests a picnic, and Mr. Knightley declines to take her up on the offer:
Mrs. Elton suggests a picnic, and Mr. Knightley declines to take her up on the offer:
Mrs. Elton: “There is to be no form or parade—a sort of gipsy party.—We are to walk about your gardens, and gather the strawberries ourselves, and sit under trees;—and whatever else you may like to provide, it is to be all out of doors—a table spread in the shade, you know. Everything must be as natural and simple as possible. Is not that your idea?”
Mr. Knightley: “Not quite. My idea of the simple and the natural will be to have the table spread in the dining-room. The nature and the simplicity of gentlemen and ladies, with their servants and furniture, I think is best observed by meals indoors.”
18
It’s funny. Modern scientists who work with
other
species don’t take the same dismissive attitude toward
their
cultures. They’re busy encouraging adolescent whooping cranes to learn all about migration from experienced sandhill cranes,
or dressing up in adult condor puppet suits so they can help baby condors learn how to be condors the traditional way. (See James C. Lewis, “Whooping Crane, Grus Americana,” in
Birds of North America Online
,
http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/153/articles/conservation
, and Matt Kaplan, “Puppet Parents Raise Troubled Condors,”
Nature
, August 7, 2007,
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070806/full/news070806-3.html
.) Scientists know that without condor or crane culture, condors and whooping cranes won’t survive as free and healthy species—only as freakish individuals, zoo exhibits, cut off from nature and dependent on the scientists for their whole existence. How different from their cavalier attitude toward human culture.
It’s funny. Modern scientists who work with
other
species don’t take the same dismissive attitude toward
their
cultures. They’re busy encouraging adolescent whooping cranes to learn all about migration from experienced sandhill cranes,
or dressing up in adult condor puppet suits so they can help baby condors learn how to be condors the traditional way. (See James C. Lewis, “Whooping Crane, Grus Americana,” in
Birds of North America Online
,
http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/153/articles/conservation
, and Matt Kaplan, “Puppet Parents Raise Troubled Condors,”
Nature
, August 7, 2007,
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070806/full/news070806-3.html
.) Scientists know that without condor or crane culture, condors and whooping cranes won’t survive as free and healthy species—only as freakish individuals, zoo exhibits, cut off from nature and dependent on the scientists for their whole existence. How different from their cavalier attitude toward human culture.
19
We’ve all seen the horrifying “honour killings” stories out of Pakistan and even from some Muslim enclaves in Europe and America. On a lighter and happier note, see Wilbur Sargunaraj, “Love Marriage,”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TojTlYNNm9w
.
We’ve all seen the horrifying “honour killings” stories out of Pakistan and even from some Muslim enclaves in Europe and America. On a lighter and happier note, see Wilbur Sargunaraj, “Love Marriage,”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TojTlYNNm9w
.
20
Sometimes they’re being selfish about money or alliances—sadly true about some parents even in less traditional societies: Mrs. Bennet cares more that her daughters marry “greatly” than that they marry happily.
Sometimes they’re being selfish about money or alliances—sadly true about some parents even in less traditional societies: Mrs. Bennet cares more that her daughters marry “greatly” than that they marry happily.
21
“Western human rights organizations and the ruling on referring to them for judgement,” Islam QA, Question No. 97827,
http:/islam-aq.com/indexphp?ref+97827&In=eng#
. , quoted in Robert Spencer,
Religion of Peace? Why Chrstianity Is and Islam Isn’t
(Regnery, 2007), pp. 205–6.
“Western human rights organizations and the ruling on referring to them for judgement,” Islam QA, Question No. 97827,
http:/islam-aq.com/indexphp?ref+97827&In=eng#
. , quoted in Robert Spencer,
Religion of Peace? Why Chrstianity Is and Islam Isn’t
(Regnery, 2007), pp. 205–6.
22
But we’ve got things arranged so that the wolves can do us less obvious and material harm here than in the sheikh’s Saudi Arabia—even less harm than wolves of their sort could do our great-grandmothers. Unfaithful men can still break our hearts, but at least they don’t shame us and our families, or starve us.
But we’ve got things arranged so that the wolves can do us less obvious and material harm here than in the sheikh’s Saudi Arabia—even less harm than wolves of their sort could do our great-grandmothers. Unfaithful men can still break our hearts, but at least they don’t shame us and our families, or starve us.
23
Nona Willis-Aronowitz ,“The Virginity Mystique,”
Nation
, July 19, 2007,
http://www.thenation.com/article/virginity-mystique
.
Nona Willis-Aronowitz ,“The Virginity Mystique,”
Nation
, July 19, 2007,
http://www.thenation.com/article/virginity-mystique
.
25
Sam Roberts, “51% of Women Are Now Living without Spouse,”
New York Times
, January 16, 2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/us/16census.html
.
Sam Roberts, “51% of Women Are Now Living without Spouse,”
New York Times
, January 16, 2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/us/16census.html
.
INDEX
Aaccomplishments
Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man
address
admiration
adolescence
Age of Reason, the
air
al-Hilali, Taj Din
al-Munajjid, Muhammad Salih
America
Americans
American Revolution
Anderson, Hephzibah
appearance
art
assembly balls
Atlantic
attachment
admiration and
constant
disinterested
gap between men and women
mutual
object of
premature
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