We Austenites can be a boy-crazy bunch.
We make much of Mr. Darcy diving into a pond in a puffy shirt (which isn’t even in the book!). We divide into camps over, say, Knightley and Wentworth, and then further into sub-camps over Jonny Lee Miller and Jeremy Northam (or Colin Firth and Matthew McFadyen, or Ciaran Hinds and Rupert Penry-Jones). We admire the mutton chops and the fancy dance moves of Austen heroes from Sense and Sensibility all the way up to Persuasion. We objectify the pants off those fictional characters—see what I did there?—and have a fantastic time doing it.
And we’re missing half the story.
In Friday’s Telegraph, “novelist and ladies’ man” (heh) Jay McInerney gave us the other side of the coin: the male perspective on the ladies of Austen. Spoiler alert: It seems the menfolk can’t get enough of the fine eyes and dirty hems of Elizabeth Bennet any more than Darcy could; McInerney also reveals things for Emma Woodhouse and, with a charming note of self-consciousness, Fanny Price.
We don’t get a lot of this perspective around these parts; being primarily female and straight, the Austen community in general tends to spend way more time on what’s underneath Darcy’s breeches than what might be going on with those boobalicious Regency gowns.
McInerney goes on to claim some degree of depth in his Austen attachments—he really does love them for their minds, he says, both as characters and as representations of Jane herself. But what if he didn’t? What if this guy fixated—with an unusual sense of publicity and and odd sort of camaraderie—on the rain-drenched Marianne Dashwood, or on Jane Bennet’s mid-storm arrival at Netherfield? What if he sat around writing fan fiction about Lydia and either Wickham or, because it’s fanfic and he can, Mr. Collins or Charlotte Lucas or (crossover alert!) Hermione Granger or Sirius Black? Or all of the above? Would we react to him differently, and to his way of experiencing the Austen universe? How would we approach him as a man and as an admirer and/or objectifier of the women of Austen?
Readers, what do you think? (And while we’re at it, who’s your biggest Austen crush—of either gender?)
austenacious 
Some of Jane’s female characters annoy me intensely, particularly Lydia Bennett. Even Elizabeth Bennett, whom I mostly love, has a tendency to annoy me now and again. As for my biggest Austen crush, it has to be Captain Wentworth, easily.
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Okay, I’ll say it: it’s the naughty Mary Crawford who’s the object of my girlcrush.
I know I’m not supposed to like her, but just like Edmund, I can’t help myself. She’s witty and smart and captivating, and has the nerve to make a dirty joke in mixed company. (“Rears and vices”!) I know she doesn’t get the guy, but I can’t help wonder if JA didn’t secretly admire her a bit herself.
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I was pretty shocked when I realized an Austen character had just made a real dirty joke – but, being in my late teens, I admit I enjoyed the transgression instantly.
Despite the very harsh moral lense through which Fanny and Edmund see the world, and despite Mary’s obvious faults, I like her myself. She’s the type whose true friendship would have be earned both ways, but she is able to learn the value of such friendship.
BTW, hello from the year 2012!
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Interesting essay. I liked his statement that Austen’s idea of true love is a mix of passion and reason–that to have one without the other in a relationship is asking for trouble.
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Mandy – I wonder whether the capacity (fulfilled or not) to annoy readers is necessary for a truly realistic character? I can see Jane, or any other author, having a certain impatience for characters who don’t have an obnoxious side–since most regular humans do!
Rosemary – Haaaaa! Awesome. This is a safe place. Admire at will!
E.M. – Agreed, whatever the Romantics may have to say about it. (I also really enjoyed the essay–it’s rare to get the male perspective on Austen, and besides being a good read, I got the feeling that he knows the novels inside and out. Rock on, man.)
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Oddly enough, Fanny Price is one of my only fictional crushes. As much as Emma is my favorite novel, I tend to identify more with her flaws and struggles rather than being enamored of them.
The article is rather nice – I concur with the sentiment that you wouldn’t want to take Fanny to a party – but since I don’t like parties, it wouldn’t present much of a problem.
I also really appreciated that he avoids the traps of “Austen was a Romantic” and “Austen had no romance” quite adroitly (just as Austen herself does, of course 🙂
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