So there’s this new book out called Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, by Lori Gottlieb. The idea being that lots of single women (especially those over-30 spinsters) have “toxic” romantic-fantasy expectations of a perfect partner, and should give that up to marry. . . someone whose characteristics vary wildly depending on who’s doing the reviews. From the reviews in The Telegraph and Grazia Daily, you get the impression that Gottlieb is advising women grab the first male they see and settle down having babies or something. Dreary.
Naturally, a lot of people have issues with this, along the lines of “married women aren’t necessarily happier than single women” and “why should women feel that marriage (and motherhood) is the ultimate goal?” These are perfectly valid points.
Actually, from this interview at The Happiness Project, Gottlieb says the book “is about finding true love by looking for the RIGHT Mr. Right, by focusing on what’s important in love rather than on things that don’t really matter.” In fact, if you read the interview, the book seems to be Sense and Sensibility recast in a modern light. The lessons of Marianne for the new generation. And apparently the new generation needs those lessons, because they seem to see nothing on the spectrum of marriage between “romantic fantasy perfect partnerships” (whatever that means) and “a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring non-profit business.”
The funny thing is that I found all those articles (except the interview) because they all reference Jane Austen. And I am tired of Jane Austen being the peg on which people hang women’s “unrealistic” expectations of romance and marriage. Was she not an eminent realist about happiness in marriage? Don’t Austen heroines always find love with the sweet, thoughtful guy, who coincidentally has quite enough money, thanks, and not with the dashing, devil-may-care, spendthrift heart-flutterers? Jane Austen is ALL ABOUT the depth and not the surface in relationships. And as a happily married woman (everyone wave “hi” to Mr. Fitzpatrick!), I agree with Austen and Gottlieb that happiness in marriage is about understanding each other and agreeing about the world on fundamental levels, not about the laundry list of attributes Marianne and apparently women on dating sites are looking for. Geez, Austen spends hundreds of pages combating this type of Romanticism.
Sure, I know why people blame (or credit?) Jane Austen with the idea that true love exists, accept no substitutions. As Salon points out, this started long before Colin Firth jumped into a pond in a billowy shirt. But I honestly don’t know where they get the idea that she was telling us it would be all wet shirts, all the time, and nothing else. Man, for that, try the Brontës.
Photo credit: ©2010 by Charlene Chong. All rights reserved.
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