Jane Austen Hates Being Misunderstood

Have you made your Jane Austen fortune cookies yet?

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.

Jane Austen Not-Fight Club: Rochester vs. Darcy?

Well, Charlotte, you’ve won.

The Brits—who, of course, invented romance, what with all that sweeping around the moors, plus Charles/Diana and the classy trysts we see in Hello! magazine—have voted Jane Eyre‘s Mr. Rochester the most romantic man in literature, bumping our Mr. Darcy down to number-three status. In an impressive display of gracious victory, Andrew McCarthy of the Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth called Darcy (and everybody else in Jane’s world, which is a nice touch) “irritating.” We love you, too, Bronteites!

They’re not wrong, of course. As a romantic hero—and especially as a Romantic hero—Rochester’s brooding and breathy ways wipe the floor with Darcy, who is only awkward and devoted and does not lie about keeping a crazy wife locked in the attic. Rochester, after all, has the choice of wealthy and accomplished ladies, and turns his back on all of them to marry the plain and earnest governess—and acts as if she’s everything he’s ever wanted, singlehandedly turning her from dreary and dutiful orphan to love-story heroine. Darcy comes around eventually, but the grand gesture and love for the sake of love (flying in the face of social convention) isn’t what he’s about—and I’d propose that Jane (Austen, not Eyre; this is getting confusing) wouldn’t have him any other way, not being one for the Brontes’ brand of gushiness in the first place. In any case, does Lizzy hear Darcy’s supernatural voice echoing through the Lake Country, calling her back to her true love when she’s homeless and sleeping under a bush? No. No, she does not. So case closed, really.

Incidentally, Jane Austen’s contemporary Lord Byron comes up a lot in these conversations, which I suppose is all well and good if you want a “mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know” Sixth Baron poking about in your love life. Personally, I’m on the fence about this.

What I’m not sure about is whether they should be asking us about romance at all—if this list is any indication, we sure know how to pick ’em. Clearly, we like the bad boys, and not without—let’s just say it—a bit of a masochistic bent. Rhett Butler? Heathcliff? I’m almost surprised Darcy’s ranked so highly–the good guys, the ones you’d eventually take home to meet your parents, are most definitely towards the bottom of the list (this, of course, being the crux of the issue—if they’d do okay at brunch with Mom and Dad, to paraphrase Harry Burns, perhaps “humpin’ and pumpin’ is not [their] strong suit”). What do we think about this, readers? Does romance generally equal a certain sense of choosing to be dominated? Is our love of exotic literary men our safe way of indulging the desire for a romantic (but not particularly kind or respectful) hero in our lives? Do we really think Heathcliff is that hot?

In any case, Bronte fans, congratulations—truly. But if we catch you outside our windows, moaning our names in the night, we’re taking the trophy back. You’ve been warned.