I figured out Jane Austen. It's all clear to me now. What I didn't realize before was that she is really writing about her own little Jane Austen world where she gets to manipulate the people and reward and punish whom she wants to reward and punish and even if things get out of hand she can always fix them with a little husband ex machina. So, the main rule is that you have to be smart and pretty and if your smart and pretty you deserve to win and Jane Austen will make you win. So you have Elizabeth Bennett, who is weak in the money and man area and she is going to lose if something doesn't happen soon, so Jane Austen (or shall we say Super Jane Austen) comes in and saves the day (like a fairy godmother) she says, "Lizzie, I see you are weak and have no good connections and no money," (this is also part of the rules, if you are below a certain income that for us would still be pretty well off then you count as having no money) "but you are pretty and smart so I will reward you with Pemberly, Mr. Darcy, and ten thousand pounds a year." But for people who are stupid and/or ugly she gives them bad marriages, marriage slow and miserable as it were. So that's why these books didn't make sense to me and made me angry, I didn't understand that Jane Austen was controlling her own little world here. Jane Austen is really just the nice fairy godmother taking pity on the weak and helpless women who deserve husbands and money. And it's not really about husbands, it's about marriage as death and if people follow Jane's rules of goodness then they go to marriage heaven and if they are bad they go to marriage hell. That's why everything ends with marriage. There is no escaping marriage, it is the ultimate fate. And I realize that when I was a little girl I lived in Jane Austen's marriage world, and I think most people do when they're little, even boys. But now I realize that I can just not get married and it's like I've found out how to cheat death. Digory says, "I don't know that I care about living on and on after everyone I know is dead." but hey, it could be an interesting adventure.
Posted by linnea at October 2, 2004 1:07 PMI know, incredibly liberating, isn't it? the problem is that by the time I reached that conclusion, I met Chris shortly thereafter. ;-)
I'm just starting to like Austen's World for the first time. For once, the smart ones win. And their wit can be so sharp that the stupid ones don't even realize it!
What I wonder is what bad thing did Mr. Bennett do to get the purgatory that is Mrs. Bennett?
Posted by: Jeannette at October 2, 2004 4:38 PMI think you're hitting what we might call an "alternate reading" here. Austen isn't playing doll house with her literary characters. She's writing a comedy. Every wonder why Shakespear's comedies always end in marriage? He's not pulling romance out of thin air, he's just ending the story. That was the nature of comedy for hundreds of years with Ms. Austen just extending the tradition. Note carefully the (rather funny) social exchanges on which the strength of the novel hinges. Austen is writing a light comedic satire on social England.
As for the smart poor girls getting the great husband, it was in a large part a reflection of the era. Mid-19th century England was enormously stratified by class and the workplace was not considered a proper positions for middle/upper-class women. Austen is a realist, not a rebel. She recognizes that, for most middle-class women, the way to move themselves up in life was the acquisition of funds and the best way to do that was through marriage. Marriage isn't a fate, it's a goal. The equivalent for this time would be graduating college. It's like getting a bad job vs getting a good job.
So blame not Ms. Austen for marrying off all her characters. The fact that you feel some resentment to the idea is a tribute to the fact that you have more freedom and more options than she did.
Posted by: Matthias at October 3, 2004 9:59 AMI know she's not really playing dollhouse and she doesn't really believe in marriage hell, but it's fun to come up with these outrageous alternate readings and use phrases like "Super Jane Austen."
Posted by: linnea at October 3, 2004 4:48 PMya, except the "smart ones" in Austen's world are actually stupid, completely motivated by their own insecurities and wrapped up in a self-loving dreamscape. The just happen to be "witty." Which is a load of crap; like going to France and feeling "cultured."
My impression is that Austen is not the kindof woman we'd ever wanna hang out with; head royally inserted way the heck up her posterior.
Posted by: JosiahQ at October 3, 2004 6:01 PMI liked this post. And trackbacked it on my blog. Come see, come see :)
Posted by: Evan Donovan at October 3, 2004 7:13 PMMatthias, you're kinda an arrogant bastard sometimes. You act as if you've got the corner on the market of Austen. Stop being so condescending and let someone else have an opinion for once. It's not an alternate reading. Art, as a broad category from literature to cinema to music to paint & sculpture are subject in part to the interpretation of the individual, and no amount of petty, ubiquitous information you may have garnered about the historical context is going to change the way that art affects the individual who lives here and now.
Linnea, I like your reading. I'd held tenuously to the "Austen as satirist/social critic" reading for a while, but frankly, I'm just not comfortable with it, and I think you may have hit on part of why I'm not comfortable with it. She doesn't use the real rules, or follow the Shakespearian conventions: she has to make up her own. In some ways these rules act as foils for larger social conditions in England at the time, sure. But that doesn't matter to me. What matters is that she has just caused the absurd notion of her ridiculous marriages to make sense in her own little fictitious world. And she invites us to fantasize about it for a while with her.
Of course, her world sucks, and I hate it, but that's besides the point.
Posted by: KornSt@r at October 5, 2004 4:47 AMI've gotten old enough to know better than to not comment on what it will be like when I am old. It probably is what it it is, and not what we think it will be. I remember thinking before I had children that i would never feed them french fries.
Elizabeth was resigned to living without Darcy, however, and the money.And there are Proverbs about how you end up because of the associates you have made. So Austen is not that far-fetched. Is there something wrong with getting married in the end??????
Linnea... forever may I be your Natalie and you my Linnea and no marriage or weird contractual agreement change that... nor men, nor love, nor lack of sleep, nor oceans or musical taste differences. Thank you for reminding me about how great life is RIGHT NOW... dang it!
Posted by: Deke at October 8, 2004 1:07 AM