8 posts tagged “jane austen”

Miss Austen Regrets tries to tell the story of a human being who cannot find a counterpart but nevertheless, feels the need of one. Ironically, it is the story of one of Western Literature’s most formidable Romance novelists, Jane Austen.  It is a movie that asks questions but leaves the answers to you. Should a person marry a person they are three fifths in love with? Two fifths? Fifteen sixteenths? What does an unusually bright person do when they are capable of creating characters in a novel that they could fall in love with but are incapable of meeting someone in the real world that they can. Do they believe? Do they risk growing old believing? “The only way to get a man like Mr. Darcy” says Jane in the movie, “is to make him up.”

Jane Austen died fairly young. And the movie explores the characters in her life and their beliefs about Jane’s decision to pursue literature rather than family, the ideal rather than the present. “’Quite Happy’ is not the end I want to write for my story” she says. But ultimately, that is what she has to settle for. .

“What kind of man could have been worthy of Jane Austen?  That list of men had to have been very, very short.  So short, that Austen may have had to have created and crafted fictional men to fill that void.  Sometimes, when we cannot find what we seek, we create it in our imagination – to fill the void of something we feel and believe should exist.” HERE

“Surely you and I are beyond speaking when words are not enough” Edmund, Mansfield Park

As in all of the other Jane Austen novels I have read thus far, the main characters must sort themselves into pairs and/or reflect upon the ways that they have irrevocable mis-sorted themselves. Fanny Price's mother has to live with a man who fell far short of her idealizations of him. Lord and Lady Bertram have much to be disappointed with in each other I suppose. The young people all must be thoroughly vetted by circumstances to determine their moral worth and thus appropriate partner. Needless to say, much of the novel involves a process of whereby pretenses are stripped away so that the reader can feel satisfied that the fakers and frauds get each other and the people of integrity and moral consistency are happily linked into conjugal unions. In Jane Austen's universe, the wheels of justice and exposure grind slowly but fine and we are left satisfied in the end that the wheat lives happily ever after with the wheat and the chaff with the chaff, if they can stand one another. “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.” Austen concludes, “I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”

“Sir Thomas, poor Sir Thomas, a parent, and conscious of errors in his own conduct as a parent, was the longest to suffer.”

One cannot deny that the ending is karmicly pleasing. Austen concedes that a number of attachments that were made during the course of the romantic melee' had to be untied for the right people to wind up with their counterparts but she deals ever so tactfully with the subject in the following way.

“Edmund had greatly the advantage of her in this respect. He had not to wait and wish with vacant affections for an object worthy to succeed her in them. Scarcely had he done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to Fanny how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another woman, before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as well—or a great deal better; whether Fanny herself were not growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles, and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been; and whether it might not be a possible, an hopeful undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.”

How long is a proper length of time for such attachments to dissolve, Jane Austen will not say but she does infer that the affections of such kinds of young love are absolutely transferable. “I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion,” she writes,

“that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people.—I only intreat every body to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny, as Fanny herself could desire. . .”

Happily ever after. That is the reward for those who have committed themselves to honesty and transparency.

“With so much true merit and true love, and no want of fortune and friends, the happiness of the married cousins must appear as secure as earthly happiness can be.—Equally formed for domestic life, and attached to country pleasures, their home was the home of affection and comfort; and to complete the picture of good, the acquisition of Mansfield living, by the death of Dr. Grant, occurred just after they had been married long enough to begin to want an increase of income, and feel their distance from the paternal abode an inconvenience.”

Say what you will of Mansfield Park, it is a place where the laws of a moral universe can be depended on in affairs of the heart. One just has to be a few hundred pages worth of patient.

Take Michael Chrichton’s Timeline and combine it with a little Pleasantville, Mark Twain’s the Prince and the Pauper, C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Back to the Future and you have the makings of Lost in Austen, a hilariously funny post-modernist (or pre-modernist) romp through Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Amanda Price, a 20 something Jane Austen devotee finds herself transported into the Bennet’s house through a secret doorway leading from her flat in London. Elizabeth Bennet, it appears, is a modern woman. So modern, that she intentionally exchanges lots and locks poor Amanda in the early 19^th century where all hell breaks loose on the plotlines of Jane Austen’s sacred text because of her. In short, everyone starts winding up with the wrong people and all sorts of backstory that Jane Austen herself apparently did not know begins to reveal itself.

Listen as Mr. Bingley curses Darcy for persuading him to let Jane Bennet marry Mr. Collins:

“She loves me still. To what unrelenting misery have I condemned her? On your instruction. Damn you. And damn everyone who won’t put a light in his window and stay up all night damning you.”

Will Mr. Darcy wind up with a woman from the 20^th century? Will Jane Collins wind up with Mr. Collins? Will Mr. Wickham wind up with anyone? Will Mr. Bennet stand up and challenge anyone? Will Mrs. Bennet learn that there are things more important that getting your daughter’s situated with titles? It is fascinating to watch Amanda Price trying to shepherd this flock of errant fictional sheep into their propah roles.  “Just keep talking,” she encourages Elizabeth towards the end of the movie, “From the talking comes the love.”  

“But,” we are tempted to say, if we have read the novels, “Isn’t that precisely what Jane Austen was saying would not happen? Isn’t the whole point of Jane Austen novels to say that we do ourselves a disservice when we think we can talk our selves or anyone else into loving that which we do not love?”

I have no wish to plot spoil. Especially when Amanda Price is so good at it. A definite must see for Austen fans.

Question for Comment: If you could find yourself in a novel, which would it be? And why would you choose it?

“How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!”

I realize that I have reviewed Jane Austen’s Persuasion before but after reading through it again with the boys, I feel the need to add another layer of thought on it. I fear that my altogether-too-cynical-sometimes charges have affected my viewpoints on a number of matters and it may turn out that you readers will wish I had left well enough alone. Grin. I will just say that I am not sure I agree with my interpretation here when I was done but I found it interesting and so I shall leave it as is.

The psychological truth that seems to be manifesting itself upon this latest reading involves the relationship between attraction as an emotional or physiological state and observation. In short the question that arose in the context of my most recent conversations about the novel have to do with whether our observation is as much affected by our attractions as our attractions are affected by our observations? Might it be said, for example, that Anne Elliot is attracted to Captain Wentworth because she observes that he is an honorable man with impeccable integrity? Or, does she see Captain Wentworth as such because she is attracted to him? Similarly, is Captain Wentworth attracted to Anne Elliot because she has a superlative character? Or does he will her to have such a character because he is attracted?

Do Anne and Frederick Wentworth give each other “free passes” on some moral and ethical and character issues because they want the relationship to work out while refusing to give similar quarter to other suitors and debutantes who they are not attracted to? Will they, as it were, “cook the books”? Do the two of them hold to absolutes on some occasions that they quite shamelessly discard when to not do so might jeopardize their prospects with each other?

Some examples may suffice.

Captain Wentworth makes it clear to Louisa that he has no use for people who do not “stick to their guns” and act in accordance with their convictions despite social pressures. "My first wish for all, whom I am interested in, is that they should be firm,” he insists. And yet later, when speaking with Anne about why he remained so distant from her and seemingly committed to Louisa Musgrove, he explains that it was entirely on account of his concern for his reputation as an honorable man in the public. Needless to say, he laces this explanation with numerous references to Anne’s superlativeness among all the women he has ever known and she seems to accept this explanation because it is consistent with her desire to always see him as honorable and herself as irreplaceable.

“Of what he had then written, nothing was to be retracted or qualified. He persisted in having loved none but her. She had never been supplanted. He never even believed himself to see her equal. Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge--that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them. Her character was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself, maintaining the loveliest medium of fortitude and gentleness

In his preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove (the attempts of angry pride), he protested that he had for ever felt it to be impossible; that he had not cared, could not care for Louisa; though, till that day, till the leisure for reflection which followed it, he had not understood the perfect excellence of the mind with which Louisa's could so ill bear a comparison

There, he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way. . . .

From that period his penance had become severe. He had no sooner been free from the horror and remorse attending the first few days of Louisa's accident, no sooner begun to feel himself alive again, than he had begun to feel himself, though alive, not at liberty.

"I found," said he, "that I was considered by Harville an engaged man! That neither Harville nor his wife entertained a doubt of our mutual attachment [speaking of Louisa and Wentworth’s]. I was startled and shocked. To a degree, I could contradict this instantly; but, when I began to reflect that others might have felt the same--her own family, nay, perhaps herself, I was no longer at my own disposal. I was hers in honour if she wished it. I had been unguarded. I had not thought seriously on this subject before. I had not considered that my excessive intimacy must have its danger of ill consequence in many ways; and that I had no right to be trying whether I could attach myself to either of the girls, at the risk of raising even an unpleasant report, were there no other ill effects. I had been grossly wrong, and must abide the consequences."

He found too late, in short, that he had entangled himself; and that precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Louisa at all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him were what the Harvilles supposed.”

"You who speak languages," writes Orson Scott Card, "You are such liars." As if to say “I have always loved you Anne, but being an honorable man who would never lead someone on or be perceived to, I would have married Louisa rather than seem inconstant”. One recalls that earlier in the novel, Anne had been precisely concerned that Captain Wentworth might be stringing both Musgrove sisters along in what was perilously close to a shameful manner.  His explanation for all these attentions covered marvelously and she does not seem to mind supporting the effort. “A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman!--He ought not--he does not," she had once said. It simply would not do if the reality was that he really had honestly ever been attracted to Louisa Musgrove. Truly noble men never lose their unflagging devotion to the women they first fall in love with, right? And thus the narrative that allowed for those attentions and attachments to be only a matter of duty resolve the problem perfectly.

It is absolutely true that at one time, Frederick Wentworth thought quite disparagingly of Anne Elliot for the way that she had been so completely influenced by the persuasive abilities of Lady Russell and her father. And yet he later is willing to accept Anne’s explanation that though not proud of what she had done, it should at least be seen in light of character strength and not a weakness.

“I mean,” Anne explains in her defense in the last chapter,

“that I was right in submitting to her [Lady Russell], and that if I had done otherwise, I should have suffered more in continuing the engagement than I did even in giving it up, because I should have suffered in my conscience. I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman's portion."

In short, “I am sorry that I dumped you because Lady Russell approved but would you mind terribly incorporating what I did into the eulogetic narrative you have constructed of me? Would you, dear Frederick, be willing to see it as some sort of good thing, for my sake?” What is happening here? What is happening is a process by which two people who have determined on being with someone they wish to regard as impeccably honorable, liquidate for each other the obviously reasonable judgments that have against one another’s failings in life.

One clearly sees this in the following rather humorous exchange:

"I was six weeks with Edward," said [Wentworth], "and saw him happy. I could have no other pleasure. I deserved none. He enquired after you very particularly; asked even if you were personally altered, little suspecting that to my eye you could never alter."

Anne smiled, and let it pass. It was too pleasing a blunder for a reproach.”

She knows that his actual comment had been to the effect that she had altered almost beyond recognition. But she prefers the airbrushed version and lets it pass as the official history of his feelings towards her. And this is my point. Being attracted to Captain Wentworth, Anne Elliot will always chose to believe the best of his character, sometimes even to the detriment of accuracy. Not being attracted to her other suitors, Mr. Elliot for example; she is always inclined to suspect them to be worse than they appear and almost content to find out that they are. Other suitors have, as I sometimes say “permission to try but not to succeed” to impress her. Frederick Wentworth on the other hand, has “permission to try but to not succeed” to disillusion her.

And that is how attraction interferes with observation. But perhaps another illustration will help. When Anne considers the possibilities of marrying someone she is not attracted to, the obstacles that are created by differences of temperament, personality, or station are deemed insurmountable. She does not think that anyone should expect her to partner with someone who is obviously incompatible. But the moment that she finds out that Captain Benwick has proposed to Louisa Musgrove, her principle rival for the affections of Captain Wentworth, her core convictions about this matter alter somewhat.

“Captain Benwick and Louisa Musgrove!” she exclaims when she is told the news,

“The high-spirited, joyous, talking Louisa Musgrove, and the dejected, thinking, feeling, reading Captain Benwick, seemed each of them everything that would not suit the other. Their minds most dissimilar!”

But does she plan to go warn the poor Louisa Musgrove of the certain mistake she is making. Oh no! “ . . . He had an affectionate heart. He must love somebody” she says. And then you begin to see the rationalizing heart go to work on the struggling-to-remain-true-to-reason head:

“She saw no reason against their being happy. Louisa had fine naval fervour to begin with, and they would soon grow more alike. He would gain cheerfulness, and she would learn to be an enthusiast for Scott and Lord Byron; nay, that was probably learnt already; of course they had fallen in love over poetry. The idea of Louisa Musgrove turned into a person of literary taste, and sentimental, reflection was amusing, but she had no doubt of its being so.”

In short, her attractions have harnessed up her observations and taken them for a ride. With regard to her own affections, she will assert that no one but her heart’s perfect counterpart will do

“More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much, perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him,--but she had been too dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place, (except in one visit to Bath soon after the rupture,) or in any novelty or enlargement of society.--No one had ever come within the Kellynch circle, who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth, as he stood in her memory. No second attachment, the only thoroughly natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste, in the small limits of the society around them.”

 But when thinking about other people’s romances, she will allow a great deal of slack to be made:

"There is hardly any personal defect," replied Anne, "which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to."

What is perhaps most delightful, is how Jane Austen lets Anne Elliot’s self awareness peek above the surface of consciousness every once in a while. Austen will sometimes let the unconscious emotional self be spotted by her principle character in a way that one suspects she expresses through her characters. The following examples from the novel will have to suffice.

“Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing.”

“But neither Charles Hayter's feelings, nor any body's feelings, could interest her, till she had a little better arranged her own. She was ashamed of herself, quite ashamed of being so nervous, so overcome by such a trifle; but so it was; and it required a long application of solitude and reflection to recover her.”

“She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! alas! she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.”

 “No, it was not regret which made Anne's heart beat in spite of herself, and brought the colour into her cheeks when she thought of Captain Wentworth unshackled and free. She had some feelings which she was ashamed to investigate.”

How she might have felt, had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth.”

It is hard to state my thesis more clearly than this last sentiment expresses it. If we are attracted to someone, it will affect the way that we see others. Our affective selves will color everything that is observed by our reflective selves, or so the theory I am prosing says. I suspect that this is what so many people find so delightfully amusing about Jane Austen’s characters sometimes. They play at the surface of consciousness, knowing and not knowing themselves at the same time and allowing some things to remain unknown for the sake of love and other things to become known for the same reason.

In the introduction to the novel that was written by Jane Austen’s brother Henry Austen, he explains how deft Jane, like Anne Elliot the character, was at being in the know and out at the same time. She had that combination of grace and wit that could intuit precisely what was going on (and had gone on) but that could help maintain the secret even from the conscious self, not to mention others. “Though the frailties, foibles, and follies of others could not escape her immediate detection,” Henry writes of his deceased sister,

“Yet even on their vices did she never trust herself to comment with unkindness. The affectation of candour is not uncommon; but she had no affectation. Faultless herself, as nearly as human nature can be, she always sought, in the faults of others, something to excuse, to forgive or forget. Where extenuation was impossible, she had a sure refuge in silence. She never uttered either a hasty, a silly, or a severe expression. In short, her temper was as polished as her wit. Nor were her manners inferior to her temper.”

If this is so, if we all our observations are distorted by our affectations, how can any of us trust our judgments? One might well ask along with Captain Harville, "But how shall we prove any thing?" To which Anne responds,

"We never shall. We never can expect to prove anything upon such a point. It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin probably with a little bias towards our own [position], and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle.”

My hat is off to Jane Austen. She seems to be someone who could look into her own soul or into the lives of others or into the universe itself and find what truths might be helpful to the creation of a happy life . . . and make those observations conscious. Similarly, she seems to have been able to look into her soul or the lives of others or into the universe and when she found that which would bring pain or sorrow, leave what she found in such a way that no one would ever know she had ever found it.

"This," Anne Elliot says to Mr. Elliot, "is nearly the sense, or rather the meaning of the words, for certainly the sense of an Italian love-song must not be talked of.”

As if to say, I can only tell you what is appropriate to say and ask you to understand that there was more.

"But I am getting too near complaint,” she wrote as she was dying, “It has been the appointment of God, however secondary causes may have operated."

She was 42. To the last, affectation, desire, the longing for something, in this case, immortality, was influencing and dare I say persuading observation which, for all intents and purposes, would have left her crying out, “My god, My god, Why have you forsaken me?”

Question for comment: Would it bother you to discover that your emotions and desires affected your observations more than you think they do?

House of Mirth, I confess, seemed part Jane Austen and part Charles Darwin. Set in high society New York, it portrays a life and sensibility similar to the aristocratic circles that Jane Austen’s characters theorize trading in their charm and good looks to marry into. What is different is that in Britain, people are born into their status and in America, people must earn it (or exploit those who earn it). And for that reason, the people who are in the upper class are almost unmitigatedly bad people, having had to trade in some aspect of their humanity for their money whereas in England there seems to be a chance that genetics, being the roulette wheel that it is, will kick out at least a few good people per aristocratic generation.  

Edith Wharton seems to have turned the classic genre of the English “manners novel” (Jane Austen, George Elliot, Henry James) into a Darwinian morality tale. i.e. “This is what can happen if you foul up the mate selection process.” Watching the demise of Lily Bart is a bit like watching a Horatio Alger heroine with the DVD in reverse. Lily goes from the apex of her marrying potential to suicide in the course of the story, and the reason has more to do with her being short-sighted and deluded by the propaganda of affluence at first (No one tells her that she really can be happy as the wife of a lawyer instead of a Wall Street tycoon) but in time, is the result of her lacking that “killer instinct” that the other women in New York high society all seem to have the ability to employ at will. They will all deposit a former friend or lover on the garbage heap to advance their status and she won’t. She can be shallow, but she is not Machiavellianly cruel.

They can lie. They can cheat. They can destroy a person’s reputation to achieve their ends. And she can’t. In a sadly Darwinian way, her refusal to use these claws and jaws of ruthlessness leave her exposed and vulnerable in the world as it is. She has made the mistake of thinking that the society that she so wants to be a member of got there by being as nice as they pretend to be at parties. Wharton has written a romance novel I suppose, but it is profoundly in the realm of realism and not idealism. It is as though she has told Jack London’s Call of the Wild or To Build a Fire or Law of Life or The Sea Wolf and simply set it in the setting of the New York City elite.  

"Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert, for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang."  Jack London, Call of the Wild-

One gets the sense that the succession of parties in which Edith Wharton’s characters play out their lives is not much different from Jack London’s Yukon. Oh, people use gossip and innuendo and inference and money rather than claw and fang and club and whip but the end result is the same: “living things stepping on other living things to rise higher in the food pyramid. Ethically speaking, there is not a lot of difference between the way Betha Dorset plays her cards and the way Wolf Larsen does. Its just that the former covers her moaneuverings with a laced napkin.

Ironically, I have been reading the Biblical book of Ruth lately. I say ironically, because it too is a story about a woman who’s life it seems, is saved by marriage to a man. It is a book about a woman who has made mistakes in life that she comes to believe are unredeemable. Indeed, she asks to be called by the name “Mara (Bitterness). But through a few simple acts of grace, and I hope an act of pure love, her life is restored to her. In short, in Ruth, the rise and fall of Lily Bart is interrupted by grace and a man willing to say, you know, “status be damned. This is a fine woman and I would be ever so lucky to have her for a wife.”

Edith Wharton’s story ends with Lily’s death (sorry for the plot spoiler). She is only redeemed in this respect: The man she loves realizes what a moron he was for not making a better argument against her suggestion that his love was not accompanied with enough wealth.

I quote the novel here:

“That was all he knew—all he could hope to unravel of the story. The mute lips on the pillow refused him more than this—unless indeed they had told him the rest in the kiss they had left upon his forehead. Yes, he could now read into that farewell all that his heart craved to find there; he could even draw from it courage not to accuse himself for having failed to reach the height of his opportunity.”

Some people figure things out earlier. Some later. Some figure things out “too late” as they say. I just wish there were a fire siren that went off in the sky when we were about to make big mistakes “of commission or omission” in life. I wonder at how huge the mistakes that we can make without warning alarm are. I wonder if perhaps the force in the universe that wants us all to find love and happiness should make itself, or himself or herself louder in this respect. At least a cough. A simple divine “ehem” from a skyward direction would help immensely. Grin.

Like many of these period novels and movies, Our Mutual Friend, The Duchess, Firelight, etc. I find myself delighted that women in the modern world are not REQUIRED to marry to live and that men have that opportunity thereby to wise up and realize that they have some sort of an obligation to be lovable and not merely financially dependable. Its tough to be both. I ought to know. I never seem to manage both. But nevertheless I am glad that it is a goal the modern world has been made obligatory. I hope I am a better person for it.

Question for Comment: "Lily. You must marry as soon as you can." How would you finish a sentence that started "Lily, you must marry ..."?

Lets just say Satan came to you and asked you to be the archetect of a brand new Hell. Lets say that Satan is a fan of great works of literature and asks you to give the place nine levels, in honor of Dante's great work The Inferno. Who would you put in each level? Dante puts great men who were not Christians in his first level and people guilty of lust in the second. From there, he works his way down to the ninth. Who does he put in his ninth layer? Its not violent people. They are in the seventh, one level below the heretics. Greedy people go in the fourth level. Angry people in the fifth. All sorts of different kinds of liars are in the eigth level and the ninth and last level is thus completely reserved for betrayers: The following summary comes from Spark Notes:

 

In Caina, the First Ring of the Ninth Circle of Hell, those who betrayed their kin stand frozen up to their necks in the lake’s ice. In Antenora, the Second Ring, those who betrayed their country and party stand frozen up to their heads; here Dante meets Count Ugolino, who spends eternity gnawing on the head of the man who imprisoned him in life. In Ptolomea, the Third Ring, those who betrayed their guests spend eternity lying on their backs in the frozen lake, their tears making blocks of ice over their eyes. Dante next follows Virgil into Judecca, the Fourth Ring of the Ninth Circle of Hell and the lowest depth. Here, those who betrayed their benefactors spend eternity in complete icy submersion.

 

Rodger Jackson references this moral estimation of betrayal in his engaging 2000 Humanitas article,

 

The Sense and Sensibility of Betrayal:Discovering the Meaning of Treachery through Jane Austen

 

"An act of betrayal makes us appreciate Dante’s reserving the innermost ring of the Inferno for the betrayers. We can even say there is a characteristic “feel” to betrayal. The betrayed experience powerful sensations of violation; they feel used and damaged. Betrayal, however, elicits more than strong feelings. Psychologists offer clinical evidence attesting to the devastating effects of betrayal.1 Betrayal acts as an assault on the integrity of individuals, affecting the capacity to trust, undermining confidence in judgment, and contracting the possibilities of the world by increasing distrust and scepticism.2 Betrayal changes not only our sense of the world, but our sensibility toward the world.

 

There is yet another significance to the distinction between betrayal and abandonment. Most of us do not see ourselves as betrayers, and in this assessment we are probably correct. For good or bad, it is not everyone who can cultivate the trust of another while plotting to break that trust, or to recognize that someone has our justified, acknowledged trust and then turn that relationship into an instrument. Willoughby certainly did not have this type of deliberate, calculating character.

 

But notice that this allows him to indulge in a familiar form ofdenial. He casts himself more as the victim of unfortunate circumstances than as someone who has committed a great wrong: he sees the way he treats Marianne as necessary, unavoidable.

 

What Austen does so well with Willoughby and Marianne is to present a frighteningly common situation wherein an individual voluntarily enters a relationship of trust and then abandons that relationship, not from some carefully constructed plot to harm the truster, but from a neglect born of self-interest, disinterest, or carelessness. Willoughby illustrates that with abandonment we may find innumerable ways of passing off responsibility for our actions; with betrayal we are at least deliberate and self-aware. But Marianne must remind us that the results of abandonment can be as cruel as the most meticulously plotted act of betrayal.

 

The Sense and Sensibility of Betrayal:Discovering the Meaning of Treachery through Jane Austen by Rodger L. Jackson. Humanitas, Vol. 13, 2000.

 In summary, he draws a distinction with the use of Jane Austen's novel, between someone who knows they are going to betray you WHILE they elicit your trust and those who do not know.

Question for Comment: My question would be "which is worse?" Which of these two villains would you put in the lowest level of the lowest level of your inferno?

The question implies that one does more harm perhaps. That one inflicts more "betrayal trauma" to use a psychological term. You might think that it is the person who KNOWS they are going to decieve you that is worse but I am not entirely sure. In those cases, the betrayer is after something that they probably do not single you out for any intrinsic reason in you. They are like a theif standing on a corner waiting for someone with a pocketbook. It is nothing personal. The one who abandons you AFTER eliciting your trust consciously trades in the relationship that they ACTUALLY had with you for some other bauble that catches their fancy. 

There is no hiding from the pain when that happens. The only smart thing to do when that happens to you is to build a pyre of the betrayers things, make an effigy on top, light it on fire so that the betrayer can see it from his (or her) distant and fleeing ship, and impale yourself on the betrayer sword with a Dido-like prayer to the gods that your decendents might forever hunt down theirs. 

Thats what Dido (The Aeneid) does anyway. She was smart enough to know that this is really the only escape for pain of this sort. But maybe others think otherwise.

Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics)

Jane Austen

"Mr. Collins to be sure was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary.  But still he would be her husband.  – without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honorable provision for well educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.  This preservative she had now obtained; and at the age of 27, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it."

Throughout Austen's novels, one gets this sense that women were significantly at a disadvantage in courting. Men could afford to be more selective I suppose you could say because their very financial existence was not entirely dependent upon their choices.

"Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.  He really believed, that were it not for the inferiority of her connections he should be in some danger. . .  . He began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.

Elizabeth had been at Nethersfield long enough.  She attracted him more than he liked -- . . .   He wisely resolved to be particularly careful that no sign of admiration should now escape him, nothing that could elevate her with hope of influencing his felicity, sensible that if such an idea had been suggested, his behavior during the last day must have material weight in confirming or crushing it. Steady to his purpose, he scarcely spoke ten words to her through the whole of Saturday, and though they were at one time left by themselves for half an hour, he adhered most conscientiously to his books, and would not even look at her."

Darcy simply has to make sure that he DOESN'T marry someone who's family will become a drain on his resources. Elizabeth's sisters have to find someone who can sustain them. I feel sorry for these people. They are not free to find the people that love them and that they love. Their economic gender inequalities are constantly interfering with their heart-judgments. As one character puts it,

"Our habits of expense make us too dependent, and there are not too many in my rank of life who can afford to marry without some attention to money."

And thus the warning!

        "O Lizzy!  Do anything rather than marry without affection."

... and her father's consolation:

        ". . . my dear child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life."

Question for Comment: What has interfered with good relational sense in your life?

Tonights movie SHOULD have been watched with a group. And I probably would have enjoyed it more if i had read all the Jane Austen novels. I think I have read two; Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion.

I will supply a few quotes and comments below for any readers out there who wonder if I am good for nothing besides history documentaries. First of all, everyone should have a character they can relate to in a Jane Austen novel. Here is mine.

“There  we differ, Mary,” said Anne, “I think Lady Russell would like him and I think she would be so much pleased with his mind, that she would very soon see no deficiency in his manner.”

 “So do I, Anne,” said Charles. “I am sure Lady Russell would like him.  He is just Lady Russell’s sort.  Give him a book, and he will read all day long.”

The fact is that Jane Austen's novels reveal a significant amount of relational social meditation. This relational “half-time show” analysis that women do with each other (And as a rather full time dad who has spent many an hour at the local rec. center pond overhearing it, I know) has the ultimate effect of giving women real time satellite and AWACS vision of the field of relational play while men are busily attempting to cob together a periscope out of duct tape and toilet paper tubes.

“All the little variations of the last week are gone through; and of yesterday and today there could scarcely be an end.”

 An apt description of a Jane Austen novel if there ever was one (assuming that Persuasion is typical. ;-)

She sat in the hour with me on Monday evening, and gave me the whole history.

“The whole history!”  Repeated Anne, laughing.  “She could not make a very long history, I think, of one such little article of unfounded news.”

Perhaps an analogy here will suffice. Did you know that it is possible for there to be up to 105 different hockey games in a Stanley Cup Playoff? 16 teams narrow down to 8 teams and then to 4 and then 2; With each series capable of being played to seven games. That’s 15 different 7-game series, played over the course of a month or two. To a non-hockey-loving wife of a hockey fan, it might seem endless. All those periods! All that time watching as this little black piece of rubber moves from corner to point to corner to slot to corner to point. God! For a fast forward button! Sometimes, teams will go for periods at a time without scoring. And just when you think the game is over – There is a clock after all, it will go into overtime – double overtime – triple overtime. When will the series end?

Perhaps I can carry the analogy further. Imagine a wife dutifully trying to watch a series with her man. Taking a cue from Van Auken’s Severe Mercy, there is something he enjoys in it. There MUST be something enjoyable. It must be terribly difficult for her to imagine why it matters that the Flyers win and not the Flames (Those are Professional Hockey teams by the way). To a guy, I suspect that reading a Jane Austen novel is akin to this. There is SO much “passing the puck” in a novel like this! So much meandering dialog! After a while, I imagine he finds himself wishing that Mr. Elliot and Anne elope, or that Frederick would drown, or that The Miss Musgroves would come out of the closet and declare themselves lovers on the Jerry Springer show. If only to have the damn novel over already!

Now, mind you, I say “to a guy” because there are some of us out here who are willing to make their way entirely through a novel like this just to get some kernel of insight into the women we love. We do not find ourselves intrigued ourselves but the fact is that this is, by Jane’s own admission a novel ABOUT women FOR women.

“But let me observe that all histories are against you, all stories, prose and verse.  If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you 50 quotations in a moment on my side of the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon a woman’s inconstancy.  Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness.  But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.

 “Perhaps I shall.  – yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books.  Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story.  Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.  I will not allow books to prove anything.”

[no comment.] Grin.

Poor Wentworth. He thinks himself superior to most men in that HE, more than any, knows what he is looking for in a wife. Grin. Listen to him!

“A strong mind, with sweetness of manner, this is the woman I want” said he.  “Something a little inferior shall of course put up with, but it must not be much.  If I am a fool, I shall be a fool indeed, for I have thought on the subject more than most men.”

“A strong mind with sweetness of manner, This is the woman I want.” Of COURSE he is confused throughout the whole saga. Several million women fit his criteria, including the Musgrove sistahs. Imagine the millions of poor blokes who have NOT taken the time that Frederick has. He has TWO character qualities in his list. Most men have only one!

 But I am being too hard on him. Even armed with his two character qualities, he was capable of identifying Anne from their first acquaintance. HE knew what he wanted. She had what he wanted. He was convinced. Note well that he didn’t go looking to some Mr. Russell for confirmation or sophisticated analysis. His criteria being simple, his task was simple. Her criteria being complex, she depended on the help of other women in accomplishing it … and thereby made her self vulnerable to loosing sight of herself.

“I am no matchmaker, as you will know” said the Lady Russell, “being much too well aware of the uncertainty of all human events and calculations.  I only meant that if Mr. Elliott should sometime hence pay his addresses to you, and if you should be disposed to accept them, I think there would be every possibility of your being happy together.  A most suitable connection everybody must consider it – but I think it might be a very happy one.”

All women can be fooled. Not all women admit it to themselves. Mrs. Russell demonstrates herself to be wrong twice in the book and – dare I say it, it is only as Anne learns to “think like a man” – i.e. to trust herself that her LESS sophisticated nineteen year old understanding of a situation may be the more reliable one in spite of the wisdom of a Mrs. Russell, that she makes a right choice. (Note well that Wentworth was never dissuaded by her) Nothing is dummer than a  nineteen year old man by the way. They have thought so little about anything! But they don’t let that dissuade them from doing just exactly what they know they want.

The Roman scoundrel-poet Ovid once  knavishly suggested to men on the prowl that they should make every effort to seduce women as though women thought in groups, not as individuals:

The maid can rouse her, when she combs her hair in the morning,
and add her oar to the work of your sails . . .
Then she should speak of you, and add persuasive words,
and swear you’re dying, crazed with love.

I don’t know, maybe this is a blessed curse of being a woman? This predisposition to think in group – indeed to cycle in pairs or tandems! So predisposed to defer to the collective mind what is known from the start individually!
 

But just now she could think only of Capt. Wentworth.  She could not understand his present feelings, whether he were really suffering from much disappointment or not; Until that point were settled, she could not be quite herself.

She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas!  Alas!  She must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.

 Eight years earlier, she had KNOWN that it was a mistake to let Mrs. Russell’s influence carry as much weight as she had:

 She was persuaded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays and disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in maintaining the engagement, then she had been in the sacrifice of it;

 … And in another place …

 He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill; deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shown a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure.  She had given him up to oblige others.  It had been the effect of over-persuasion.  It had been weakness and timidity.

 The effect of over-persuasion. She had been susceptible to it. He had not. It is much more difficult to confuse a person who is working from a  simple argument. He wanted a woman. Wanted a woman with a strong mind. Wanted a woman with a sweet manner. What was there to argue about? I wonder if … if perhaps women are simply more vulnerable to paying the cost of mistakes than men are? I wonder if this is why they are prone to think in packs more? Women will raise children and thus they cannot be so simplistic as men in deciding whose children they will raise:

 “So! you and I are left to shift by ourselves, with this poor sick child – and not a creature coming near us all the evening!  I knew how it would be.  This is always my luck! If there is anything disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it, in Charles is as bad as any of them.  Very unfeeling!  . . . nursing does not belong to a man, it is not his province.  A sick child is always the mother’s property, her own feelings generally make it so.”

One woman in the story I think serves as a foil to the others in the story in this regard:

 “If I love a man, as she loves the Admiral, I would always want to be with him, nothing should ever separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him, then driven safely by anyone else.”

 It may well be that it is this concern for safety, for not being “overturned” while caring for children that is responsible for the way that early 19^th century women guarded each other from risks and allowed themselves to be guarded. Just a hypothesis. Men like Frederick were willing to take risks. Women like Anne, were not so prone to do so. Not without the approval of their sisterhood. Maybe this is because when they ARE forced to care for children when the husbands do not, they MUST rely on each other to do it. (We see this interdependence of women as childcare providers throughout the novel). Anne herself pinch hits for mothers in crisis. No wonder she does not want to get herself ina  situation where she must parent with no men (They being off to sea) and no women (They being offended that they were not consulted about the mate selection before the children were born?)

 If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once , remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk.  When I yielded, I thought it was to duty; but no duty could be called in aid here.  In marrying a man in indifferent to me, all risk would  been incurred, and all duty violated.”

 Why does Anne eventually decide to ere on the side of risk? One wonders if she does really. By the time Wentworth returns, he is no longer a risk in anyone’s point of view. The picture of Anne’s mother that Austen draws is rather remarkable really in light of the whole plot:

 “She had humored, or softened or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for 17 years; and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, her children, to attach her to life, and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them.”

 The epitaph for the life of a woman who had taken no risks herself. How sad that Anne came so close, under the watchful guidance of Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Smith, both of whom place a stamp of approval on her chances with Mr. Wm. Elliot, to finding herself in precisely the same marriage!

 Look how close she came to “settling”!

 “She was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever; but she felt her approach to the years in danger, and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet blood within the next 12 months or so”

 Indeed, one is left to speculate that had not Anne ever met a Frederick Wentworth – someone who advocated the life of heart-following RISK – she might well have found herself in just exactly the same situation as her mother had!

 “How she might have felt, had there been no Capt. Wentworth in the case, was not worth inquiry; for there was a Capt. Wentworth: and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his forever.  Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men., then their final separation.”

 OK. I am too tired to write more here. Two final quotes and I shall have to suffice it at that.

 “Oh!  Dear Mrs. Croft,” cried Mrs. Musgrove, unable to let her finish her speech, “there is nothing I so abominate for young people as a long engagement.  It is what I always and protested against for my children.  It is all very well, I used to say, for young people to be engaged, if there is a certainty of their being able to marry in six months, or even in 12, but a long engagement!”

 “Yes dear ma’am,” said Mrs. Croft, “or an uncertain engagement; an engagement which may be long.  To begin without knowing that at such a time there will be the means of marrying, I hold to be very unsafe and unwise, and what, I think, all parents should prevent as far as they can.”

 Amen to that!! ;-) And finally, this one. I love this one!

 “Towards the close of the first act, in the interval succeeding an Italian song, she explained the words of the song to Mr. Elliott.  – they had a concert bill between them

 This, she said, is nearly the sense, or rather the  meaning of the words, for certainly the sense of  an Italian love song must not be talked of.”

 Truer words were never said.

 Utque viro furtiva venus, sic grata puellae:               
     Vir male dissimulat: tectius illa cupit.
Conveniat maribus, nequam nos ante rogemus,
     Femina iam partes victa rogantis agat.

Question for Comment: Most of my comments about women in this analysis relate to my impressions of women in Jane Austen's day, not today. Do you think that women today would agree that they are different than the women in Jane Austen novels?

P.S. If you have any interest in talking about Jane Austen novels, I think I have about ten pages of quotes typed out from Pride and Prejudice I could add to the soup. Grin.