In Love, Look for Happiness
The first lesson Jane Austen can teach modern women (women especially, but it wouldn't hurt men to listen too): when it comes to love, aim for happiness.
Isn't that obvious? Doesn't everybody want to be happy?
Sure, just like we all want to be thin. But we want a lot of other things, too, like 20-oz. sodas.
Jane Austen shows us heroines who end up with the perfect happy endings we want--think Elizabeth Bennet with Mr. Darcy. But she also shows us women who miss out because they're pursuing other things. Lydia Bennet has such a "rage for admiration" that she pursues male attention without giving long-term consequences a second thought. Charlotte Lucas is willing to marry the embarrassing Mr. Collins for financial security. And Marianne Dashwood, the only Jane Austen heroine who misses out on a really happy ending, loses the love of her life because she's too busy having a Romantic adventure to see clearly what the guy is really up to.
Do women still miss happiness for these reasons? Unfortunately, more than ever. Think about the difference between a seventeen-year-old girl in 1812 reading Sense and Sensibility and a seventeen-year-old girl in 2012 reading our girls' and women's magazines. A twenty-first-century teenager who's looking forward to her "first time" simply isn't aiming for happily ever after in her love life. She's a lot like Marianne, just looking forward to an adventure.
So what's wrong with adventure? Nothing. Security and male attention are great things too. So are status and pleasure. But it's not savvy to put any of those things before happiness.
Jane Austen fully expected her readers to model their "conduct" on her novels. The impulse that readers have to imitate what they read is a major theme of her books. Yielding to that impulse in the case of her own novels could be really smart.
Okay, who agrees or disagrees: Could recalibrating to aim for happiness really change the trajectory of some women's lives?
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Feb '11
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
No, marriage should not be about happiness at all. Marriage is about holiness and bringing the couple closer to God and this will then develop their marriage and allow for the growth of happiness. Human happiness is a fleeting illusion. All this Austen stuff of the last decade makes my skin crawl. Everything I learned about life, I learned from Tobias Smollett.
Jun '10
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
One of the advantages to "saving yourself for marriage" is that love, when it happens, will have to be based solely on friendship. You won't have anything else to base it on. Too many modern marriages have been based on enjoying one favorite hobby--sex. People's favorite hobbies change.
Mar '12
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
I have to step in to defend Charlotte Lucas; I have a soft spot for her. Consider her position--she was 27, not particularly pretty, with few prospects and a large but not very well off family.
Mr. Collins was unctuous, but he was hardly a bad man, he clearly treated Charlotte well enough and respected her as his wife. She gained a social role and her own home. Given the relatively separate lives they lived, it's a reasonable enough arrangement. Charlotte didn't particularly like her husband, but she got the satisfaction of a life she otherwise liked, away from her parents. Sir and Lady Lucas didn't seem particularly easy to live with, either, so it may have been a decent trade.
Elizabeth got engaged before her 21st birthday, I believe. How would she have acted 6, 7 years on, if she was still stuck living at home with her mother and sisters, with the threat of an entail still hanging over all their heads. Marrying for security shouldn't be reprehensible in itself.
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
Oh man. Can you help clear up the contradiction between your 1st & 3rd sentences (no point in happiness) & your 2nd?
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
"People's favorite hobbies change." Hahahaha.
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
I see your point--Lori Gottlieb made a similar argument for "settling" in the 21st century. But Jane Austen's standards are higher--she thought it was wrong to marry without love. And she put her money (or rather, her life--she had v. little money) where her mouth was, breaking her engagement with a rich man she didn't love (though he had a good character, & the families were friends) , even though that meant spending the rest of her life as a spinster & poor relation.
Madcap: I have to step in to defend Charlotte Lucas; I have a soft spot for her. Consider her position--she was 27, not particularly pretty, with few prospects and a large but not very well off family.
Mr. Collins was unctuous, but he was hardly a bad man, he clearly treated Charlotte well enough. . . . .
Elizabeth got engaged before her 21st birthday, I believe. How would she have acted 6, 7 years on, if she was still stuck living at home with her mother and sisters, with the threat of an entail still hanging over all their heads. . . . Marrying for security shouldn't be reprehensible in itself. · 22 minutes ago
Nov '11
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
Rather than teaching us to aim for happiness, which is too dependent on external circumstances, Austen teaches us to aim for virtue, for goodness, both in oneself and in one's prospective mate.
Of course, the difficulty, especially in love matters, is figuring out which virtues matter more than others and which virtues are real and which only seem to be. So Austen teaches how the virtues and apparent virtues display themselves, so we will recognize them for what they are. And finally, she teaches us, or entices us, to love the the former and to have the right attitude about the latter, because knowledge without passion is not love.
Austen educates the passions to love virtue.
Mar '11
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
The older I get, the more I find that I'm happy if I live as I should, as taught and handed down by centuries of wisdom and experience. One of the things I've learned... from the Bible as well... is that while marriage in and of itself isn't about "happiness", doing a marriage right produces happiness. Happiness is a side effect of good marriage.
Edited on April 2, 2012 at 6:09pmMay '11
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
"Could recalibrating to aim for happiness really change the trajectory of some women's lives?" I don't know if Austen ever touched on this but it seems to me that many of the women who feel unfulfilled in a solitary life inadvertently avoid happiness because deep down inside they don't think they deserve it.
Sep '10
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
Elizabeth: I don't know how to answer your question directly. In this I am just like some of your students, I'm sure. But for men, if Austen's novels are any guide, charity (caritas) and patience are always the winning combination. D'Arcy, for all his faults, has both of these in abundance, and there are lots of other examples. Even in her last novel Persuasion, the real turning point is when Captain Wentworth forgives Anne in his heart.
Of course, it also helps to have a few hundred thousand pounds sterling, too.
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
"But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue . . ."
Astonishing: Rather than teaching us to aim for happiness, which is too dependent on external circumstances, Austen teaches us to aim for virtue, for goodness, both in oneself and in one's prospective mate.
Of course, the difficulty, especially in love matters, is figuring out which virtues matter more than others and which virtues are real and which only seem to be. So Austen teaches how the virtues and apparent virtues display themselves, so we will recognize them for what they are. And finally, she teaches us, or entices us, to love the the former and to have the right attitude about the latter, because knowledge without passion is not love.
Austen educates the passions to love virtue. · 38 minutes ago
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
This take on things is more modern psychology than I think she would go for. Jane Austen's thought: "Nobody minds having what is too good for them."
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
What's our working definition of happiness here?
I know many people who have wonderful life circumstances, but who are not happy. Being content with one's lot in life, even when all is well, is very difficult. It requires a grateful heart, and in this age of entitlement, it's rare to meet women (or men) marked by gratitude.
Feb '11
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
Happiness (human) as opposed to happiness (divine), which should be more precisely called joy, are two unique things. Therefore, any happiness, that is human is fleeting, hollow, and borne of the fallen nature of humanity, it may be a shadow of the original divine joy, but is not the same. Joy is the product of a life lived in relationship to God's love and transcends those things that create un-happiness, it is that which brings joy to the marriage covenant. Therefore a marriage that seeks human happiness is doomed to failure, whereas a marriage centered on holiness will lead to joy, which is richer and better than happiness.
Elizabeth Kantor: Can you help clear up the contradiction between your 1st & 3rd sentences (no point in happiness) & your 2nd? ·
Apr '11
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
Literature was never my favorite subject and I never had to read Austen in 16 years of school; however, thanks to stumbling upon some Harry Potter fanfic written by an English teacher who loved Austen, I finally read her in my 30s and felt a light go off in my head. Young girls of my generation could have taken a lot of lessons from Austen instead of the videos and movies we watched on MTV and BET. While I cannot verify that I would have lead my life based upon an Austen novel had I read one while a young lady, I believe the stories would have stuck out in my head when I was pining over some young cad who, like Willoughby, toyed with my feelings. I do remember wondering, more than once, if my life could have been positively impacted by having read these cautionary tales when I was younger instead of "Are You There G-d, It's Me Margaret?". LOL
Nov '11
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
Elizabeth Kantor:
Astonishing: . . . Austen teaches us to aim for virtue, for goodness, both in oneself and in one's prospective mate.
. . . Austen teaches how the virtues and apparent virtues display themselves, so we will recognize them for what they are. . . . she teaches us, or entices us, to love the the former and to have the right attitude about the latter, because knowledge without passion is not love.
Austen educates the passions to love virtue.
"But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue . . ."
You quote Elizabeth's thoughts at her most pessimistic moment. I am not so certainly pessimistic about Lydia and Wickham's prospects. Many (or most) nowadays (and maybe always) are "only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue."
Yet the honest and simple Lydia does truly love Wickham. Although good sense is not one of her virtues, Lydia has enough other goodness in her to make a good marriage, and might acquire better sense with experience. Her simple decency might improve Wickham in time.
One sees many "foolish" unions where the couple, sticking together, eventually make each other better.
Edited on April 2, 2012 at 7:21pmApr '11
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
I always enjoyed reading Austen in highschool far more than other of her contemporaries, like Hawthorn. What I liked was that really she did seem to advocate very simple and modern virtues. Marrying someone who makes you happy is quitesentially modern take on marriage. What is unclear is what does make one happy. It seems like if happiness alone should guide marriage does that not then encourage divorce? Jane Austen lived in a society where the dissolution of a marriage was impossible for a woman. Naturally if one must choose once and only once one must choose well. Do we really have that constraint now? I would say no.
May '10
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
The difficulty with your formulation is that happiness is at least as ambiguous a term as love. I remember vividly a high school friend explaining to me that he was just like Mother Teresa. She was doing what made her happy (helping people) and so was he (smoking pot.) His moral: Everyone should do whatever makes them happy.
What's really wanted, I think, is a distinction between authentic love--the kind that has the power to bestow lasting happiness--and mock-ups like infatuation or mere sexual attraction.
Among the great merits of Jane Austen is that she illustrates so convincingly that a true and deep love--while a gift and a mystery--is in part an achievement. Only those who have cultivated in themselves a depth and seriousness of character and a commitment to truth and good can hope to attain it.
The careless, the thoughtless, the superficial, the self-centered, and mediocre characters will have to settle for some counterfeit or approximation.
Apr '11
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
katievs:
The careless, the thoughtless, the superficial, the self-centered, and mediocre characters will have to settle for some counterfeit or approximation. · 0 minutes ago
But, in the modern world you don't have to settle you can just divorce. Do we really need wisdom if we can just use trial and error? Maybe we get wisdom in the process of flubing about every which way. What I wonder is if all those unhappy Jane Austen characters who choose poor men, if in a modern world they would not just ditch them when they realize they are losers.
Nov '11
Re: In Love, Look for Happiness
Diane Ellis, Ed.: What's our working definition of happiness here?
I know many people who have wonderful life circumstances, but who are not happy. Being content with one's lot in life, even when all is well, is very difficult. It requires a grateful heart, and in this age of entitlement, it's rare to meet women (or men) marked by gratitude.
That's the question, isn't it! But I think for the present discussion we have to assume we all know what happiness is, otherwise we wouldn't have time to talk about courting.
The capacity for contentment and the capacity for gratitude are admirable in themselves (assuming one is content about and grateful about the right things), and they might be necessary for achieving happiness, but I don't think contentment and gratitude are the same as happiness.
You might be able to make yourself content even with six hot pokers stuck in your left eyeball, and grateful for the absence of the seventh, but being happy would require something more. Maybe it's the lack of "something more" that explains why there are "many people who have wonderful life circumstances, but who are not happy."
Edited on April 2, 2012 at 8:22pm