Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Good news! "U.S. marriage rate stable"--researchers report that 56% of men and 52% of women are still married twenty years into their first marriages.
Don't feel like breaking out the champagne? Wondering whether our expectations for long-term happiness in relationships can possibly go any lower?
There's good reason to worry. It's not just the hard data about divorce, or about how fewer and fewer people are even attempting long-term commitment in the first place.
There are also all the firsthand accounts--overwhelmingly by women, though men are frustrated too----of how nearly impossible it seems to be, to get what we want out of relationships.
We have brilliant social scientists explaining the breakdown of marriage and brilliant cultural commentators warning about the toxic mess that modern relationships often descend into. But where can we go for a viable alternative?
May I suggest?--Jane Austen. The list of what she has to offer modern men and (especially) women practically writes itself. I'll start, but please jump into the conversation!
What we find in Jane Austen, that's too often missing from real life today:
- Love lives with dignity, instead of humiliation--Emma and Lizzy make mistakes, but it's all on a higher plane, somehow
- An aesthetic of elegance, not hotness
- Keen (and mostly forgotten) insights into male and female psychology
- "Rules," not for manipulating the opposite sex but for getting just close enough to the other person to know whether he's the one for you--without getting so close you completely lose your perspective
- Happily ever after as a live option
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Comments:
May '10
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
And zombies. You forgot to mention the zombies.
(Welcome, Elizabeth!)
Apr '11
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
My goodness this isn't my bag. I'm going to willfully withhold from offering my opinions - at least for a bit.
I can't wait to follow this conversation. I'm 42 and nine years happily married. It could be myopia, but I truly think my cohort got to experience another world growing up and then the changes born of the 60s firmly took hold in relational and family dynamics.
I'm not sure we've fully reckoned with the impact.
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Oh no! How could I forget to mention the zombies???!!!!
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
But Charles (and please call me Elizabeth!), if you've been happily married for only nine years, you must have managed to thread your way through the post-60s craziness somehow. Care to share any insights?
Or, putting it another way, can you point to what was it about the other world you got to experience growing up that you think prepared you to do better than younger people?
Oct '10
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Reread the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice. Austen shows her fair share of marriages in which at least one spouse is repenting at leisure.
Such marriages were kept together by laws prohibiting divorce, of course. I wonder, though, if the laws preventing women from inheriting property also gave men a sense of obligation to care for women financially.
The desire to romanticize Jane Austen's fiction is understandable, but I suspect that few modern women want their daughters to face the limited range of options that Austen's characters did.
Mar '11
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Elizabeth: welcome aboard. I agree wholeheartedly--but I may be biased; I regard Austen as the greatest English novelist.
Nevertheless, from the distance of some years, I've had occasion to look back and assess some of the misguided choices some of my Junior and Senior high school teachers made in assigning certain works to certain ages.
With regard to Austen, I'm not sure that the average teenage boy is ready for her--that is, I think reading her too early for them would be a detriment and ruin the experience--they should be directed to other literature that better suits their character formation at this stage.
By contrast, for young women, I think that the high school age is probably the perfect age to first be introduced to Austen and that they would profit greatly from reading her at this age.
Perhaps you'd be willing to offer a word or two as someone who's had experience teaching English lit.
Mar '11
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Some time ago reflecting on my two favorite Austen creations ( Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice ) it occurred to how impossible it would be for a youth today to relate to them in any fashion. The mores, the motivations driving the dramatis personae are as foreign to current Western Civilization as any alien in a science fiction novel would be.
Not a pleasant realization.
Edited on April 1, 2012 at 8:23pmRe: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Crow's Nest,
Sense and Sensibility went over quite well with the college freshmen I taught, both male & female, but I can see it might be tricky with high school boys.
Mar '12
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Bona Fides: 18 years of marriage (my one and only). Born in 1951 into a traditional WASP family. Parents fought a lot but never divorced.
My advice, remember marriage is a covenant! A covenant is stronger than a contract. Always, keep your promises, whether or not he/she doesn't. Being faithful, even in little things, builds trust and trust is the foundation of marriage.
Try to avoid the blame game. If you don't like something he/she has done, don't use phrases like "You made me feel" or "You did X". Talk about your experience, eg. "It hurts when" or "I don't like it when".
Be willing to listen. Listen when you don't want to. Listen when it hurts. Listen without judgement. Listen without anger (most difficult). Make it safe for him/her to express feelings.
Most importantly, learn to forgive! You will hurt and be hurt, mostly inadvertently, sometimes deliberately. Either way, express your pain, then let it go and forgive.
I'm still learning to do all this. Be patient with yourself and him/her.
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Roberto,
I see what you mean, but notice how much everyone (including a lot of high school girls) loves the movies. I think people glimpse something there that we don't have--the point of The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After is showing how we actually can have some of those things ourselves, today, if we're willing to listen to Jane Austen.
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
J.D.,
Jane Austen does take pains to show us just how awful marriage can be if you marry the wrong person. Not just the Bennets--look at Mr. and Mrs. Price living in squalor long after all their passion is long spent, or think of poor Lady Elliot or Mrs. Tilney, before they died.
Jane Austen's solution to the fact that a bad marriage can ruin your life was to be careful to marry the right person.
Options for women were actually becoming less limited in Jane Austen's day--that's why it's so important for her heroines to be savvy about men--they, not their parents, are going to be choosing their husbands, and they don't want to make the kind of mistake that Mr. Bennet made, "captivated by youth and beauty."
It's not romanticizing Jane Austen's fiction to hold up her happy matches as a model for modern women--the prudence her heroines exercise is even much more necessary today, given the options we have.
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
J.D. still--Of course it was ghastly to be tied to life to a person you couldn't love and respect. And horrible to be a "ruined woman." But it's not like modern women are all in clover. It's also pretty miserable to be sharing custody with a hostile ex-husband, or to have lived with a guy for five years only to figure out that he's never going to be ready to commit. What Jane Austen has to offer is insights that could help modern women avoid pretty much every kind of bad result in love.
Apr '11
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
While I'm happy my daughter is not constrained by the rigid social constraints of Jane's day and can "make her own way" if she chooses, she still judges men by whether they live up to certain standards of civility and good manners. It won't be easy for any prospective suitor to live up to her requirements that he be "like Mr. Knightley.....but he also needs to like my horse, and own a tractor."
Aug '11
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Roberto: Some time ago reflecting on my two favorite Austen creations (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice) it occurred to how impossible it would be for a youth today to relate to them in any fashion.
Edited 12 minutes ago
I don't agree in the least. The lessons that Jane Austen depicts in her novels were often my guiding principles during my youth in the late 70s. Now that I am a mother (of an Elizabeth!) and sometimes reluctant adviser to her and her peers I find Austen's writing to be more relevant than ever. For example:
1. If you break off the engagement you have to return the ring. (Really!)
2. If someone tells you something in confidence, you need to keep it in confidence.
3. It is generally a good idea to wait and observe a bit to get a sense of a person's character before launching into a full-blown friendship/relationship.
4. Exposing yourself (on Facebook, in your attire, whatever) can be a fairly subtle thing--and can have adverse consequences for those connected to you as well as yourself.
....and so much more. All timeless.
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Shrodinger's Cat--Jane Austen is all about mutual respect between women & men--our "fellow creatures," as she calls you. And it's quite interesting how her characters combine really high standards with compassion for other people's failings--there's how-to on all this in The Jane Austen Guide, if you know anybody who could use some help with what you say has made your marriage work.
Mar '11
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Elizabeth Kantor: Roberto,
I see what you mean, but notice how much everyone (including a lot of high school girls) loves the movies. I think people glimpse something there that we don't have--the point of The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After is showing how we actually can have some of those things ourselves, today, if we're willing to listen to Jane Austen. · 18 minutes ago
The romance no doubt has appeal but what of the rest? Throughout her works the implicit and often explicit motivating behaviour is shame: fear of shame, hiding shameful acts, huge exertions taken to avoid shameful ends. The ends reached may be that dream of "Happily Ever After" everyone wishes for but it involves signing up for a rigorous decorum which militates a great deal of behaviour prevalent in modern culture as being out of bounds. A bitter pill for many I would think.
Mar '11
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
EasternShoreGirl
Roberto: Some time ago reflecting on my two favorite Austen creations (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice) it occurred to how impossible it would be for a youth today to relate to them in any fashion.
Edited 12 minutes ago
I don't agree in the least. The lessons that Jane Austen depicts in her novels were often my guiding principles during my youth in the late 70s. · 14 minutes ago
It is not Austen I disagree with. I am simply dubious that a generation raised on Keeping Up with the Kardashians and Jersey Shore will find those lessons palatable.
Feb '11
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Welcome, Elizabeth (as one of our daughters shares your name). Speaking of my daughters, they live in a world of instant interaction--texting, social media--which limits their ability to take on the lessons of Jane's heroines: to slow down and take a bit of perspective on events, questioning early hypotheses and conclusions, realizing hidden qualities. Also, as a father I like how Jane's patriarchs are seemingly ineffectual but ultimately wise. As I strive to bring about positive impacts in my family's life, I wish more for wisdom.
May '10
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
So,where did Jane Austen's values and attitudes come from? Where were their roots? Jane Austen's values are like a vase full of beautiful, fresh-cut flowers just in from the garden. They are lovely. And they are destined to die because they have no roots.
Our society is what it is because we are a cut-flower society. We've been living off of the nutrients and vitality that were absorbed long ago, but that is now becoming too weak to sustain us. The only hope is that, the cut flowers might root so that they can be re-planted in good soil that will provide on-going nourishment.. But where to get that potting soil?
Nov '11
Re: Jane Austen, We Need You Now!
Miss Austen's Christian roots - taken as a given in her time - and "rebranded" as "core values" (or terms of a similar ilk) are timeless; especially when well-seasoned by her lightly-barbed humor and irrepressible wit. Incidentally, Mansfield Park and Persuasion top my personal "favorites list". (I look forward to sharing The Guide with nieces who epitomize both Emma and Lizzy Bennet - as well as nephews who aspire to Mr. Darcy.)