The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (14 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Kantor

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W
HAT WOULD JANE DO?
Jane Austen would treat the men in her life with generosity and respect.
She’d want to be able to see men clearly—and look forward to a relationship of “superior affection” and “confidence” with one of them. (If you want the same thing, then you may
want to start biting your tongue. If that’s hard, try avoiding groups of women whose chief entertainment is running men down. Spend time with friends who are more like Mrs. Gardiner or Anne Elliot. And, don’t forget, the most powerful antidote to the urge to marinate in self-righteous complaints is insight into our own flaws.)
If Jane Austen were tempted to settle, she’d reconsider. (If you’re tempted, ask yourself, are you being 100 percent honest with the guy? Where is a relationship based on dishonesty going to get you?)
I
F WE
REALLY
WANT TO BRING BACK JANE AUSTEN ...
We’ll disband the sisterhood of snark and give other women mutual support in seeing men clearly, judging them wisely, and loving them honestly. We’ll expect more from men. And our respect for them will nourish their respect for us, putting us on the road to Jane Austen heroine-level dignity.
CHAPTER FIVE
D
O TAKE LOVE SERIOUSLY
HOWEVER “COMMON” AND “DANGEROUS” IT MAY have been in Jane Austen’s day,
1
the brutal practicality Lori Gottlieb recommends about marriage is really only a conversation piece in the twenty-first century. We’re far more likely to fall prey to a deeper cynicism about love that doesn’t have even Gottlieb’s practical-seeming hopes, however misplaced they may be, to redeem it.
The ultimate cynicism is not to believe in love at all.
If there’s really no such thing as Jane Austen’s “true attachment” or “disinterested” love, then we’re justified in settling. Or we might as well treat the illusion of love as mere entertainment. Or we’d better resign ourselves to the sad but somehow Romantically interesting fact (à la
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
or
Being John Malkovich
) that “love” always and everywhere just makes us each other’s dupes
.
This is the crucial question: Once you’ve seen through the Romantic illusions about love, is there anything real left to see? In Mary Crawford, Jane Austen gives us a woman who doubts there is.
Don’t See through Real Love
Mary is the anti-heroine of
Mansfield Park
. She’s Fanny Price’s “rival,” as they said in Jane Austen’s day, for Edmund Bertram’s love. Mary is a worldly wise young woman who brings her big-city London attitudes to retired and old-fashioned Mansfield, where her risqué way of talking shocks Edmund.
2
Very early on, it’s clear that Mary’s attitude toward love is cynical. She insists to Mrs. Grant, her married sister, that sooner or later their brother Henry, a callous heartbreaker, will be “taken in” by a woman. Mrs. Grant protests, “But I would not have him
taken in
, I would not have him duped; I would have it all fair and honorable.”
But Mary insists that love is just a trick, at least 99 percent of the time: “There is not one in a hundred of either sex, who is not taken in when they marry. Look where I will, I see that it
is
so; and I feel that it
must
be so, when I consider that it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.”
Mary is cynically determined to do well for herself in marriage; she’s in the market for a guy who’s going to have status and a lot of money.That’s why at first she thinks she might marry Edmund’s older brother Tom, heir to Mansfield Park and a baronetcy.
3
But when Tom leaves Mansfield for a while, Mary can’t help being attracted by his younger brother Edmund, despite the fact that Edmund won’t inherit the family estate. “There was a charm, perhaps, in his sincerity, his steadiness, his integrity, which Miss Crawford might be equal to feel, though not equal to discuss with herself.”
4
And Edmund is strongly attracted to Mary, too, despite the fact that she’s continually upsetting him with her flippant way of talking about things that he takes seriously. She never really clues in to how uncomfortable she’s making him, and for a while their mutual attraction smoothes over all the rough places. He excuses all her faults to himself.
5
The abortive love story between Mary and Edmund is all about blindness. Her cynicism blinds her to the things he cares about—and to the value of his love.
6
And the illusions of love blind him to the depth of her cynicism, up until the very end.
For a while, under the influence of Edmund and the other residents of Mansfield, Mary does begin to get a glimpse of the realities that cynicism has made invisible to her. She hesitates between the worldly ideas and ambitions she brought with her to Mansfield—her prejudice against the
clergy (Edmund is planning to be ordained), her addiction to conspicuous consumption (Edmund is preparing for a modest life in a small country parsonage), her requirement of a house in London (Edmund can’t afford one) on the one hand—and on the other hand the sterling qualities, more really valuable than money, that she’s just learning to appreciate in her new Mansfield friends: “You have all so much more
heart
among you, than one finds in the world at large. You all give me a feeling of being able to trust and confide in you; which, in common intercourse, one knows nothing of.”
Sex and the City
But then Mary leaves Mansfield for a visit with her old friends in London. Edmund sees her there, and doesn’t think much of them. Janet Fraser, the friend Mary’s staying with, is “a cold-hearted, vain woman, who has married entirely from convenience, and though evidently unhappy in her marriage, places her disappointment, not in faults of judgment or temper, or disproportion of age, but to her being after all, less affluent than many of her acquaintance, especially than her sister, Lady Stornaway.”
Mrs. Fraser has learned nothing from the mistake she made in marrying for money; she’s still “the determined supporter of everything mercenary and ambitious, provided it be only mercenary and ambitious enough.” And Mary can’t see what her friend did wrong, either.
7
Poor Janet has been sadly taken in, and yet there was nothing improper on her side; she did not run into the match inconsiderately, there was no want of foresight. She took three days to consider of his proposals; and during those three days asked the advice of every body connected with her, whose opinion was worth having; and especially applied to my late dear aunt, whose knowledge of the world made her judgment very generally and deservedly looked up to by all the young people of her acquaintance; and she was decidedly in favour of Mr. Fraser. This seems as if nothing were a security for matrimonial comfort! I have not so much to say for my friend Flora, who jilted a very nice young man in the Blues, for the sake of that horrid Lord Stornaway,
who has about as much sense, Fanny, as Mr. Rushworth, but much worse looking, and with a blackguard character.
You can see exactly what Fanny means by “a mind led astray and bewildered, and without any suspicion of being so; darkened, yet fancying itself light.” The “knowledge of the world” that all these women—Mary’s friends, Mary’s aunt, Mary herself—rely on is actually ignorance of everything that’s really important. They’re London sophisticates, too worldly wise to marry for love. They think only naïve people believe in “disinterested attachment.” To them, it seems much smarter to marry for money and status than to be “taken in.” And when their mercenary, ambitious marriages don’t after all make them happy, they have no clue what went wrong.
Back among this London set, Mary relapses into cynicism. She’s “cooled” toward Edmund “by a return to London habits.” Fanny is appalled by the letter Mary writes her, and particularly by the way Mary thinks about Edmund now that she’s back in London: “The woman who could speak of him, and speak only of his appearance!—What an unworthy attachment! To be deriving support from the commendation of Mrs. Fraser!
She
who had been intimate with him half a year! Fanny was ashamed of her.” Mary is thinking about Edmund’s looks and how his attachment to her gives her status in the eyes of her friends, but also about how his profession will lower her status if she marries him.
8
She sees everything in terms of money, ambition, and sex appeal.
Edmund knows that proposing marriage is risky while Mary is with her London friends; they’ll advise her against such an unworldly match. So he hesitates. And events intervene. Edmund is called away by his elder brother’s dangerous illness—which makes Mary suddenly more interested in Edmund, who will inherit Mansfield Park and be a baronet if Tom dies.
And then Edmund’s sister Maria horrifies the whole Mansfield family by leaving her husband for Mary’s brother Henry. And Mary’s reaction to this adulterous affair finally opens Edmund’s eyes. He can hardly believe that the woman he wanted to marry thinks that Maria’s only real mistake in her affair with Henry was ... getting caught. Edmund is deeply upset by his sister’s adultery, and he finds Mary’s flippant way of talking about it painful. He tells Fanny,
I do not consider her as meaning to wound my feelings. The evil is yet deeper; in her total ignorance, unsuspiciousness of there being such feelings, in a perversion of mind which made it natural to her to treat the subject as she did. She was speaking only as she had been used to hear others speak, as she imagined every body else would speak.
Mary’s cynicism kills Edmund’s feelings for her, and he ends up marrying Fanny—to the reader’s delight! Mary is so careful not to be “taken in” by the illusion of love that she misses the real thing.
So what application can Mary Crawford’s failure with Edmund possibly have for us? We’re not likely to meet many men as straitlaced as Edmund Bertram.

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