To think that most Jane Austen's heroines didn't find happiness in marriage?

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I am a big fan and I must have read the books a hundred times, but I am starting to realize that most heroes in her books are either assholes or idiots and towards the end of the book they stop being assholes or idiots and become worthy of marrying the heroine. I am not talking only of Mr Darcy here, but most others too. AIBU to think that this transformation didn't last very long and they went back to their usual ways shortly after the marriage was consummated? And that the heroines were miserable and were told to LTB at some point during their lives?

There is a great essay called The Betrayal of Marianne about this... the principle being that Marianne ends up marrying Colonel Brandon who's stuffy and old enough to be her father, because she can't be allowed o follow her heart and her passions and run off with Willoughby. She can't be wild and free, because of the constraints of women's novel writing at the time.

I think that Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth had a wonderful marriage and happy life, and adored each other. He might have been a bit sulky sometimes but she wasn't perfect either.

Thanks londonloves I will look it up

This makes me think of the Collinses in P&P. Jane's friend Mrs Collins puts up with the dreadful Rev Collins because she feels she has no choice (she's 27 or something really old!) but she makes her marriage work by having her own space in the house and keeping away from her husband.

Maybe this sort of "separate" marriage is how many of them got by?

Northanger Abbey was always my favourite but the ending has always left me feeling a bit ‘meh’

It’s like he felt obligated to marry her and she was all head over heels about him.

I think Elizabeth and Darcy would have been alright, and completely agree with Gender about Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, but Mr Knightley is so condescending and so creepy ("I have been in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least"), that it's hard to imagine Emma would be happy with him for very long.

She's quite clear that a lot of the non heroines didn't but usually implies the heroines do, doesn't she? Bingley and Jane are both so nice that they'd never fall out over anything. I always wondered how Lizzy and Darcy would fare after the initial red hot lust died down.

Fanny Price and that whole family had a very weird setup. Enough material for a psychologists conference there.

I might read them all again.
Marriage was the career option for girls from naice families at the time. They had to make it work. With a comfortably-off husband and a big house, that was fairly easy. For a parson's wife, less so, but it could be done.

Dd swears she learned a lot of what she knows about life from JA, and she seems to be making a go of things.

Aren't they satirical?

she can't be allowed to follow her heart and her passions and run off with Willoughby

What, so she could find herself dumped, pregnant and destitute as soon as Willoughby spied a better prospect? Like his previous victim?

I can imagine what advice she'd be given if she posted about Willoughby on Mumsnet today - 'Red flags all over - Run for the hills!'

She can't be wild and free, because of the constraints of women's novel writing at the time.

Lydia Bennet was.

I think at the time, marriage wasn't about happiness, or love in the modern sense. Women, particularly of the class Austen writes about were there as vessels to carry on the family line. In return, they got security and a home. If they married someone who treated them well and who loved them, it was a bonus, but it was basically a business contract between families, much in the way we have arranged marriages today. Charlotte Lucas points this out to Lizzie. Lizzie has options, is young and beautiful so can refuse Mr Collins, but being married to a parson with his own house is to Charlotte a good alternative to being at the mercy of the male members of her family, or living in relative poverty. If Lizzie didnt have to option of marriage to Darcy or another rich man, she would have had to marry Collins. Mrs Bennett gets a bad rap in this regard, as she is trying to give her silly daughters a roof over their heads when their father dies and their home is taken from under them.

If it wasnt for substantial help from Darcy, Lydia Bennett would have ended up destitute and would have ruined her entire family in the process. She was a very lucky girl.

I think Captain Wentworth was quite spiteful and childish. Let's not forget he almost got engaged to Anne's SIL in order to spite her and told her family and friends that she (Anne) was "so altered he wouldn't have known her", meaning she was all old and wrinkly at 27! As for Mr Darcy, I cannot imagine that someone so proud and arrogant would change so radically and become the exact opposite of what he was, at least not in the long term. I have never known anyone in real life who did that. I think he would always be embarrassed to visit her family in Hertfordshire and would ultimately regret marrying her and she him.

She does! She's the actual smart one in that respect. Their father is witty but also burying his head in the sand, and his ostrich routine would've fucked them all over.

I am currently reading Perception by Terri Fleming . It is about Mary after Jane, Elizabeth and Lydia marry. I don’t normally like these type of follow ones but I am enjoying this. It is just a bit of light fluffy holiday reading . I agree that the marriages don’t work well for the females. They always seem far too grateful that the ‘hero’ has deemed to marry them.

I think at the time, marriage wasn't about happiness, or love in the modern sense.
That may be true in general, but for Jane Austen and her heroines it was. Austen herself rejected a proposal from a very rich guy and family friend because she was not in love with him.

@QuinquiremeOfNineveh it's an academic article, not necessarily my opinion
The fact is though that as a female writer in that period, Austen had to work quite hard to be respectable , and the only appropriate ending for a novel written by a woman at the time was for the heroine to marry someone reasonably financially secure.
Lydia and co are warnings of what could happen if you don't follow the rules.
Maybe she is just gently suggesting that the rules need changing. There are many levels of satire in Austen's novels.

Yes Captain Wentworth did behave badly but I think that he was only flirting with Anne's Sil, I've forgotten her name, to make Anne jealous, and seemed shocked that he had allowed it to go too far.

This is all balanced for me though by the fact that Anne had treated him really badly at first. I really think that neither really behaved worse than each other. IMO

It was so much worse for women at that time period, having marriage as the ultimate ambition. Hard to imagine being past your bloom at 27 & classed as a spinster for never marrying! @Quinquireme - Lydia Bennett’s freedom didn’t last long as she had to marry Wickham for the sake of ‘propriety.’ How crap would that marriage be!? Emma has a degree of freedom - until she marries Knightley.

I always find it interesting that Jane herself never married. She had offers didn’t she? Wasn’t she in love with a man called Tom, but she was too poor & he chose to marry someone else?

Genderwitched I think Anne's biggest problem is that she is a martyr. Married to a sulky guy, I cannot see how that would go well

Yes, but their glorious love and wonderful adventures made it all worthwhile. The end

I think Elizabeth Bennett married Darcy for his house. Jane Austen clearly had an eye for property, she tends to describe houses in far more detail and with far more appreciation than she ever does the physical appearance of her main characters. Pemberley was apparently based on Chatsworth House, so she had good taste.

So in that respect I think she was probably quite content. In the final chapter of P&P it does imply a certain happy ever after quality to their marriage, so I should think that a massive house in which they probably didn’t have to see each other from one day to the next probably helped a great deal.

One of the other things I always find odd about her novels is the idea that (if we assume they were supposed to be set roughly the same time as they were published), all the heroines that survived childbirth would have been old women in the Victorian period. So if Elizabeth was about 20 in 1812, she could still have been around as an 80 year old in the 1870s.

Btw I always thought that maybe Austen was hinting at something with Henry Tilney. He knew an awful lot about different types of muslin, and didn’t seem actively interested in Catherine until he proposed. Not saying that it wouldn’t be a happy marriage, in it’s own way, but maybe Henry would have had other interests?

I think Austen's heroines are all written as unlikeable, with the exception of Elizabeth Bennett. I really admire her for that - it is something radical even now to find yourself rooting for such an unpleasant bunch. And they are social satires not romances. I think the trickle of unease as you contemplate any of the Austen marriages after you close the book is masterly. I feel sorriest for Henry Tilney, who is a wonderful, funny, moral and intelligent man who two years after his marriage will find himself married to a total airhead, two kids and another on the way, whose only interest is gossip, as she hasn't got time or energy to read even kitsch horror any more. I think Catherine Morland becomes Mrs Bennett.

Compare Austen's women to Dickens' women. Austen's are flawed, real, bracingly conventional and annoying. They behave like humans not dolls.