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

[bgmama]

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?

This thread has made me look at Mrs Bennett in a whole new light. Yes, she wasn't necessarily the sharpest tool in the box, but she did seem to love all her children, if not very equally, and have their best interests at heart whereas Mr Bennett is quite the negligent parent who is quite openly contemptuous of is younger daughters, rather than actually trying to do anything about it.

I disagree. Mrs Bennett was well aware of the urgency to get them married off successfully, but she was also careless and vain. What was she thinking bringing the younger (out of control) girls out when the eldest weren’t yet married? If she hadn’t been so busy bragging loudly that Jane was practically engaged to Bingley the whole drama would never have happened. She had a basic responsibility as the mother of the girls to present herself and her daughters as well-mannered and marriageable. She failed to do this because she put her own desires of bragging and spoiling her younger daughters first. She encouraged Lydia and Kitty to run around after officers flirting when she should have been keeping a better eye on them, though to an extent that can be put down to naivety.

I don’t think Mr B is all that bad. The stuff he says is supposed to be dry and witty and Elizabeth and Jane obviously don’t find him horribly cruel, while Elizabeth shares his sense of humour. He does realise how much he’s messed up and he openly tells Elizabeth and apologises to her. Most importantly, he puts her happiness well ahead of his own and that of the entire family with her denial of Collins’s proposal and is even happy for her to get rid of the insanely rich Darcy. He’s a loving father to an extent that few would have been in other novels, and to the extent that it could have driven his family to ruin.

I think the point is he and Mrs B are neither of them perfect parents but they do love their children. They both love and indulge their children to the extent it’s dangerous for their children but they’re not bad people.

They are poorly matched though. Mr B would have been better suited to someone smart and capable like Elizabeth, or gentle and obliging like Jane. I think Mrs B would have been better off with an indulgent Bingley type, though had they ever had money troubles neither would have had a clue what to do.

Also as soon as I finish my current Heyer I’m reading P&P again. Thanks for the inspiration!

@ScipioAfricanus

You might like this podcast. It is very comprehensive about the development of English from its IndoEuropean routes.
It’s helped me understand some of the route of weirdness in spelling I. English.

historyofenglishpodcast.com/episodes/

Fascinating thread!

So to recap

P & P - ineffective parents
S & S - ineffective mother
Persuasion - vain father
MP - vain lady Bertram & absent father
Emma - hypochondriac father
NA - read it so long ago that I can’t remember!

But doesn’t say muc for parenthood does it?

True, Ex, and it makes me wonder how her writing might have changed had she become a mother herself.

I'd never thought of Mr B as being significantly older, but textually it could work. Mrs B can't be older than 50 tops really, and is probably younger. If you weren't a worker who was all used up by that age and were no longer at risk of dying in childbirth or were a man, there's no particular reason to think death is around the corner if you're 45, notwithstanding people died suddenly much more often then. If he's much older rather than just a few years, 60 plus even, that makes more sense.

Might also explain the 'out' thing, if time is of the essence. Lydia and Kitty are supposed to be lookers. Jane must've been out for at least 5-6 years at the start of the book, and nothing doing. She's the beauty of the family so you can see how they'd think, if she's taking this long then fuck me, we can't waste time with the others. Best get them all on the market now.

Although I do think it's at least partially in the book as evidence that Mrs B spoils Lydia, but there might be more to it.

Scipio if you want Old English, one very short paperback does it all - The Earliest English Poems, Penguin, Alexander (Prof Alexander was my tutor). He was an incredibly nice man who spent his life producing a Greatest Hits in modern English, this is it. You can read them in the original in other books but there's not so much difference in this version which is why it's so good.

Lovely reading in this weather, it's always freezing cold and barren in Old England.

JA as a mother... what a fascinating idea. I suppose she spent so much of her life - and adulthood - as an unwilling child, she stuck to what she knew. She wasn't mad keen on babies, or at any rate being roped in to look after someone else's as a poor relations, but she did love teenagers.

Thinking more about references and themes we miss now, reading the books two centuries on, I'm also interested in whether Mansfield Park read as creepy at the time. Several of us have identified it as such on this thread. I know cousin marriage was pretty mainstream then even amongst first cousins, and is obviously rather taboo now amongst the large majority of British people. So it's hard to read that part of it in the same way as someone would in 1818. But the other stuff, is that a bit skeevy too?

Fermat - yes, I think that's right regarding marriages. The Wife of Bath had five husbands "at the church door"

Mrs Bennet was right to be concerned about her daughters future, it is only natural that she would want to marry them off asap, but as a pp said she went about it the wrong way. She didn't teach them anything worth knowing, and she never checked the behavior of the youngest too. It's hard to feel a great deal of smypathy for her, she is vulgar and brash and doesn't have the sense to hide it.

I love this thread...it's really made me think ore deeply about JA's characters and what she was actually saying. This is the sort of thing that should be in classics..I love a bit of education and depth. Thank you everyone!

she is vulgar and brash and doesn't have the sense to hide it.

^This. I remember Elizabeth’s frustration at her mother allowing the girls to do whatever they wanted, and when she spoke to her dad he basically said, “oh well, I can’t stop them”. How incredibly irritating for her!

I am so excited to read this again.

"more deeply" not "ore deeply". That's mining talk!

Speaking of which, may we discuss Poldark (the wonderful books not the superficial, largely made-up TV series) next?

JA as a mother... what a fascinating idea.

When I think of a writer who reminds me of being a mother it’s Elizabeth Gaskell. She really drives home the intensity of that love, and makes you feel so close to other women who lived long ago. But then she always had a brilliant way of summing anyone up with just a sentence or two. But I derail...

Are there chests in the book?

This is very intersting, not been on since yesterday and some great comments.
I too assumed the birth rate would have been much higher, and had no idea about the fall and rise (?) of women's rights...

I can't help wondering what Jane Austen would have become if she'd lived today... some kind of razor sharp social commentator/economist type?

Also please no Poldark talk, am saving the next tv series for after I hand in my thesis at the end of htis month!

Good point that this should be in classics.

I suppose Mrs B made what was a pretty good match for her by being brash and gorgeous, so it's hard for her to see beyond the need for that.

Don't bother Cliveybaby...it's a travesty! Read the books!

I think it's easy to forget that authors had to bear in mind attitudes of the time, if they wanted to be published - and be paid for it!

Re the clergyman - St John Rivers - in Jane Eyre, who wanted to cart Jane off to India as a missionary's wife , and told her it was her duty, she shouldn't expect love, etc. - I swear CB thought he was a fanatic that no sane woman should ever hook up with, but given general religious feeling at the time, esp. that making Christians out of 'heathens' could only be a Good Thing - she had to imply it very subtly, which IMO she did very cleverly.

As it was, there were strong criticisms at the time, to the effect that it was very wrong of JE to have sought to move out of the sphere of life in which it had pleased God to place her! Though having said that, there were a lot of enthusiastic comments, too. And of course she had to make Mr Rochester suffer horribly before his happy ending - given popular morality at the time, , heaven forbid that he should get away with having tried to commit bigamy.

OTOH Jane Austen was able to ridicule the clergy, but she was able to do it with a very light and humorous touch, in altogether lighter novels.

The first publication of Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd was as a serial in a monthly magazine, IIRC edited by Virginia Woolf's father. Hardy was obliged to rewrite or remove certain sections, or tone them right down, for fear of shocking or wrongly influencing the nice young M or UC class ladies who might read it. (The mag was probably too expensive for the likes of servants anyway).

When it was later published in book form, he was able to add the 'shocking' elements, e.g. Bathsheba opening the coffin to find the unmarried mother and her baby. It was reasoned that anyone who could afford to buy novels, which were very expensive at the time, could be trusted not to have a fit of the vapours or descend at once into immorality.
As a pp said, autre temps...

I always wonder if JA would have written at all if she could have got a nice well-paid job as a surgeon or a banker or summat. She would have made a bloody good top divorce lawyer.

I suspect she would have stayed single, installed her DM in a granny flat near her, and indulged in some crackingly expensive hobbies. I like to think of 21st cent JA touring the finest restaurants in Venice and falling in love with Florence. One thing I do know for sure - JA would have worn Celine.

I swear CB thought he was a fanatic that no sane woman should ever hook up with, but given general religious feeling at the time, esp. that making Christians out of 'heathens' could only be a Good Thing - she had to imply it very subtly, which IMO she did very cleverly.

Too subtly for a lot of people! So many people say, “why did she go back to awful Rochester?” missing the point entirely.

I always thought St John was a reflection of her own father.

Interesting comments about CB & St John. Has anyone read ‘Wide Sargasso Sea?’ I love the fact that it explores the mad woman in the attic’s perspective & how she might have been driven to become that caricature in the book. Post colonial perspectives give another slant to everything - so interesting how they challenge the idea of empire & highlight cultural differences & perspectives of the time.

I read WSS but I couldn’t stand it. I get what she was trying to do but I thought it was terribly written and from memory (it was a LONG time ago) she changed basic facts we’re given in JE to suit her story, so it’s no longer realistic enough to compare.