One of the great things about my time in university was that I got to read and study a lot of great works of literature. One of the worst things about my time in university was that this was usually through the grimy, cracked lens of feminism or some other vile form of textual deconstruction. This was by no means always the case but even the best professors I had were careful at least to pay lip-service to these interpretations in their lectures. Thankfully, as memories of my time at university fade, the good I got out of it has retained its clarity. And it has not been hard to maintain this clarity when what you’re reading was clearly written by someone who does not share the worldview or intentions that the professor is trying to draw out of their writing. Whether it be Homer, Shakespeare or in the subject of this post, it is usually obvious what the author’s actual intentions were.
I was first introduced to Jane Austen through the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries which being around twelve years old at the time, I had absolutely no interest in watching. My mother really enjoyed it though and I learned the basics of the story and ended up reading the novel during High School. So when Persuasion was one of the assigned texts in a subject at university, I already had some idea of Austen’s writing. This also included other books from around that period like Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
At least while I studied, there was very little of the creative interpretations or hidden meanings you find in the more outrageous analyses. Examples of this are that such and such a character is actually a sodomite or the author herself was a closet case. I don’t know if this has ever been said about Jane Austen but I assume that the mere fact she never married is more than enough evidence of sexual perversion for many modern minds. The professors to their partial credit, for the most part took the text for what it was and only complained about the plight of women at the time. The focus was generally on showing how this was so.
I never studied Pride and Prejudice during my time at university but I know that Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of the novel, has often been grossly misunderstood. She has often been seen as either an early feminist or a precursor of the scourge to come. Yet nothing in the novel really points to this outside of her declining the proposals of two men and being rather more opinionative than was the norm in that era. That she is more romantic than practical with marriage and would rather be poorer with a man she loves than richer with one she doesn’t is another loose aspect of this. Outside of these character traits, there is nothing to indicate she wants to do anything but get married and have children like the vast majority of women do. She shows no desire to break with the oppressive paternal social structures she was born into. She is in most ways a very feminine character which is the very antithesis of feminist.
Elizabeth really only differs from other women in that she wants to marry a man she can respect and this is voiced directly by her father at the end:
I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband, unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are about.
Many women (including her more practical friend Charlotte), are not of this disposition which is what makes Elizabeth such an interesting heroine. There is nothing feminist or even “girl-bossy” about her. She is equally willing to suffer the more likely consequence of such a disposition — spinsterhood. Something most women, then and now, are not.
It is also worth reminding readers here that Elizabeth is considered a local beauty. Feminists seldom are or at least don’t long remain so which cuts closer to the core of the ideology than any academic theory or definition can. It is her beauty as well as her disposition that so attracts Fitzwilliam Darcy once he knows her well enough to see it. He is a man who is all too familiar with women who are more attracted by his wealth and social position such as his best friend’s sister Caroline. In Elizabeth he finds an intelligent young beauty who posed a challenge and was so worth pursuing. Elizabeth is certainly cognisant of this:
The fact is you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them. Had you not been really amiable you would have hated me for it; but in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and in your heart, you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously courted you. There—I have saved you the trouble of accounting for it; and really, all things considered, I begin to think it perfectly reasonable. To be sure, you knew no actual good of me—but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.
He is (perhaps a little unrealistically), quite frank about what he loves in her:
Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.
So they get married and have children.