On my recent travels, I took Austen’s Persuasion, and the reading light failing on one of my flights, listened to much of Pride and Prejudice on my iPod. I do not intend to review either of these wonderful books, but I did fall to musing about Jane Austen’s heroines, no doubt from a typically narrow and masculine point of view (perhaps the two adjectives were tautologous).
In some ways, they are quite homogeneous – young and single, with views and personalities very much their own – and their fates, too, are similar, as they all end up married – and married happily, too. Yet for all that, they are very different characters, and Austen’s genius is to deal with such similar material in such a way as to illuminate so wide a range of material in her society and in all societies. There is meek Fanny Price in Mansfield Park; beautiful Jane and boisterous Elizabeth, the Bennett sisters in Pride and Prejudice; intelligent Anne Elliot in Persuasion; the romantic and the pragmatic sisters, Marianne and Elinor in Sense and Sensibility; the innocent and impressionable Catherine in Northanger Abbey; and finally the interfering and eponymous Emma. I do not mean to imply, by the choice of one adjective, that any of these women did not have other attributes, or even that these are their most important characteristics. I only say that these are the attributes which have burned themselves on my mind, and which demonstrates the true range of Austen’s young ladies - all the vulgar, stupid and disagreeable women (of which there are plenty in Austen) are junior sisters, aunts, acquaintances merely.
They all get married, and married pretty well. How likely is that in fact, in the society of the day? Well, given the slight surplus of young ladies, natural and generated by war, the odds might be against them, but each has something specific to commend her. In material terms, several of them are not at all well off, but all are brought up to gentility and accomplishment, and some – like Fanny and Emma – are brought up really quite grandly, whether that is their natural family metier or not, and the Dashwoods lived very well before they were forced to move. But several have a liveliness and ready wit (Lizzie and Anne W) which seems to have been attractive in every age, and others have a good sense, rectitude and reasonableness which apparently attracts the moralists and prigs like Edmund (Fanny, eventually) and Emma’s suitor, Knightley.
The arch-heroine, of course, is Elizabeth Bennett, and while Darcy (initially) and some of his companions find her too hoydenish and forward, all the others suffer desperately by comparison. She has good looks, wit, self confidence, intelligence, and a lively understanding of herself and others, even if she badly misjudges Wickham. The modern reader cannot but feel he would marry her himself, given half a chance. But her sister Jane, and Fanny Price, seem just too self-effacing. Jane is incomparably the more mature, of course, and some of Fanny’s weaknesses come from lack of love and understanding when she first appears at Mansfield Park; but Jane just seems a nice girl, pretty and complaisant, and there seems little real depth of character there. Fanny – though she increasingly has views of her own – is a mouse, and seems born to play an adoring second fiddle to a stronger personality – first Lady Bertram, then Edmund. The only sequel to an Austen novel I’ve ever read felt the need to develop her quite a lot, not altogether convincingly!
At the other end of the scale is Emma, who wants to manage everyone else in a way which is most unattractive, mainly because she is so blind to their real needs, and to her own motivations. Marianne is a full hearted Romantic with a capital R, until her rejection and illness, but Elinor falls into the category of accomplished young ladies somewhere between Elizabeth and Jane in energy, character and appeal, rather like Anne Elliot, though perhaps without her exceptional intelligence and understanding. Catherine is a nice enough girl, with good instincts, but is very gullible and rather silly at times. That she is Jane Austen's first heroine may be part of the reason for this, her subtlety not being full grown - and of course, the Gothick mood demands exaggeration and suggestibility.
To a modern taste, Anne, Elizabeth and Elinor would be welcomed onto the books of any dating agency (though they would be unlikely to need such a thing), while I fear Fanny might struggle (to find the confidence to sign up, and to go on blind dates, for a start). Emma would do well if she could curb her bossy interferingness, but might put a few men off on a first date (unless Gwyneth Paltrow turned up, of course)!
How real a picture is this of early nineteenth century genteel womanhood, I wonder? I suspect the marriage market was pretty pragmatic for a lot of people, although wealth was not essential for marriage or even happy marriage. But it could also be pretty brutal, and it may be that Charlotte Lucas, in taking the ridiculous Collins for the sake of a home of her own, presents the most honest picture of the fate of many.