Rakes, Rage, & the Rationality Racket: Jane Austen, High-T, & the Long Arc of Bad Decisions
Contrary to Edward McLaren, literary Regency marriage patterns, stand-up comedy, and Homeric epic all agree: marrying Colonel Brandon is in no way a tragedy or “settling”, but rather adulting. & the real emotional sex has always been the one with the bigger army…
A very nice catch from the very sharp Edward McLaren, on the English language’s premier novelist, Jane Austen, and on a persistent ambiguity throughout her work, as her female characters make their choices and marry Darcies, Bingleys, Wickhams, Brandons, Collinses, and Willoughbies:
Edward McLaren: Jane Austen’s Rake Problem <https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/jane-austens-rake-problem>: ‘In Sense and Sensibility Marianne, heartbroken over Willoughby… marries Colonel Brandon, who is “On the Wrong Side of Five-and-Thirty”, whereas she is only seventeen…. Willoughby has impregnated Colonel Brandon’s ward… is… engaged to a Miss Grey… [with] £50,000.… Willoughby… [admits] he did fall in love with Marianne…. Notably, Mrs. Dashwood says: “I am very sure myself, that had Willoughby turned out as really amiable…Marianne would yet never have been so happy with him, as she will be with Colonel Brandon…” To this, Elinor’s reaction is as follows: “She paused.—Her daughter could not quite agree with her, but her dissent was not heard, and therefore gave no offence.”
To me, this is a deep and important silence…. Marianne is “settling”…. Willoughby… would make a good lover… nuy be a bad husband…. [Marianne] will have a better life as Colonel Brandon’s wife…. Brandon’s cousin Eliza is said to have died of “lovesickness” for Willoughby…. So Colonel Brandon it is—but at what cost? When she is in love with Willoughby Marianne’s eyes are “bright”, or “bewitching”, whereas after her recovery she has “a rational, though languid, gaze”… [ad] can set her mind on a new “cured” rationality and… marrying Colonel Brandon… [but] the fire is snuffed out. The romantic, passionate Marianne is transformed into a happy little drone and an acceptable wife….
There are men that a woman can marry, who are willing to invest lots of time in them, and there are men that a woman can truly erotically love, who are frequently the target of other women’s conquests…. The ideal… simply isn’t real… Marriage in Jane Austen isn’t a big romantic affair, as we see in adaptations, but is a tool for a functioning society. Jane Austen was still a conservative, and she still approved of marriage, but she kept a twinkle in her eye for the rakes…
What do I think of this? Well, I definitely get off of the Edward McLaren train here. Where I get off is where he asserts that this is a truth human biology imposes on us about the way the human world has to work rather than a combination of Regency upper-class culture and Jane Austen’s not-wholly-accurate view of the world.
Why do I think this?