A little over two-hundred years since Jane Austen wrote her first book Sense and Sensibility there are hundreds of adaptations and tributes to her six canonized novels. Some cinematic adaptations include romantic comedy movies like Clueless, Bridget Jones Diaries, and Austenland. More recent tributes include articles like “14 Love Lessons From Jane Austen” or “29 Important Lessons Jane Austen Taught You About Love”. While the movies fit the romantic comedy genre and the articles provide something to laugh at, they do not accurately portray the message that Austen was trying to send her readers. These mass media and Hollywood reproductions highlight and over dramatize the romance in Austen’s novels. At least that's my personal opinion anyway, and anyone from JASNA (The Jane Austen Society of North America) is welcome to strike me down if they disagree because they probably know a lot more about Austen than I do.
While people do get married in the novels it is not always for love. For example, In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth’s reasons for wanting to be with Darcy are: “he was exactly the man, who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was a union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance” (318). In Northanger Abbey, Tilney says something similar to that of Elizabeth Bennett. He says of marriage and dancing: “it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into… that it is their duty, each to endeavor to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere… or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else” (95).
Austen’s heroines always follow the rules of society in her novels, or at least they try to. There may be characters like Elizabeth Bennett who test the limits but the rules are never deliberately broken; for example when Catherine Morland is tricked into ridding in a carriage with John Thorpe. The rules of courtship in the Regency Period of England made it hard for the couples to get to know each other well while being under the watchful eyes of their friends and family. It was difficult to base a marriage on love when there were a lot of politics that went into who people could and could not marry. Some of the rules were that you had to marry within your class, the lady had to be “out” in society, and a man could not court a younger lady if she had an older sister who was out. Dowries were also important, how much money a woman could bring to a marriage determined who she could marry within her class. Each party’s finances were openly discussed making marriage seem more like a business agreement than anything else. There had to be an assumed attachment between a man and a woman before he proposed to her but most of the time it was not because he loved her. The word attachment is usually used by Austen to mean an affectionate relationship.Austen chooses her language carefully when describing the feelings and thoughts of her characters; her heroines and heroes use words like “suitable” and “agreeable” to describe their attachment to each other.
If a character does make a declaration of love before an official proposal, it is usually a misguided decision and it will inevitably be denied because this was not how things were done in the Regency Period. Austen rarely uses the word love to describe her heroes and heroine’s feelings for each other, but she uses it frequently to describe other possible attachments. In Austen’s novel there is a reoccurring theme that characters who jump the gun on declaring their feelings for another are usually thwarted in their attempts to secure them. For example, Mr. Collins to Elizabeth Bennet, John Thorpe to Catherine Moreland, and even Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth.
In Austen’s novels there are two exceptions to the failed declarations of love; the love that Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram share, and the love between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. In Persuasion, Wentworth writes to Anne, “I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you” (245). Fanny and Edmund from Mansfield Park have known each other their whole lives, and have been using the term love to describe their familial bond to each other. This aside, the bond that the two share is really similar to marriage and what a wife would do for a husband during that time period. This was perhaps the slowest progressing relationship but it seems to be the most promising one because Fanny and Edmund knew each other so well and were so dependent on one another for their happiness already that it seemed only natural that they should love each other. “With so much true merit and true love, and no want for fortune and friends, the happiness of the married cousins must appear as secure as earthly happiness can be” (468).
Austen criticizes her characters that say they love someone before they get to know that person fully; she wouldn’t have been a big believer of love at first sight and the fast pace of romantic comedies today. Austen emphasizes a give and take relationship, where the partners are on equal ground and have a mutual appreciation for each other. A relationship for the advantage of both so that no one partner puts in something that the other is not willing to give back. The hasty declarations of love failed because the relationships were not equal. Austen believes that a real, lasting, prosperous marriage is based on a love that grew over time and will continue to grow.
