Fine Ladies or Rational Creatures?

“Why are we still reading Jane Austen?” ask several students in my course on the novel. Why is she part of “the canon” of “great literature,” they demand when to them her novels, especially Persuasion, are tedious. Nothing happens. All the romance is in the back story. Anne Elliot struggles with a depression she cannot name and a loss she cannot discuss. “Solitude and reflection” — her coping mechanisms — aren’t exciting for a reader.

I want to rescue the novel for students who did not come into the class as Austen fans and demonstrate that she still has something to say to young women today.

Jane Austen knows that women must devise survival strategies in a world where men control most of the resources — land always seems to be entailed- and the also make the rules.

When Captain Frederick Wentworth with his bad faith misogyny insists that he doesn’t want women on his ships because they are too high maintenance, his sister, aptly named Sophie, counters that if he regards all women as “fine ladies,” he’s right, but there’s another option. He can also see them as rational creatures. As she is.

Do we as readers forgive Wentworth in this scene because we know, as Sophie does not, that his feelings have been deeply hurt by Anne’s withdrawal from their engagement?

But Anne did not merely yield to Lady Russell’s persuasion when she broke off with Wentworth in 1806, eight years before present time of the novel. She was behaving as a “rational creature,” as she later argues. If they had married before Wentworth obtained the command of his first ship, not only would they not have had a large enough income, but Wentworth also might have refrained from taking some of the risks which led him, as a licensed buccaneer, to his fortune.

At nineteem, Anne recognized the value of Wentworth’s character when her snobbish family and status conscious god-mother did not. She knew he was a good man even if he was a poor catch. At twenty-two, she had the wisdom to reject the proposal of Charles Musgrove, eldest son of a local land-owning family. Although he was an acceptable husband in the eyes of her relatives, she recognized that he would not have been a good partner for her.

Accepting Charles would have been the safe bet, as was Mr. Collins for Charlotte Lucas after Elizabeth Bennett, to her mother’s horror, rejected him.

While status and money are the sine qua non of a successful marriage, they are not the only crucial factors. And in order to make good judgments, girls must hone their insights in order to distinguish a Wickham from a Darcy or a William Elliot from a Wentworth.

An error of judgment, when it comes to a marriage partner, can doom a woman to a life of poverty — as we see with Mrs. Smith who married a spendthrift — or to a life of quiet desperation — as we imagine was the fate of Lady Elizabeth Elliot whose one mistake was to ally herself with Sir Walter.

The Crofts epitomize an ideal of marriage within the constraints of patriarchy, represented by their egalitarian “style of driving” in which Mrs. Croft can “give the reins a better direction” whenever her husband is too impulsive.

In the novel, Austen mocks the characters who squander their resources to ingratiate themselves with a “nothing” like Vicountess Dalrymple and valorizes the self-made — not only Wentworth, but also the Crofts and Harvilles. Elizabeth Bennett asserted her suitability for Darcy to his aunt, Lady Catherine, by reminding her that she is a gentleman’s daughter, that is, a member of the gentry. But in Persuasion, to the chagrin of Sir Walter, the gentry take a back seat to the upwardly mobile men of the navy.

A character like Anne’s older sister Elizabeth who — approaching thirty- does not recognize how quickly social values are changing will find herself an old maid.

Unlike her contemporary, Mary Wollstonecraft, who advocated social change in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Jane Austen tries to show women how they can make the best of the world in which they live rather than looking forward to a more equitable future. Austen is anxious to assure readers that women can maintain an authentic self and not end up as poor governesses, the fate from which reformed Frank Churchill rescues Jane Fairfax.

Perhaps that’s one reason we continue to read her work — in addition to the subtlety of her psychological insights and the wit of her language — she reminds us that women had choices, even in a world with fewer opportunities than we have. But they needed to choose wisely as “rational creatures.” As we still must do.