I don't really agree with this authors analysis of Austen. Like on Pride and Prejudice, "Elizabeth Bennet wants to marry for love and respect, but in her world marriage is fundamentally about economic security and social alliance." Elizabeth grew up with her parents fairly disastrous marriage (where her Dad doesn't respect her Mom) and inability to think in the future which put the girls in such a bad situation (her father should have saved money up instead of just assuming he'd have a son eventually). She is reacting against that, wanting a husband that will have mutual respect AND the economic security of someone who is responsible. She wouldn't just want to marry someone for love who wasn't able to provide her economic security, just like she doesn't want to marry Darcy she doesn't respect him. This article makes it sound like she is rejecting the social expectations of her society, but only her mom really wants her to marry Mr. Collins and as seen by her own marriage and support of Lydia's marriage she is a pretty bad judge of what's going to make a good life.

Later they say "They also both, mostly, focus on characters who have enough privilege to have choices, but not enough power to escape circumstances. Characters in both aren’t peasants without agency, but they’re also caught in larger systems they can’t opt out of" But that just describes basically everyone, none of us have no agency, but all of us are also caught up in larger systems we can't opt out of. But even within Austen you have Emma, who is entirely economically and socially secure and doesn't need to worry about anything and Fanny who lives entirely at the whims of others.

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macleginn 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Neveress all Austen's happy endings are due to the magical alignment of respect and love with security and social alliance. Jane's heroines are playing a (relatively, see below) high risk/high reward game of not wanting to sacrifice _anything_, which leads to their triumphs in the novels but most often led to loneliness and economic insecurity in the real world.

Similarly, all people have choices, but these choices are often pretty agonising ones, and Jane almost never has her protagonists or us confront such life-and-death, very-bad-vs-infinitely-worse choices. And this was a conscious choice since the novels of the 18th century had been more or less filled with them.

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fellowniusmonk 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

That's because Austen had sense and not sensibility.

She herself never married, she absolutely rips on the state of affairs in her time but she wasn't going to advocate in her pop fiction that the women of the time make a move that would almost certainly ruin their prospects.

Austen was insanely clever and pragmatic at making her point and having it shared, as much credit as she gets it isn't nearly enough. In some of her other works you can see certain of her points presented with less nuance and memetic potential, she worked at it.

Let me make an outlandish assertion because I'm feeling froggy as I do truly love Austen. If we assumed that Jesus was God and was like a boring Mr. Roger's type and intentionally embedded his message in the most controversial wrapper possible to ensure that the real message was propagated into eternity, then Jesus narrowly edges out Austen in cleverness and only because he didn't have to put pen to paper, I don't think Austen can be overrated.

	▲	gabriel666smith 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		She was such a good marketer of ideas, and at sneaking them into more palatable constructs. The opinion you replied to frustrates me when I encounter it. She was only doing "magical thinking" in her narratives so much as her novels are marriage comedies, and this is required. The reality of her life was that she was incredibly uncompromising. She had to publish her early work under an androgynous pseudonym to profit from it. She didn't marry cynically despite having opportunities to. She was a realist, and a strain of that runs through her work. There are many moments where she anticipates the great Russian realists. She managed to turn a good profit on her art in spite of her period's circumstances. She genuinely advanced the idea of who is allowed to make art, and who is allowed to profit from it. Generally the novels have nuanced but happy endings. She was writing for an audience. She was a shrewd businessman at a time when there weren't businesswomen. In her personal life, she was genuinely uncompromising. She's a GOATed artist. You can't ask much more of a human!

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neaden 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Agreed but I think "The best marriage is one where the spouses respect each other and the man is able to provide a comfortable and secure economic life for the woman." wasn't like, a counter-cultural ideal, while the author of the post has Jane set up in opposition to her societies ideal of what a marriage should be. She was willing to reject the certainty of Bingley for a chance at something better, but I also think Elizabeth would have rejected a poor suitor who she did feel respect for. She wouldn't have married a farmer like Robert Martin for instance.

Edit: And even on risk, the big risk is that if Elizabeth's dad dies the family would have to live on Mrs. Bennet's income of just 200 pounds a year, which to put in perspective was about what Jane Austen's father made as a clergyman when she was born, though he would go on to make more money later in life. It wouldn't be poverty and still put them in the upper few percent of English people at the time.

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mft_ 3 days ago | parent [-]

I think it’s strongly implied that Lizzy would have married someone poor that she loved and respected.

	▲	neaden 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		She doesn't even talk to any poor people though. Her father is the richest man in town, there are no farmers, tradesmen, or clerks that she even speaks to in the book let alone someone who is actually part of the bottom 90% of England's economy at the time. Even with Wickham when they first meet and she likes him, she flirts with him but knows nothing serious can ever happen since he doesn't have enough money and knows he will want to marry an heiress. In chapter 26 her aunt cautions her against falling in love with Wickham and she assures her aunt that while she enjoys his company she doesn't view him as marriage material.

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momojo 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> But that just describes basically everyone, none of us have no agency, but all of us are also caught up in larger systems we can't opt out of.

But isn't the drama between the billionaire heiress and her starving-artist lover more interesting than the lawyer girlfriend deciding whether she wants to marry her below-average-salary boyfriend?

Or maybe I don't understand your complaint.