Emotional Chastity: What Would Miss Austen Do?

Here is my belated contribution to this week's Bright Maidens blog topic: Emotional Chastity.

It's a rite of passage that happened every summer I worked at "high school history camp": a group of teenage girls discovered Jane Austen movie adaptations. The best reactions came from Ang Lee's exquisite 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility. (Spoiler alert, if you have been under a rock for the 200 years since the novel was written.)

Why is a good man in breeches so hard to find?

SWOON! as Willoughby scoops up injured Marianne as if she "weighed no more than a dried leaf." GASP! when he later betrays her affections. MOURN! for Elinor when Lucy Steele's "prior claims" threaten to separate her from Edward forever. CHEER! the final happy ending.

And after the credits roll, you just might pine for your own dashing waistcoat on horseback, ready to woo you with flowers, sonnets, and heroic deeds.

As much as I love movies of  Jane's books, I do have to admit that they carry a subtle temptation for women to objectify men. Instead of viewing them as complex persons, we might value them solely for their potential to give us the romantic costume-drama experiences we desire. Consider, for example, this brilliant but ridiculous video.



Taken to an extreme, this is emotional porn - just the exciting payoff without any of the patience, sacrifice, and real love that a relationship demands.

In chastity-minded circles, Austen novels are popular PG-rated romantic entertainment for young women. After all, the heroes are polite, the heroines are virtuous, and a  marriage commitment is their goal. That's all well and good, but Austen's true genius lies not in wholesomeness but in wry social commentary. One of the lessons her heroines often learn is not to be too in love with love. Heartbreak almost destroys Marianne Dashwood, while Emma Woodhouse's obsession with matchmaking blinds her to authentic relationships.

Austen's underappreciated first novel, Northanger Abbey, bases the entire plot on Catherine Morland's silly obsession with Gothic novels. Reading too many 19th century equivalents of Twilight has made her suspect horrid drama around every corner. In the end, she assumes dreadful things about her suitor and his family, putting a budding romance in jeopardy. The snarky point is clear: ladies, lay off the fiction and interact with some real people for a change.

Not gonna lie, I still love a good petticoat-filled chick flick. In his first email to me, my boyfriend got my attention by asking what I thought about the 2008 adaptation of S&S. (A shrewd move on his part.) But a week after our first date, I found myself flipping through one of those Pride and Prejudice happily-ever-after sequels at Barnes & Noble. Suddenly, the manufactured plot of Regency romance was unfullfilling. Mr. Darcy was charming enough, but he wasn't as intriguing as the red-headed southern boy whom I could learn about in hours of real-life conversation. The Beau had talents, opinions, dreams, and memories that could fill more than just one volume. I put the book back on the shelf, ready to find greater satisfaction in writing my own love story.