Jane Austen Vs. Reality

Reality vs. Jane Austen: An Analysis for the Single Christian

INTRO 

I love Jane Austen and believe she’s one of the most brilliant authors of the English language. Her novels are powerful, and worth discussing at length because of their voice in our culture. My purpose here is not to degrade her or turn anyone away from her work, but to critique how we see it and what we do with it. Because she so successfully connected with her readers, we’re still feeling her impact today. However, I believe her works today are burdened with consequences she never intended. 

Pixabay: castleguard

As a Christian, her wholesome values and the clean aspect of her stories draws us in without reserve. And that’s where I’m aiming today, at the way we ingest her work without critical thinking (because it’s so nice and warm and fuzzy and enjoyable), and how we should be careful to store these charming characters in the correct box in our minds - the box of fantasy. 

Yes, Jane Austen’s novels are fantasy as much as Winnie the Pooh is imaginary. (Yes, I’m fun at parties.) I know we know fiction isn’t real, but let’s dig deeper into what that means in places like Pemberley or Rosings Park. We’ll first look at some mechanisms in Jane’s work that contribute to her lasting influence today. Influence, not as in fame, but as in actively influencing how we think, talk to ourselves, and engineer stories around romance.

Jane was powerful.  

DESIRE is powerful 

Austen never married, and in my (also unmarried) opinion, that fact overarches every story she wrote. She had relationship ups and downs too, where maybe she wanted to marry, or was asked to marry and compelled to say “no.” Those things hurt. She undoubtedly suffered the heartaches we all do, and then never found a companion to spend her life with. She, of all people, was qualified to write about longing.

I believe her own unresolved longing is probably one of the most gripping powers in her stories, because we all feel a deep longing for connection. All six novels are laced with profound desire. But here’s a catch: it’s probably more due to literary conventions than her beliefs, that she sets up romance as the resolution to the tensions in her stories. We’ll come back to that. 

REALISM is powerful 

It’s common to hear people say they love her for being “realistic,” and that’s true. And that leads us to another catch: her characters and their quirks often feel real, but the plots (the way things happen to them) are contrived. Her characters and other elements contributed to her being a forerunner in the realism movement of her day, but it’s important to un-braid the elements and see that realism only refers to certain aspects of the story. Other elements, as we’ll see, are airbrushed to an idealistic maximum. To put a finer point on it, we should read Edward’s miraculous return in Sense & Sensibility with the same whimsy as we read Tigger bouncing into Pooh’s house.

Besides being a great writer, she was incredibly adept at decoding human psychology. It’s why she translates so well centuries past her time period. We love her perfectly sparkling understanding of human nature. She captured us all in our glories and flaws, as if holding up a mirror to our humanity. We’re imperfect and need forgiving, but we’re glorious and capable of love. 

The power of her realism though, is not that she captured some things well, but that she knew what to leave out. If she was smart enough to write so well, she was smart enough to know this wasn’t how the world worked at all. She knew what her audience did and didn’t want to hear. She was purposely writing a fantasy world, and purposely idealizing, glorifying, and celebrating what she wanted to. 

EMOTIONS are powerful 

Although they’re an intellectual adventure, Jane’s stories evoke real feelings, emotions, longings, and tensions in us. People remind us of people we know. Heartaches hurt because they remind us of our losses. The resolutions feel like deep relief. She consistently sets up romantic desires in all her main characters, then challenges them into oblivion, then against all odds, we arrive at an unlikely, but wonderfully happy ending. 

This predictable progression (the ancestor of the Hallmark movie, no?) is part of what makes the books a safe space. Dreams come true because we dreamed them, and things work out exactly as we hoped, because they were meant to. Challenges won’t leave lasting scars. They’re only an illusion that is propelling us toward the happy ending.

The emotional train track is set. We get on board and suddenly all roads lead to romance being a resolution for all the woes of the story. Stories, by provoking emotions like these, can bypass our intelligence, and even our values. Because of this, stories are capable of moving weight from one side to the other on the scale of our values. Sometimes, like a cat scooting a vase to the edge of a ledge, stories can knock our values right off the scale itself into oblivion. 

ESCAPISM is powerful 

It’s not uncommon in the singles world to hear the dream man called “Mr. Darcy.” (It’s Knightley for me FTR.) And while that may be a harmless shorthand, it’s not funny if it runs too deep. I’ll be the first to admit, I’d immediately choose Barton Cottage over the current dating scene with its apps, awkwardness, friendzones, and situationships. Who wouldn’t? 

Jane’s powers are piling up. These stories written for entertainment can become a filter on our perceptions of our own reality as we navigate real-life relationships. It’s like an Instagram filter for your heart, that smooths away the blemishes of our struggles. The more painful and unreliable this life is, the more tempting a world where every puzzle piece fits perfectly, and no desires go unmet. 

These powers together open a door that appeals to our desire to escape our own pains. Seeing romance as an ultimate solution can distort our thoughts, values, and even our ambitions. And all of these can distort our visions of our own happiness, needs, purpose, and ultimately, our calling. 

No single person sets up a shrine in their house to marriage, or romance and bows down to it. Idolatry isn’t just about bowing, although bowing is a red flag. Idolatry can simply be about over-valuing, misplacing, or allowing God’s good and true things to be scooted aside for lesser things.

In this sense, the greater danger of escapism isn’t that we leave this world for the fictional, but that we take her fantasy world and impose it on ours. 

FANTASY is powerful

We’ll look at some fantasy-driven moments from the books that can twist our mind away from healthy reality if we’re not careful. I can’t emphasize enough that these aren’t about flaws in her writing, but about us misplacing her plots into real-life scenarios where her tropes don’t serve us well. 

Here are three “escapes” I identified. While this isn’t an outright confession, let’s just say I didn’t consult any friends in writing this. My opinions here are born out of experience: mistakes I’ve made, seen others make, and even terrible advice I was given. 

Be careful out there with…

           He’s too in love with me to talk about it.

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” Mr. Knightley’s declaration to Emma after they’d both fallen in love is, by far, one of my favorite lines in all of Jane’s work. Mr. Knightley is noble, and in the context, this moment is lovely. I have zero critical thinking when this moment is playing out before me. It works in the book.

Where it doesn’t work for us, is if we make it a template for any and all hopes we feel toward someone. First of all, the Knightleys’ context was a lifelong, genuine friendship. Most of us aren’t building on that. So if anytime a lesser relationship fizzles out, or can’t get started, and we let fantasy speak , “Ah, he’s just hiding his feelings…” That mantra won’t lead to joy. Restraint is good, but complete lack of communication is not. Mind-reading and filling communication gaps with fantasy will lead us wrong. 

In real life, if someone acts neutral or uninterested in you, it’s often because they’re uninterested. It’s not healthy to keep hoping, trolling, Googling, etc. after someone who isn’t interested. Self-respect will look like spending your energy on someone who cares about you. (Have you noticed, fantasy never fosters self-respect? And vice versa.) Yes, there can be ambiguity, misunderstanding, and misplaced restraint in real life. However, at the end of the day, you want to be with someone who finds a way to express their care for you in clear words and actions.

In short: Let people go who don’t show genuine interest in you. Don’t play games, and don’t lose yourself in the confusing world of people who do.

Be careful out there with…

           All hope is gone, but he’ll return for me.

Spoiler alert. At the end of Sense & Sensibility, after an absolute nightmare of an emotional roller coaster, Edward Ferrars shows up and proposes to Elinor, the heroine who has waited for this moment for the whole book. It works in the book.

Where it doesn’t work for us: when someone you formerly hoped to be with has moved on, is dating someone new, is engaged, or God forbid, married… be done. Let go. Pray for God to cut the chains if you can’t. Talk it out in a safe place. Get closure and walk in freedom. The book does portray Elinor responding rightly reacting to the difficulty, but then the author gifts us a miracle of extreme relief and joy. The dead dream revives, Elinor’s original dream of being with Edward comes true. Why wouldn’t we want to align ourselves with Elinor, and hope the world will do the same for us? 

One of the confounding factors here is the way Jane plays in her novels with discrepancies between appearances and reality. Edward appeared to be married. Tragedy! But he wasn’t, and he was in love with Elinor after all. Triumph! These realities inside the Austen world are often counterintuitive, and events are revealed through the story in ways you could compare to a murder mystery. That’s half the joy of reading them, to disentangle deceptions, and learn along with the characters what true reality has occurred, and what their new reality will be.

At the end, truth is revealed, and it’s often laced with surprises. Although life can be incredibly surprising, for better and worse, that doesn’t mean we can allow fantasy to override our perceptions. We can easily engineer this imaginary structure into hoping for unlikely things to happen to us that simply aren’t happening. Even our safety instincts fall into question if we’re not careful with this. 

But don’t we believe in miracles? Yes! But there’s a difference between faith-fueled, healthy optimism, and hoping an extremely unlikely and complicated reversal will happen exactly the way we want it to. That’s the stuff Jane spent her hours contriving, not how our world works. In her world, the main character always gets what they want. Their deepest griefs are met with having the loss undone. They don’t have to lay dreams to rest. They don’t have to move on. Circumstances always work out to serve their deepest, oldest hopes. [This is probably part of the idealism Mark Twain famously took issue with. He was a crank, but he had a point.] 

Our wishes, sadly, don't dictate the events happening around us. Our desires don’t necessarily impact anyone but our own self. Some of our dreams and feelings – even the most noble ones – are simply misplaced, and our God-intended path is down a different road than we thought. Sometimes dreams die, opportunities are lost, and doors close. Life isn’t fair, and not all of God’s goodness is easy to accept. His will is ultimately good, but not all steps on His narrow paths are painless, or He wouldn’t have promised us so much comfort. 

In short: keeping hope alive in the face of loss won’t dictate you a perfect future. Get wisdom and try to accept painful realities in the fear of God. Don’t invest your loyalty in an imaginary plot point that hasn’t happened yet.

Be careful out there with…

Bad marriages don’t happen to good people, only to bad people. 

Jane had a Christian moral system, and she used Christian values to clearly distinguish her heroes and villains. Heroes are kind, honest, generous, peacemakers, hopeful, loyal, etc. and they’re rewarded with the marriage of their dreams. 

Villains, and only villains participate in wrong behaviors such as dishonesty, seducing, taking advantage of power differentials, flirting with married people, or marrying for selfish reasons. Villains are written out of the plot, straight to Jane Austen jail, which is usually a marriage with another villain.

Who doesn’t get a petty satisfaction in the way Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill deserve each other in the worst way? 

How does this go wrong for us? Let me count the ways. First, it could lead us to believe people who are unhealthy for us will automatically leave without us taking painful efforts to put up boundaries. 

Second, it can skew our perception of broken relationships. The tragic truth here is that difficult marriages can happen to anyone. Life can change; people can change. A marriage that began easily can become a nightmare. Innocent people can be misled into a relationship they thought was something else altogether. Abusers can hide behind nice manners. False pretenses, false reputations, deception, and manipulation can happen behind the scenes without altering public reputation. Life, unfortunately, doesn’t weed out these dangers for us, or always reveal their identity at convenient times. If only that were how it worked, we could avoid much suffering. 

Third, it can destroy our ability to see nuances. When divorces or breakups happen, the last thing we want to do is use this structure of hero vs. villain to discern what happened. The last thing we should do is fill in the gaps with imagined scenarios. We don’t have Jane’s unfiltered take on these kinds of stories, but I think she’d agree with me here. She clearly valued a world where marriages are safe places of respect and honesty, but that doesn’t give us permission to victim blame. 

In short: Life can be harshly unfair. People can find themselves in marriages they didn’t deserve and that they chose in good faith. The stories we know aren’t hero vs. villain. There are always nuances, and things we don’t know.  

CONCLUSIONS

Life can be beautiful, but real life isn’t fair. That’s why we have fiction. We need respite sometimes, and that’s okay. It’s nice to go relax in Jane’s world, and be reminded how beautiful romance is, and that it’s okay to hope it happens for us. But we can’t forget to bring the dream in for a landing, and re-enter the door to this reality, where there are deeper and more lasting joys, purposes, and fulfillments to be found than a solitary, tender moment between two crushes, or the surreal pomp of a wedding day. 

Facts are our friends, and nowhere is this so true as in relationships. There are long, beautiful stories waiting to happen for us too. Real ones with infinite mundane moments no novelist would ever write down. That’s the irony, isn’t it? If we plant our feet too deeply elsewhere, we’ll miss what we have here altogether.

Despite Jane Austen’s genius skills, and her unquestionable authority in her genre, she is not the author of our faith, or our romances. God is, and He operates over us in much the same way an omniscient narrator does, but the difference is we get to make choices. If we surrender to Him, and keep His word truly above hers, her stories are harmless to us. If we treat her words too highly, or too carelessly, we might suffer for misusing them. 

[Another side note: Do any of you nerds want “God is my omniscient narrator” stickers, because I do. LMK, I’m thinking of having them made.]

If stories have the power to distort us away from the reality God has set before us, our solution is to cleanse the palate of our spirit and let God’s word be a louder source. Part of that process is separating fantasy from reality, which is never as simple as it sounds. The Christian seeks a path lit by the word of God, not by imaginations. We’re following a pillar of fire, not a fallible, imaginary narrative. We’re meant to seek God harder than we seek the things we want because He is the ultimate hero, and our ultimate answer. 

I think if Jane could speak today, the last thing she would want is for someone to miss out on or damage a lasting relationship because they were so fixated on hoping an imaginary plot she created in jest would materialize. 

To celebrate romance is to celebrate a turning point, and the relief of finding happiness with someone else. But to celebrate the greater purposes of life itself, the best it can offer, requires closing the book on many fantasies and imaginations that aren’t happening, and embracing the beauties we can experience today, such as they are. We never have to close the door on hope. In fact, it’s a brighter hope when we free our expectations from the limitations and inevitable errors of fantasy, and stay present in what can be real.

Wishing you much love. And also, read responsibly!

- Kristi