The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After by Elizabeth Kantor

Author:Elizabeth Kantor [Kantor, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2012-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

We’re the Experts

Because if there’s one sex that has the better chance of really understanding relationships, it’s us. Face it: relationships are our hobby, our fascination, our obsession. Make Facebook friends with a couple of fourteen-year-old girls, and you’ll soon see that they’re as preoccupied by relationships as fourteen-year-old boys are by—well, let’s just say, by women’s physical endowments. Park next to a construction site outside a commuter train station and watch the men and women on their way to work.35 Every man will be watching the backhoes move dirt, and every woman will have her eyes on some human being’s face. It’s true about us even as infants. Baby girls respond to facial expressions; baby boys’ eyes follow moving objects.36 And women grow up to possess “emotional intelligence,” verbal facility, an awareness of other people’s feelings, and a head for relationship dynamics that men can’t compete with.37

That’s why Fanny sees exactly what Henry Crawford is up to with Maria and Julia, while Edmund is totally oblivious to the fact that his good friend is playing with his sisters’ hearts.38 (Mary Crawford sees it all very clearly, too, though without Fanny’s compassion.)39 And Fanny understands the progress of Edmund’s love for Mary much better than he understands it himself. Anne Elliot, we’ve already seen, advises Captain Benwick on his heartbreak from a position of “seniority of mind”—and also, of course, very ably makes the case for her deeper understanding of men, women, and love to Captain Harville. And when Anne sees that Captain Wentworth’s attention has thrown both Louisa and Henrietta Musgrove into “a little fever of admiration” for him and that their cousin Charles Hayter has become jealous on Henrietta’s account, Anne sees where it’s all likely to lead: “Anne longed for the power of representing to them all what they were about, and of pointing out some of the evils they were exposing themselves to. She did not attribute guile to any.... There was no triumph, no pitiful triumph in his manner. He had, probably, never heard, and never thought of any claims of Charles Hayter. He was only wrong in accepting the attentions—(for accepting must be the word) of two young women at once.”

And notice that Anne is an expert on the how-to aspect of the situation as well as on the realities of the sexual psychology: “As to Captain Wentworth’s views, she deemed it of more consequence that he should know his own mind, early enough not to be endangering the happiness of either sister, or impeaching his own honour, than that he should prefer Henrietta to Louisa, or Louisa, to Henrietta.” Anne longs to deploy her expertise for the benefit of all concerned.40

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