What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved (36 page)

EIGHTEEN

What Are the Right and Wrong Ways to Propose Marriage?

Having resolved to do it without loss of time, as his leave of absence extended only to the following Saturday, and having no feelings of diffidence to make it distressing to himself even at the moment, he set about it in a very orderly manner, with all the observances, which he supposed a regular part of the business.

Pride and Prejudice
, I. xix

A reader of Jane Austen’s fiction might think that the worst way to propose marriage is by letter. The plot of
Emma
relies entirely on Robert Martin’s decision to ask Harriet Smith to marry him in writing. This gives the weak-minded Harriet the opportunity to go to Emma for advice about how to answer. Although Robert Martin has arrived at Mrs Goddard’s, where Harriet lives, in person, the fact that he has the letter in a package with him suggests that he always intended to propose in this way. Why? Lack of genteel confidence? A sense of delicacy, perhaps: even the prejudiced Emma detects ‘delicacy of feeling’ in the letter itself (I. vii). He would surely know that Harriet in person would be persuadable. It is as if he wishes, by proposing in a letter, to give her some power to make her own decision. It is an honourable but a sad misjudgement. Emma herself, as she examines Harriet’s reactions and schemes to get her to reject the proposal, silently acknowledges that, had Robert Martin ‘come in her way’ in person, he would surely have been accepted. Mr Knightley, we later find, had expected him to ‘speak’ to Harriet (I. viii). He has decided to write instead, and so Emma is given her chance to meddle and the whole narrative machinery is set in motion.

By the standards of the day, Robert Martin was not wrong to write. In the eighteenth century it had become conventional to propose in this way, and letter-writing manuals even provided templates for doing so.
¹
In a culture that placed a premium on the penning of a well-turned letter, a young man with Robert Martin’s self-improving bent would have been very likely to have read one or other of the many guides to letter-writing – usually called ‘secretaries’ or ‘letter-writers’ – that were widely available.
²
Perhaps he had digested David Fordyce’s
The New and Complete British Letter-Writer
of 1800, which included model letters from ‘a young Tradesman, proposing Marriage to a Lady in the Neighbourhood’ and another from ‘a Gentleman to a young Lady without Fortune’, offering her his hand.
³
All the evidence is that epistolary proposals of marriage were entirely proper. Sir Edward Knatchbull proposed successfully to Jane Austen’s favourite niece Fanny Knight by letter in 1820.
⁴
But Robert Martin was wrong to use this method if he hoped to achieve the desired answer. Edmund Bertram in
Mansfield Park
sees the problem clearly enough when he wonders, in a letter to Fanny, how he might propose to Mary Crawford. ‘I believe I shall write to her. I have nearly determined on explaining myself by letter’ (III. xiii). A letter will enable him to conquer his uncertainties and express himself as he should. Yet he hums and haws and frets. ‘A letter exposes to all the evil of consultation.’ A letter can be shown around. There is always her friend Mrs Fraser – surely his enemy. ‘I must think this matter over a little.’ He sees the risks of a letter, though he does not see that he is blunderingly causing Fanny pain by drawing her in to his ruminations.

Edmund’s scheme for proposing by letter suggests that something is wrong. Can he not imagine simply speaking to Mary Crawford of his affections? A proposal in person needs an occasion, but a man has the power to find this. For a woman it is not so straightforward. Probably Charlotte Lucas need not have worried about having to give Mr Collins the right chance to declare himself, but, knowing that he is on the point of returning from Hertfordshire to Kent, she is determined to take no risks. She makes it easy for him. ‘Miss Lucas perceived him from an upper window as he walked towards the house, and instantly set out to meet him accidentally in the lane’ (I. xii). She has been at that window keeping watch. Her contrivance of that accident will be a fair epitome of their relationship, with Mr Collins imagining that he is shaping events when in fact he is being manipulated by her. Yet even for a man, arranging to be on your own with the object of your attentions is not always easy. Seeking to propose to Emma, Mr Elton avails himself of a ‘precious opportunity’, a phrase that must echo the pattern of his own eager thinking (I. xv). After a bibulous Christmas Eve dinner at the Westons’, he manages to get in the coach with her. It is his heaven-sent chance. The comedy of the episode is in our sudden recognition of what it must be like from his point of view, always having the idiotic Harriet in Emma’s company and in his way. Harriet has been removed by a heavy cold, for which he must be thanking his stars, and now he has the woman he really wants on her own.

Timing is all. ‘Every thing that I have said or done, for many weeks past, has been with the sole view of marking my adoration of yourself,’ declares Mr Elton. How many weeks? At least the twelve weeks or so since the beginning of the novel. But he arrived in Highbury ‘a whole year’ earlier, and has presumably been manoeuvring towards this declaration in the coach for much of that time (I. i). Austen’s novels tease us to wonder how long you should know each other before a man can propose with hope of acceptance. Charlotte Lucas’s notorious advice in
Pride and Prejudice
is to be as speedy as possible. In order to fix Mr Bingley’s intentions, she tells Elizabeth, Jane Bennet ‘should . . . make the most of every half-hour in which she can command his attention. When she is secure of him, there will be more leisure for falling in love as much as she chooses’ (I.vi). A lengthy courtship has no advantages: ‘it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life’. The shortest courtship imaginable is indeed Mr Collins’s of Charlotte, lasting as it does from dinner-time to night-time of a single day, all of it spent in the voluble company of others. For Austen’s heroines, it is Henry Tilney’s courtship of Catherine Morland that is shortest, and this in a novel which is full of haste – from the progress of Catherine and Isabella’s friendship, through John Thorpe’s boasts about the speed of his travel, to Colonel Tilney’s constant impatience and hurry (
Northanger Abbey
has more precise times of day than any other Austen novel). The shortest of Austen’s novels, its love story is also the most rapid. The time between Catherine Morland’s arrival in Bath and her departure from Northanger Abbey is only eleven weeks. It is a brief acquaintance on which to base a married life together. Very brief, in fact, as during those eleven weeks Henry Tilney has spent some time away at his parish, leaving Catherine at Northanger Abbey with his sister. The novelist, having elicited such a speedy proposal from Henry Tilney, at least provides some reassurance by telling us that he and Catherine in fact marry ‘within a twelvemonth’ of their first meeting – not much less than the year allowed Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy between their first encounter and their nuptials.

When Captain Wentworth first proposed to Anne Elliot, they had known each other ‘a few months’, and a good deal less than the half a year during which he stays with his brother (I. iv). Eight years later, it is something over four months from their meeting again to Captain Wentworth’s proposal. It is quite clear that that earlier knowledge of each other was, and is, good grounds for their future happiness. Reaching a proposal is more problematic in the two cases where Austen’s heroines have known their husbands-to-be for a very long time. Emma has been familiar with Mr Knightley all her life; Fanny Price has lived in the same house as her cousin Edmund for eight years, though for long periods he has been away at school or university. In one way, this simply reflects the reality of Jane Austen’s rural society. Marriages were frequently contracted between individuals who had known each other as neighbours for years and it was common for cousins to marry each other. (Jane Austen’s brother Henry married their widowed cousin Eliza.) But the pairings achieved for the heroines of
Mansfield Park
and
Emma
test our belief. Edmund has been blind to Fanny’s passion for him for years, so how can he be turned from her sympathetic cousin to her suitor? Mr Knightley has been a friend and monitor to Emma, so how can he change into a lover? At least Austen finds a narratively deft and psychologically compelling solution to the second question. Mr Knightley’s amorous feelings for Emma have been held in suspension until Frank Churchill’s arrival appears imminent. The very prospect of his appearance generates the birth of a jealousy that will make Mr Knightley a different kind of attendant upon Emma.

In Austen, a man’s declaration of love is (or should be) the same as a proposal of marriage.

You might say that the narrative interest of Austen’s novels stems entirely from a convention of marriage proposals: that a man must propose; a woman must wait to be proposed to. Comparing marriage to dancing in
Northanger Abbey
, Henry Tilney condenses the essential truth: ‘man had the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal’ (I. x). No woman can propose marriage. No woman can be the first to declare her feelings. This is a social rule internalised by fiction as a narrative convention. Upon its inflexibility rests the whole of the double-narrative of Austen’s first published novel,
Sense and Sensibility
. Elinor wonders whether or not Edward Ferrars is courting her, but can only wait for him to say something. Meanwhile we watch the developing relationship between Marianne and Willoughby through Elinor’s eyes, not knowing whether or not Willoughby has proposed. Elinor is mystified by ‘the extraordinary silence of her sister and Willoughby on the subject, which they must know to be peculiarly interesting to them all’ (I. xiv). That is, their presumed engagement. They do not acknowledge ‘what their constant behaviour to each other declared to have taken place’: i.e. a proposal (from him) – and an acceptance (from her). He calls her by her Christian name; she gives him a lock of her hair. What do these gestures mean? Mrs Dashwood refuses to ask Marianne whether the proposal has been made (I. xvi). ‘Don’t we all know that it must be a match,’ exclaims Mrs Jennings, just moments before we read Willoughby’s letter of rejection (I. vii). Yet an actual proposal in this world, though it might take just a few words, is a kind of magic. Without it all intimacies are apparently meaningless.

When Elinor reads the letter from Willoughby that proclaims him ‘to be deep in hardened villainy’, she imagines that it is, in effect, nullifying an offer of marriage (II. vii). It ‘acknowledged no breach of faith’ – but of course there is, strictly speaking, no breach of faith. ‘Engagement! . . . there has been no engagement,’ cries Marianne. Elinor is amazed that her sister could have written to Willoughby even though he had not declared himself to her (II. vii). She already knows that the correspondence between Lucy and Edward ‘could subsist only under a positive engagement, could be authorised by nothing else’ (I. xxii). Marianne has offered Willoughby ‘unsolicited proofs of tenderness’ – a dangerous folly for any woman. This is why the woman must always wait for the man to declare himself. As Marianne herself soon says, ‘he is not so unworthy as you believe him. He has broken no faith with me.’ Mrs Jennings talks of how he ‘comes and makes love to a pretty girl, and promises marriage’ (II. viii), but again, this is not what he has done. Elinor explicitly tells Mrs Jennings this: ‘I must do
this
justice to Mr. Willoughby—he has broken no positive engagement with my sister’ (II. viii). He never proposed. In Austen, a man’s declaration of love is (or should be) the same as a proposal of marriage. Emma finds Mr Elton ‘actually making violent love to her’ and, naturally, ‘very much resolved on being seriously accepted as soon as possible’ (I. xv). Anne Elliot has received Captain Wentworth’s ‘declarations and proposals’ (I. iv), and we understand that he tells her that he loves her and asks her to marry him – these being inextricable and simultaneous. In
Pride and Prejudice
, Darcy first proposes to Elizabeth by declaring, ‘You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you’ (II. xi). In
Sense and Sensibility
Marianne admits to Elinor that Willoughby has ‘never absolutely’ told her that he loved her; he could not have done so without proposing marriage.

We do not hear the actual proposals in
Sense and Sensibility
. Edward arrives at Barton, having been ‘released without any reproach to himself’ from his engagement to Lucy, on a mission. ‘It was only to ask Elinor to marry him;—and considering that he was not altogether inexperienced in such a question, it might be strange that he should feel so uncomfortable in the present case as he really did, so much in need of encouragement and fresh air’ (III. xiii). Charlotte Lucas seems to be right about men needing to be ‘helped on’. Austen declines to tell us just how the proposal gets made or received, only, rather awkwardly, that three hours later, when they sit down to table at four o’clock, ‘he had secured his lady’ and ‘engaged her mother’s consent’. We know that Colonel Brandon has declared his love for Marianne in an ‘involuntary effusion’ to her mother, while she lies gravely ill (III. ix). There is no chance of his saying any of this to Marianne herself. Even stranger is the imagined ‘proposal’ that Marianne receives from him a couple of years later, when the ‘confederacy against her’ of everyone’s opinions hardly seems to require Colonel Brandon to say anything at all (III. xiv).