I was just thinking of the "Being agreeable never did a woman any good for the new "Sense & Sensibility" movie and how you and others have pointed out that the novel's message is partly just the opposite: that Marianne needs to learn to be more agreeable and proper, which is equated with being sensible. It made me think of a "feminist" complaint that I've read about Austen in the past: that in her novels, the quiet, reserved, proper heroines (Elinor Dashwood, Fanny Price, Anne Elliot) are the ones who are portrayed as always right, while the bolder, livelier, less ladylike heroines (Marianne Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennet, Catherine Morland, Emma Woodhouse) are portrayed as more flawed and in need of a moral lesson. So maybe Austen was more conservative in her views on appropriate female behavior than we sometimes want her to have been. Would you agree?
I don't really agree, because what we see again and again in Austen is that the heroines who act the most proper also seem to carry the most pain.
Elinor Dashwood suffers alone in complete silence, not reaching out to her family. Anne Elliot wastes away at Kellynch, ignored and unappreciated. Fanny Price's story is genuinely hard to read. I'll add Jane Bennet, she behaves exactly as a modest woman should and still suffers. Jane Fairfax probably fits in here somewhere.
They may be right, but it doesn't actually help them.
Elizabeth Bennet's lesson isn't to be more like Jane, it's to reserve judgment and examine her cynicism. Catherine Morland just needs to grow up, it isn't about being feminine or not or even more well-behaved. Emma Woodhouse has to demonstrate compassion worthy of her high station. And even Marianne, it's more about not causing her family so much pain by proxy and assuming that those who don't show pain can't be feeling it.
I think Jane Austen's feminism is in showing women as fully formed and fleshed out "rational creatures" with just as much interiority and intelligence as men. I think she also shows that no matter where women are placed in gentry society, from governess-to-be Jane Fairfax and poor relation Fanny Price to the rich Emma Woodhouse and high rank Anne Elliot, that they are generally at the mercy of the men around them. They are expected to marry and often must for survival, but cannot control the circumstances around that, except behaving as they can within the constraints of society.
Sure, Jane Austen is more conservative, she doesn't seem to want to burn it all down, but she's not happy and her heroines, all of them I think, have ways in which they push back or show flaws in the system they exist in.
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