The most amazing thing to me about Jane Austen is that she staunchly refuses to leave any woman behind. It doesn't matter if a woman is an antagonist, a side character, or what, the reader is assured that they will be okay. This is so different from fiction at the time or even now.
Marianne Dashwood, living a plot perfect for a tragic death by illness to preserve the beauty of her first attachment and disappointment? Nope, she lives and loves with her whole heart again. Maria Rushworth, the fallen woman who cheated on her husband does not die for her crimes or even fall into poverty or prostitution, her father and Aunt Norris will provide for her. She is punished, but she's protected. Lydia Bennet? Her two sisters will provide for her for the rest of her life. Her husband's debt will not destroy her. Miss Bates? There is an entire community around her no matter what happens and her newly rich niece will provide. No woman is even left as a governess, Miss Taylor is Mrs. Weston, Jane Fairfax becomes Mrs. Churchill instead. Mrs. Smith is pulled out of her indigent state by Anne and Wentworth.
The only woman Jane Austen allows to suffer a terrible fate is off-page and dead long before the novel begins: Eliza Brandon. Eliza Williams, her mother's affair baby, is ruined by Willoughby. Colonel Brandon could easily have washed his hands of her and her affair child, but he doesn't. Eliza Williams is going to be okay. Her child will be okay.
Antagonist women never fall into poverty or die for their crimes, most of them are even in loving marriages. Fanny Dashwood is cruel to her mother and sisters-in-law, one could imagine her falling low in karmic retribution, but no, she's fine. Lady Susan, the delightful anti-heroine, marries a baronet at the end of her novel. No punishment looms on the horizon for her promiscuity and deception. Caroline Bingley has a loving family that will never turn her away and an independent fortune. Mary Crawford has a loving sister. Isabella Thorpe may have lost the big prize, but she has her mother. Never is a woman thrown to abuse or poverty, even when they have attacked other women. The only punishment would come from their own conscience or regret for the goodness they have thrown away.
Jane Austen somehow imagines a world where even the worst women are safe.
#jane austen#is truly a better woman than me#because idk if I could ever be so charitable to women I find hateful at worst or annoying at best#and yet the sentiment lying therein is something more women could adopt#we *should* want women to be safe#even if we don't get along with them#because women are already at the mercy of a merciless society#women should be able to have a safety net *somewhere*#and Jane gave that to pretty much every woman in her stories#that's a lovely thing to do#for real tho#my history people#19th century (via @elizabeth-karenina)
For people who don't read a lot of literature from that period, I cannot overstate how many of Austen's characters would have died/been forced into a life of prostitution for their "sins". That was the literary expectation because you didn't want to risk the impressionable young women reading the novels to think it was okay to enjoy sex or otherwise not be a paragon. Jane Austen made the intentional choice not to write that kind of outcome for her stories ("let other pens dwell on guilt and misery") and she was going against the tide big time by doing so. The balls ovaries on that woman. She knew the world could be cruel to women, but she also knew the world could be kind to them, and she chose kindness every single time.
There's even a short moment in P&P Ch 50 when some of the nastier inhabitants of Meryton are disappointed that things aren't turning out as they expected, and that Lydia isn't ruined and won't become a prostitute/courtesan/outcast:
The good news quickly spread through the house, and with proportionate speed through the neighbourhood. It was borne in the latter with decent philosophy. To be sure, it would have been more for the advantage of conversation had Miss Lydia Bennet come upon the town; or, as the happiest alternative, been secluded from the world, in some distant farm house. But there was much to be talked of in marrying her; and the good-natured wishes of her well-doing which had proceeded before from all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton, lost but little of their spirit in this change of circumstances, because with such an husband her misery was considered certain.
('come upon the town' being slang for becoming a sex-worker)
And while Austen certainly acknowledges that Lydia and Wickham's marriage is pretty dire, her life still won't be a misery, no matter what the spiteful old ladies in Meryton desire.
