I feel like you could fairly easily argue that Emma doesn't have an actual romantic attachment to Knightley (though I think *he* definitely does).
It really just sounds like she wants to marry him because otherwise her extremely confined, extremely boring life would become absolutely unbearable. She can't bear to lose him as a friend, so she secures him as a husband.
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Arrived at their new homes safe and sound after a very big day. Look at all the grass!!
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The Problem with Virginity and Jane Austen
Long post and discussions of sex, non-graphic mention of sexual assault
There was a really thought provoking post by @anghraine which has me thinking about the male heroes and sex in Jane Austen’s novels.
From a modern perspective, I think it can be nicer to imagine that all of the Austen hero men, Darcy, Knightley, Brandon, Wentworth, Tilney, Bingley, Edward, and Edmund, are virgins. After all, they live in a pre-birth control era and syphilis is running rampant. None of us want to imagine Elizabeth’s nose falling off twenty years down the road or Catherine bumping into a very familiar looking child in Woodston village. (and yes, I’m well aware they had some forms of birth control but nothing like today, women were desperate for what we have today, it’s a modern miracle)
I am no sociologist, but I have observed a lot of human behaviour from the present and a lot of sex is had, and unsafe sex too. Teenagers are wild. I also know from church records in the period that many people “anticipated their vows” because there are a miraculous number of babies born within a few months of their parents marrying who live to tell the tale. I also know that London was full of prostitutes and many high and wealthy men had mistresses, sometimes very publically. The navy had problems with homosexual sex (which may have been a social acceptance problem or a rape problem *ahem* modern military) and with a lot of prostitution occuring on shore (source: Brian Southam who wrote a wonderful book called Jane Austen and the Navy) It was a work hard, party hard sort of lifestyle, as we can see below in this Thomas Rowlandson painting:
So the least likely to be a virgin in my mind is Wentworth, with his eight years of success at sea, followed by Brandon, who was stationed abroad in the military, also trying to get over a lost love, and Knightley, based on age alone (he is the oldest at 38).
Now on to the big issue, are we readers wishing virginity on the Jane Austen men for the right reasons? Syphilis and natural children aside, I grew up in a church that pushed the purity gospel and it is not good. It messes people up. They are now writing books about what it did to people. So I don’t want to force puritanical ideals on Jane Austen’s heroes just because I was taught some very harmful rhetoric.
I personally know men who waited for marriage, but they also tended to marry early (22-25). In most churches who teach this message, both men and women marry because they want to have sex (even though we aren’t supposed to do that, I know, it’s very shocking s/). So I can see Edmund and Edward being virgins on their wedding nights because they are both religious and both quite young (plus a secret engagement formed when Edward was 19). Even Bingley might be, though he seems much more out in the world. But the older these men get and still seem indifferent to marrying, I think they are getting something elsewhere. (they may also have low libido, this is very possible and not discussed enough but I can only say so much in one post)
I listened to a lecture once about if Darcy is a virgin which ended with the professor saying, “Of course not, he went to university” and he then explained that a lot of drinking and sex was happening at these places. Now we know Darcy looked down on what Wickham was doing at Cambridge, but was this because Darcy was going about it “the right way” while Wickham was seducing tradesmen’s daughters and servants? Possible too.
It is also possible that some of these Hero Austen men might have a mistress down the road. If you want to have sex, there is always a possibility of having a baby. Lady Bertram, with her perfect four child family, might well have told Sir Thomas to start looking elsewhere. I have read a letter from a woman in this century who sent her husband away because she had five babies in five years and she was done. It’s just a whole different concept than today. There was no “trying” for a baby, you had sex and babies came. But add to that half a family being swept away in sudden illness, you were relying on those extra children to make it to adulthood. Women faced being pregnant constantly for 15-20 years!
So yes, I would like the Austen men to be virgins (and I really think basically all the unmarried women we meet are), but I think it’s a desire heavily influenced by my own upbringing and the Victorian era. Henry Crawford, who is morally dubious but still, completely separates love and sex in his mind. That is something that seems crazy to us today, but the aristocracy at the time seem to share this view. You have a wife, you treat her “right” and you have a mistress on the side. Somehow, in this era, that was accepted as okay.
I agree that Jane Austen probably wasn’t on board with a lot of this, but she also wasn’t privy to those conversations that we would also need to hear to have a full view of the era. Were the men bragging about sexual conquests when the women left after dinner? Was a good husband one who kept a mistress and didn’t let anyone know? Or one who didn’t get the servants pregnant? Or was it good enough not to mess with your own class? (Darcy did not decide to warn the lower class people of Meryton about Wickham, are those women below his notice?) Everyone is horrified by the treatment of Eliza Williams, but if Willoughby had provided a hundred a year for the baby would he be okay? Emma seems to approve of what Harriet’s father has done in her maintenance.
I just don’t know.
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