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250 years since her birth, Jane Austen still has the best marriage advice
March 05, 2025
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There are few things like a literary anniversary to lift the tone of society, and this year culminates in a particularly happy one. December 16th marks 250 years since the birth of Jane Austen, author of six of the best novels in the English language, and without doubt the most popular.
Even today, with younger generations challenged by anything longer than an Instagram post, her stories of the trials and triumphs of daughters of the Georgian gentry inspire film versions that keep her plots and characters alive, or at least undead. Ball gowns and breeches continue to fascinate, and heroines can be turned into spunky feminists or even anti-racists to suit current tastes.
It is doubtful, however, that Millennials will be swept up into Austen fever by the spate of articles, television dramas, tours to Chawton and Bath, high teas and virtual birthday parties on offer this year. Even if some are, it will profit them little unless they read Miss Austen’s books and discover the full effect of Mr Darcy’s 5-page letter on Miss Elizabeth Bennet, or of the aftermath of the Box Hill picnic on Emma Woodhouse, among other momentous things.
What would Jane Austen herself like twenty-somethings to take from her intimate portraits of "three or four families in a Country Village” painted on a “little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory” with very fine brushstrokes? I think she would draw our attention to three things: marriage, parenthood, and character.
Marriage
Surveying the trainwreck we have made of marriage and the family over the past half-century and more, she could point out that you can’t have a true romantic comedy without a marriage or three. In fact, she would say, you can’t have a healthy society without marriage as the guarantor of family stability and economic security, as well as greater odds of happiness than the fragile alternatives of our own time.
Yes, there was a lot wrong with marriage in her day: the class system, laws of inheritance tied to the male line, and very limited opportunities for single women to support themselves without charitable relatives or enduring genteel misery as a governess. Austen herself was an exception – her income of about 600 pounds from her novels in her lifetime has been calculated as equivalent today to USD$40,000 to $60,000. Even she, however, depended heavily on family support and affection.
It is also true that individual marriages in her novels are a mixed bag. Some are good – as the Bennets’ Gardiner relations in Pride and Prejudice demonstrate, or Admiral Croft and his seafaring wife in Persuasion – but Mr and Mrs Bennet are so ill-matched it is a miracle that they have even two sensible daughters out of five. Charlotte Lucas, their neighbour’s eldest daughter, marries the stupid Mr Collins for security, only to admit that the more they are apart, the better she likes it.
Still, in a world without divorce, birth control, career women or social welfare, spouses have no option but to accept the consequences of their married state, and who can say that the results are worse than in today’s unwed and broken families?
The parenthood lottery
Incompetent and/or negligent parents are a serious problem in most of Austen’s stories. Though mitigated (or increased in some cases) by servants, tutors and relations, the harm they do through weakness or misuse of power is a source of scandal, misery and moral chaos among their children.
In the face of his wife’s shallowness and “nerves”, not to mention his own indolence, Mr Bennet opts out of parenting altogether, emerging from his study only to joke about the silliness of his younger daughters, as if it were not largely his own fault. Even in the middle of the crisis caused by Lydia’s elopement with Wickham, he assures Elizabeth that his contrition for this body blow to the family won’t last more than a fortnight.
In Persuasion, Anne Elliot’s widowed father is a vain spendthrift (his wife was the prudent one) who, like Anne’s two sisters, is devoid of understanding or sympathy for her suffering following the breaking of an engagement under pressure. Instead, they exploit her good nature and availability.
In Sense and Sensibility, Mrs Dashwood is so devastated by widowhood and the loss of her home that she abandons responsibility for the family into the hands of her older daughter. Emma’s widowed, indulgent, hypochondriac father has no advice to give her except to take care of her health and not get married.
The forging of character
In these and other ways, parents either deform their children’s characters or make them determined to be better. Parental virtue may be lacking, but natural gifts of temperament and intelligence do much to equip Austen’s heroines for the transition to adulthood. Virtues are forged through the daily give and take of family and social relationships, informed by good reading and, let’s not forget, by the Christian faith and morality that the author herself practised.
It is Austen’s intimate little portraits of this process, of people growing in self-knowledge and understanding of others through mundane struggle, that is her best gift to us. Wit and caricature give her work great zest and her plot twists keep us turning the page, but she really wants us to stop and see exactly how people become better, ready, in particular, for a good marriage and parenthood.
The confidences shared between Jane and Elizabeth Bennet are a wonderful example of how this happens. Lizzy criticises others from observation and reason while Jane insists on finding the best in everyone. She chides Lizzy for being “too strong” in denouncing Mr Collins as “a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man” and Mr Bingley as weak for being too influenced by his relations. Elizabeth in turn admits that Jane’s “goodness” is superior to her own “wit”, which loves to find targets for ridicule and then dislike them as well.
Nowhere is this moral development in Austen’s characters more dramatic than in the overturning of Elizabeth Bennet’s prejudice against Mr Darcy as she takes in the contents of his letter following his disastrous proposal and her outraged refusal (a magnificent episode in itself).
In the space of two hours, walking around Rosings Park, she goes from furious rejection of his reasons for turning Bingley away from Jane and incredulity at his account of the true history of Wickham, to the point where “She grew absolutely ashamed of herself … feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced and absurd.”
Her prolonged self-examination goes deep. “How despicably I have acted! … I who have prided myself on my discernment! … who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust. How humiliating is this discovery… Till this moment I never knew myself.”
Emma, so confident in her judgements of people, has a very similar moment of insight after her thoughtless jest at the expense of Miss Bates during the Box Hill picnic. Mr Knightley’s severe rebuke forces her to acknowledge her superficiality and arrogance, her ability to be really cruel, and “Never had she felt so agitated, mortified, grieved…” After 20 years of privileged life with “very little to vex her”, she is launched on the path of humility and genuine attention to others, including Mr Knightly himself.
Fanny Price and Anne Elliot have different moral Rubicons to cross: finding the courage to follow their hearts and consciences in the face of self-interested parental and quasi-parental authority. All the lonely reflection and self-interrogation this involves does not embitter them, but keeps them open to others, honest, and wins them their own happy ending.
What a contrast with the happy beginnings so many young people clutch at today at the cost of so many sad endings and mental ill health! Yes, young women, read Aunt Jane and arm yourselves with her wit, but even more with her wisdom about the true path to finding Mr Right. If he has read Austen too, so much the better. And if you both want to take a tour to Chawton, it’s bound to be good fun.
What do you think of these life lessons from Austen? Share this article with your family and friends.
Carolyn Moynihan writes from New Zealand. She served as the deputy editor of Mercator.
Image: Pexels
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mrscracker commented 2025-03-07 04:14:34 +1100Yes you may Mr. Fedderson & I very much appreciate you taking the time to recommend that to me. I’ll be searching for it online.
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Emberson Fedders commented 2025-03-06 23:51:38 +1100Could I recommend the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Cracker? It’s marvellous! -
mrscracker commented 2025-03-06 23:05:47 +1100My children had to talk me into watching Sense and Sensibility some years ago and I was reluctant because I didn’t really understand what Jane Austen was all about. But I enjoyed the film very much.
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Emberson Fedders commented 2025-03-06 11:23:57 +1100One of my all-time favourite authors. I reckon I re-read Pride and Prejudice at least once every two years!
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