A Longwinded Contemplation of My Inner Marianne Dashwood
I had thought that The Golden Compass DVD would be released today but it appears as though my anticipation has run away from me because it isn’t released until next week. I had hoped that the DVD would come with the deleted scenes, which include the sky bridge to Cittàgazze and the confrontation between Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter but alas, the now defunct New Line will not oblige me. I would have also liked to see a director’s cut, which ordered the panserbjørne fight and the escape from Bolvangar correctly. Chris Weitz, I was mistaken in my estimation of your love for the source material and for that I apologise. New Line, you suck.
Because I had not heard back from my aunt before I left work last night, I went about my routine as per usual. She called after I had officially settled down to sleep to arrange a meeting today. I am not pleased.
It’s really quite unfair of me to say that because I really and truly do love my aunt, who taught me to whistle and throw a frisbee and make snowmen when I was eight. I thought she was the coolest person in the world then: she was single and independent and a grown-up tomboy, something I thought girls had to grow out of when they got married. My aunt is great with children and knows how to play properly and I always felt that she knew me, that she knew what it was like to be a little girl who didn’t necessarily like feminine things.
Funny how age changes your perspective on things.
To be fair, I suppose she’s still the same woman she was ten years ago, but all of her determined singleness and unmarried freedom that I found novel and exciting as a child wasn’t due to choice, but circumstance. She had lacked for romantic opportunities when she was younger and found herself in a state of Mormon spinsterhood in her mid-fifties. When opportunity came knocking, she clung to it with all the desperation of a drowning woman. That’s harsh of me to say, but that’s what it seemed like to me. For all I know, she may truly love her husband (who is a wonderful man), but the gusto with which she became A Wife disgusts me.
It must have been difficult. Most Mormon girls I know marry young and start their families immediately and my aunt must have seen all her friends settle into their lives and felt left out. But I think I would have been more forgiving of my aunt if I saw any inkling of that awesome tomboyish woman somewhere in her marriage. But she’s gone, completely subsumed by Love. I called her on her birthday, apologising for being a bad niece as I had forgotten to send along even a card.
“It’s alright, honey,” she said. “I don’t need anything. I have my husband and he is all I need.”
Sentiments like that make me gag. It’s one thing to love your husband, but it’s another to need him to complete you. I absolutely loathe the romantic notion that people are two incomplete halves of a whole person. No. I believe that in a relationship, we are two equal parts of a greater construction.
My mother called me the other day to chat (it’s strange but quite nice to have your own mother call to chat like a girlfriend) and we came to discussing my aunt and her new ways. I expressed my distaste for mushy, lovey-dovey things, for long walks in the moonlight discussing how much you mean to one another, for ooey-gooey declarations of everlasting devotion, and she laughed.
“You’re my daughter, I suppose. I hate that stuff too. It must be how I raised you.”
To my surprise she sounded slightly sad at the last bit, as though she had somehow changed who I inherently was. Where was the woman who commanded that I not want a boyfriend and who keeps uttering subtle and dire predictions about becoming lost in my relationship with Bear?
“But you do like romantic things,” she protested a moment later, when she had recovered herself, “You think Mr. Darcy’s proposal in Pride and Prejudice is romantic.”
Goddamn my inner Marianne Dashwood! I am constantly accused of all sorts of sentimentality that I do not commonly feel!
“I do not,” I said indignantly. “I think it’s funny.”
And I do. One of the many reasons I love Jane Austen is because despite the fact that all of her novels are, strictly speaking, romances, she skewers ideas of passion and love with her sharply satirical quill. Take for example, Mr. Darcy’s first proposal (the one my mother accused me of loving):
“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
As a sentiment, it is absolutely romantic. He loves her in spite of himself? How flattering! However, as the scene unfolds, Austen subverts the supposed romance in his words.
Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her immediately followed. He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority — of its being a degradation — of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.
Oh god, the hilarity of this scene is all the more brilliant for the cringing it induces. Here you have one sensible young woman, one infatuated young man and a crisis of misunderstanding, thwarted hopes, and humiliation. I feel for Elizabeth. It’s like when a boy you’ve sort of hung out with as casual acquaintances suddenly declares his undying love for you and then you’re left at this very awkward and uncomfortable place in the conversation because you don’t know how to respond. See? This is why Austen is a genius; these emotions transcend time.
As good as Austen is about subverting romantic tropes, she’s not so good with a sincere romantic scene. During Darcy’s second proposal, she skims over what was said before hurrying along to the double wedding. I dislike the ends of Austen’s novels because it’s so clear that writing emotional scenes makes her squeamish. The second proposal is quite anti-climactic and could essentially be summarised like this:
Darcy: Well, do you like me or not?
Elizabeth: (awkwardly) Well, um, since you last, um, asked me this, my feelings have changed a lot, so um, your proposal isn’t so disgusting anymore, so…yes.
Darcy: Great, because I am violently in love with you!
Elizabeth: Really?
Darcy: Yes. Or at least, that’s what the author tells us anyway.
She quite literally just tells us.
The happiness which [Elizabeth's boringly written change of heart] produced, was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do.
My mother thinks Elizabeth and Darcy are one of the most romantic couples in the world, but that may because she’s never read the book (she disavows all fiction—I must have been the literary postman’s baby) but has watched the BBC adaptation with Colin Firth multiple times. (I don’t blame her; I think the miniseries is more romantic than the book myself.) I am not easily moved to swooning over moments in books because seeing it makes it have more emotional reality for me. However, I will admit to being a complete puddle of goo during the scene at Pemberley when Elizabeth is singing “Voi che sapete” from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Darcy is staring at her with such an infatuated look on his face.
(Other visual swoon-worthy moments: when Captain Von Trapp and Maria are dancing during the ball in The Sound of Music and when Mulder and Scully…well, any time Mulder and Scully are onscreen with each other in The X-Files, really.)
I like the idea of them cerebrally. They have a very intellectual romance. Austen prefers intellectual romances to passionate ones. Many of the female characters in her novels who have succumbed to passion have met with unfortunate ends, the most extreme being Colonel Brandon’s ward Eliza (left pregnant and about to die in a factory!). Marianne almost meets a tragic end because of her “sensibility,” but is later redeemed. I could see why Charlotte Brontë didn’t think much of her: the Brontë oeuvre is rife with stormy, moody, passionate Byronic heroes and Love and Hate and Emotions With Capital Letters.
I don’t like the Brontë’s leading men overmuch. I can’t ever really dislike my beloved Mr. Rochester, but Heathcliff excited, frightened, and then annoyed me as I grew out of adolescence. I still love him, but I will never again be in love with him. Or in lust, I suppose. I adored Wuthering Heights as a child (and it still is an exquisitely crafted novel: a story within a story!) because OMG TEH INTENSE PASSION!!!!1one but when I read it again, I feel divorced from the emotions because such deep love that obliterates all sense of self, personal identity, and individual boundaries is creepy.
My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.
EEEEAAAAUGH!!! Even as I type I’m covered with little crawlies. Ew. Ew, ew, ew, GET THEM OFF ME.
On the other hand, I am still emotionally invested in Jane Eyre, mostly because I really do like Jane. She isn’t crazy like Cathy and although she has strong emotions, she keeps a level head. I enjoy reading about the unfolding of her relationship with Rochester because for much of their Thornfield interaction, it is characterised by a lack of action. Rochester is a bit of a bastard; he manipulates things and tries to weasel information from people in underhanded ways (okay, what the hell was I talking about earlier? I LOVE Rochester still!) but through it all Jane keeps her distance and her own counsel. Also, Rochester has one of the best proposals I’ve ever read in a book:
“I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.”
There is a slight but important difference between the romantic sentiments expressed in both Brontë novels: Emily makes it clear that Cathy and Heathcliff are one person whereas Charlotte’s Rochester is asking Jane to be his companion. Hence my adoration of aforementioned hero despite (and perhaps because of!) his bastardy qualities.
I will say, I have only ever swooned in a book once. Once. And you may be sure it still KILLS me.
“Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?” asked Gilbert.
Something in his tone — something she had not heard since that miserable evening in the orchard at Patty’s Place — made Anne’s heart beat wildly. But she made answer lightly.
“Of course. Everybody has. It wouldn’t do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about. What a delicious aroma that low-descending sun is extracting from the asters and ferns. I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them. I’m sure they would be very beautiful.”
Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked.
“I have a dream,” he said slowly. “I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends — and YOU!”
Anne/Gilbert = OTP to end all OTPs 4EVA!!!!!!
P.S. This was one LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG entry, wasn’t it.
