Download Chase 1 Senior Thesis Sample 1 Professor Williams English 490 1

Senior Thesis Sample 1
Professor Williams
English 490
1 April 2011
Jane Austen and Marriage: The Need for a Husband
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune
must be in want of a wife” (Pride 179). This statement is the beginning sentence of one of the
most popular novels in the history of literature, Pride and Prejudice, written by British
authoress, Jane Austen. If Austen believed in this statement enough to place at the beginning of
her most successful novel, doesn’t it stand to reason that she would believe in its reverse? Let it
be said that it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good
fortune must be in want of a husband. Jane Austen is a woman of self-sustaining means. She
supports herself through her pen, and therefore is not in monetary need of a husband, but that
does not mean that she does not emotionally need and desire a husband. Men of good fortune do
not need wives to support them financially; they need wives to have a lifetime of companionship
and emotional support. It is no different for women. Freud’s psychoanalytic theories explain the
instinctual needs and unconscious expression found in Austen’s six major novels. Jane Austen
uses her six heroines and their joyful and triumphant marriages not only to complete her novels,
but also to literarily project her own inward feelings of desire, need, and failure of marriage, as
evidenced through Freudian psychoanalytic theories of fantasy, projection, and the unconscious.
Authors write about what they know in addition to what they imagine, and often project
chapters of their own lives and fantasies onto the pages of their works. Interestingly enough, Jane
Austen never married, but it wasn’t because no man ever fell in love with her. Austen had
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several romances in her own life, none of which ended in a marriage. So why would a woman
who never married in her entire life, write six novels that end in happy and triumphant
marriages? Freud states that a writer or an artist:
is one who is urged on by instinctual needs which are too clamorous. He longs to
attain to honor, power, riches, fame, and the love of women; but he lacks the
means of achieving these gratifications. So, like any other with an unsatisfied
longing, he turns away from reality and transfers all his interest, and all his libido
too, to the creation of his wishes in the life of fantasy, from which the way might
readily lead to neurosis (Freud qtd. in Dobie 57).
Let she be substituted for he and the love of women be substituted for the love of men, and this
quotation can be directly interpreted to explain Austen’s projection of marriage into her six
novels. Three specific stages of Austen’s life, the youthful stage, the middle stage, and the older
stage, as well as two specific men, Tom Lefroy and Harris Bigg-Wither, help to illustrate these
inner desires of marriage that Austen projects into the lives of her heroines.
In her youth, Austen met and fell in love, at the age of twenty, with a young man from
Dublin named Tom Lefroy and inserts her feelings and thoughts about their passionate
relationship in both Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, Austen’s first two novels.
Deidre Le Faye explains how Tom Lefroy entered Jane’s life in January of 1796, when Austen
was twenty years old, and how Lefroy was a pleasant young man who had already earned a
degree in his native Dublin (26). According to Carol Shields, Jane’s letters to her sister indicate
that Jane was quite taken with Lefroy, and she often mentioned her “Irish friend” (49). In a letter
to her sister, Austen is quoted to have said, “I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in
the course of the evening. I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white
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Coat” (Austen qtd. in Shields 50). But she never got the chance to tease him in such a way
because he was soon snatched away from her, according to Shields. His family it turns out, had
immense plans for him, and none of them included marrying a young clergyman’s daughter
without means. She never saw him again. She was heartbroken and felt extremely foolish for
having indulged in her childish fantasies, but nevertheless, she did not give up on love and
society (Shields 50-1). Lefroy later admitted to being in love with Jane as well but tried to lessen
it by calling it a “boyish love,” which is certainly not true because of the fact that after he
returned to Ireland and had a family of his own, he named his first daughter Jane, which shows
that he was obviously not indifferent to the famous authoress (T. E. Lefroy qtd. in Halperman
722). Whitcomb claims that after Lefroy disappeared, “Jane, stunned and heart-broken,
gradually abandons hope of doing what her heroines do so ably—reinvent themselves through
love” (32). Only three short years later, another tragedy struck the Austen sisters. Shield’s
explains that Cassandra’s fiancé, Tom Fowle was proclaimed to be dead, leaving poor Cassandra
in heartache (53). These two sisters’ heartbreak became Austen’s inspiration, as well as her
expression of her subconscious.
Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, displays intricate connections and insights into
the life of Jane Austen, especially in its relationships and concluding marriages of the heroine,
Miss Elinor Dashwood, and that of her sister Miss Marianne Dashwood as well. Both of these
sisters, after a little bit of trouble, and a little bit of despair, end the novel in felicitous and loving
marriages. Austen instills her deepest wishes that both she and her sister Cassandra could be
fortunate enough to both marry wonderful and wealthy men like Elinor and Marianne by
projecting this desire onto her heroines. She states that Elinor and Edward Ferrars “settled in
town, received very liberal assistance from Mrs. Ferrars, were on the best of terms imaginable
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with the Dashwoods, and . . . nothing could exceed the harmony in which they all lived together”
(Sense 174). Elinor is even able to retain her closeness to her mother and sisters. Austen says in
the novel, “Elinor’s marriage divided her as little from her family as could well be contrived,
without rendering the cottage at Barton entirely useless, for her mother and sisters spent much
more than half their time with her” (174). This is Austen’s ideal marriage situation, being able to
remain close with her older sister Cassandra and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Austen, while being
exquisitely happy with her husband, but it never happened. Marianne, in marrying Colonel
Brandon finds that “instead of falling a sacrifice to an irresistible passion, as once she had fondly
flattered herself with expecting . . . she found herself, at nineteen, submitting to new attachments,
entering on new duties, placed in a new home, a wife, the mistress of a family, and the patroness
of a village” (174). Austen says of Marianne that she “could never love by halves; and her whole
heart became in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby” (17475). Marianne falls deeply in love with her husband, just as Elinor does, and the sisters live
happily ever after. Cassandra and Jane Austen did not.
In this same novel, Austen is Miss Marianne Dashwood, and her sister is Miss Elinor
Dashwood. One connection drawn between Austen and her character Miss Marianne is their
similarity in improper behavior with a man that each of them loved. How Willoughby deserts
Marianne in order to find a wealthier bride is parallel with what Tom does to Jane. Marianne’s
improper behavior is also Austen’s way of commenting on her own improper behavior exhibited
in her youth with Mr. Lefroy. This representation shows Austen’s own growth and learning
through her experience with Lefroy, as it teaches her not to be so open with her emotions and
feelings towards others, especially in public situations, like the balls she and Lefroy attended.
Marianne’s marriage to Colonel Brandon yet again shows Austen’s fantasies of marrying a man
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that she loves, who just happens to be very wealthy too. Austen explains this growth she has
experienced in her own life through her commentary on Marianne’s marriage to Colonel
Brandon. She says:
Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover
the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most
favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in life as
at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively
friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another (Sense 174).
Another similarity from Austen’s own life is through Elinor Dashwood. Elinor is representative
of Austen’s sister Cassandra. Elinor is older and behaves better than Marianne does, just as
Austen believes Cassandra behaves better than she does, especially when it comes to her
behavior towards Tom Lefroy. Also, Cassandra’s fiancé dies, but in Austen’s novel, she is able
to give her loving older sister the happy ending, through Elinor, that Austen believes her sister
deserves.
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice contains one of the happiest and most triumphant
endings that concludes any of her six novels and includes not only one, but two marriages as
well. This ending again demonstrates Austen’s intense desire for not only a joyful marriage for
herself, but also for her sister Cassandra. Ann B. Dobie states that, “Freud recognized that the
artist consciously expresses fantasy, illusion, and wishes through symbols, just as dreams from
the unconscious do. To write a story or a poem, then, is to reveal the unconscious, to give a
neurosis socially acceptable expression” (57). Austen uses her heroines of this novel, Elizabeth
and Jane, to symbolize her fantasies, illusions, and wishes. Their marriages represent Austen’s
deep need and desire for a loving and blissful marriage. Pride and Prejudice, although published
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after Sense and Sensibility, is actually the first of Austen’s novels to be completed, and is by far
her most popular work. Jane confesses to Elizabeth hours after she accepts Mr. Bingley’s
proposal, and says, “I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed! . . . Oh! Lizzy,
why am I thus singled from my family, and blessed above them all! If I could but see you as
happy! If there were such another man for you,” but what Jane doesn’t know it that there is in
fact, just such a man for Elizabeth (Pride 341). Elizabeth later confesses to Jane after she accepts
Mr. Darcy’s proposal and says, concerning herself and Mr. Darcy, “It is settled between us
already that we are to be the happiest couple in the world” (Pride 352). Jane marries Charles
Bingley, who has five-thousand pounds a year, and Elizabeth marries Fitzwilliam Darcy, who
has ten-thousand pounds a year, in the very end of the novel, and again the two sister heroines
geographically and relationally live close to one another. Speaking of Mr. Bingley, Austen states,
“he bought an estate in a neighbouring country to Derbyshire; and Jane and Elizabeth, in addition
to every other source of happiness, were within thirty miles of each other” (358). Both sisters not
only gain a most monetarily and socially advantageous marriage but also gain their individual
happily-ever-afters. As mentioned before, Cassandra and Jane Austen do not.
In Pride and Prejudice, Austen is both Elizabeth Bennett and Lydia Bennett, while her
real love, Tom Lefroy, is represented with both Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham. Austen is
Elizabeth in her wit, her intelligence, and her love of reading. She is also Elizabeth in her desire
for a marriage based on love, not monetary means or social rank. Elizabeth, when entering the
drawing room at Netherfield and asked to join their party in playing cards, declines and says that
“she would amuse herself, for the short time she could stay below, with a book” (Pride 195). The
Bingley sisters are astonished that she would rather read than play cards, but Elizabeth finds
reading much more interesting, just as Austen herself does, as she is an avid reader and a brilliant
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writer. Austen is also somewhat represented through Lydia in her fairly improper behavior with
and towards Tom Lefroy, as Lydia is with all of the soldiers that she meets, including Mr.
Wickham. Austen, again in a letter to her sister divulges, “Imagine to yourself,” confessing of
herself and Mr. Lefroy and their behavior at a local ball, “everything most profligate and
shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together” (Austen qtd. in Shields 49). Lydia is
reckless in her behavior in public society, not comprehending the consequences of her actions,
just as Austen is with Lefroy.
Lefroy on the other side of things is Darcy. Whether Lefroy loved Austen or not, she
loved him, and she thought marriage was coming, but it didn’t, and he disappeared. Darcy’s love
and marriage with Elizabeth is Austen’s desire for her romance with Lefroy to have ended
happily. According to Dobie, “with Freudian theory, it is possible to discover what is not said
directly, perhaps even what the author did not realize he was saying, to read between (or perhaps
beneath) the lines” (50). There are many other similarities between Darcy and Lefroy, whether
Austen realized she made them or not. Tom Lefroy had an aunt, whom they called Aunt Lefroy,
who opposed to the marriage between Tom and Jane since neither of the two young persons had
any money. This is just like Darcy’s aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh in her opposition to Darcy
marrying Elizabeth. Aunt Lefroy was a big factor as to why Tom and Jane never married, as she
was the one who sent Tom away. The difference is, that Jane was able to allow her characters to
marry, even though she and Tom could not. Also, if Austen is Lydia, then Lefroy must also be
Wickham, since Lydia and Wickham marry as well. Lefroy is Wickham in his easy manners, and
ready countenance. He is also Wickham because both Lefroy and Wickham have no money and
are not able to marry Austen or Elizabeth because they lack the means necessary since both
Austen and Elizabeth are without means themselves. Wickham is only able to marry Lydia once
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Darcy makes Wickham “reduced to be reasonable,” and provides the necessary funds (Pride
328). These connections between Austen’s own life and those of her heroines provides insight
into Austen’s desire and need for a marriage of her own.
More romantic intrigues and proposals in the life of Austen resemble Miss Elizabeth, one
of which consists of a near proposal from a Rev. Samuel Blackall. John Halperin states that
Blackall “seems to have fallen in love with Jane Austen—or managed to convince himself that
he had done so” (723-24). Austen accordingly did not return his affections. Connections to
Elizabeth can be made in the proposal and rejection of Mr. Collins, as he is a member of the
clergy, just like Blackall and is rejected by Austen’s character. This account shows Austen’s
desire to not only marry, but to marry someone worthy, someone that she could love. She has an
intense desire to live happily ever after.
The middle stage of Austen’s life begins in December of 1802 as Austen, at the age of
twenty-six, actually becomes engaged to a Mr. Harris Bigg-Wither, which does not last, and
again connections are made between this experience and Austen’s writing. Bigg-Wither is a
fairly wealthy, suitable man, and Jane has no other prospects, nor does she think it likely she will
be faced with any others. According to Halperin, “Harris Big-Whither, 21 years old and
preparing to take orders, had proposed to Jane on the evening of 2 December 1802 . . . .
Disappointed in love and still unpublished, the novelist had accepted him. Materially, at least,
this would have been a good match for her” (730). He continues by saying that, “Jane Austen
was the only member of her large family who, before her novels began to appear, had no private
income whatever from any source . . . To such a spirit as hers, this must have been both galling
and humiliating. Further, Harris Bigg-Wither’s sisters were old and good friends of Jane and
Cassandra; the families were close” (730). Austen is conflicted, but promptly accepts Bigg-
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Wither, seeing the advantages of the marriage, but the very next day calls it off. She realizes that
she cannot make herself marry without love. She cannot force herself to marry for money, so she
writes about characters that marry each other for love and not financial stability. Austen places
this situation she faced with Bigg-Wither into the lives of her heroines in both Mansfield Park
and Northanger Abbey. Mary Barbitelli and Douglas Kries concerning Austen state, “her works
display many themes that are reminiscent of Rousseau: marriage is the foundation of society and,
for most, the source of meaning and purpose in life” (25). Marriage is a source of meaning and
purpose of life for Austen, which is demonstrated through her repeated felicitous marriages
achieved by her heroines.
Mansfield Park holds many connections to Austen’s life as it relates to marriage,
proposals, and relationships. The marriage of Mansfield Park’s heroine, Fanny Price, to her
lifetime love, Edmund Bertram, shows Austen’s intense and undying need for love to bestow
itself finally upon her in the form of a blissful marriage. Throughout the novel, Fanny pines after
Edmund while he falls in and out of love with a Miss Mary Crawford. The ever-constant Fanny
even refuses a marriage proposal from Miss Crawford’s eligible and wealthy brother, Mr. Henry
Crawford, because she does not love him. She only has eyes for her cousin Edmund. Of their
felicitous marriage Austen beautifully records:
With so much true merit and true love, and no want of fortune and friends, the
happiness of the married cousins must appear as secure as earthly happiness can
be. Equally formed for domestic life, and attached to country pleasures, their
home was the home of affection and comfort; and to complete the picture of good,
the acquisition of Mansfield living . . . occurred just after they had been married
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long enough . . . to want an increase of income, and feel their distance from the
paternal abode an inconvenience. (Mansfield 583).
Austen makes their marriage perfect. Dobie states, “Freud’s sense of the artist, finally, was that
he is an unstable personality who writes out of his own neuroses, with the result that his work
provides therapeutic insights into the nature of life not only for himself but also for those who
read” (51). Austen, as a creative artist of writing, uses these writings depicting pleasing
marriages as a therapeutic process for herself in her desires for a joyful marriage
In Mansfield Park Austen also demonstrates marriage for love as well as the opposite of
marrying for love to emphasize Fanny’s desire to only marry for love. This opposition is found in
the character of Maria Bertram as she faces a proposal from a wealthy, but idiotic man named
Rushworth. She accepts him like Austen accepts Bigg-Wither, but when given the opportunity to
escape the engagement, unlike Austen, she marries him and is incredibly unhappy as she is
driven to an affair with Henry Crawford and ends up alone in a bad situation. Speaking of Maria
and her father Austen proclaims, “Maria had destroyed her own character, and he would not, by
a vain attempt to restore what never could be restored by affording his sanction to vice, or in
seeking to lessen its disgrace, be anywise accessory to introducing such miser in another man’s
family, as he had known himself” (Mansfield 579). This is Austen’s commentary and insight into
the consequences of marrying for money, ultimate misery. Fanny is the foil to Maria in that she,
like Austen, refuses marriage to Mr. Henry Crawford, as she too desires to marry for love, which
makes her character all the more loveable as a heroine. Henry Crawford’s true character is
uncovered as Maria’s and Henry’s affair is discovered, and Fanny rejoices in escaping such a
horrid man, unlike Maria. Austen states, speaking of Fanny, “She had sources of delight that
must force their way. She was returned to Mansfield Park, she was useful, she was beloved; she
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was safe from Mr. Crawford . . .” (Mansfield 577). Fanny escapes Henry Crawford, and because
she does this she can eventually be united with her true love, Edmund Bertram. Austen does not
ever experience such an ending, and because of this, she gives her heroine all that she cannot
have. She gives Fanny the marriage that she wishes for herself. Hazel Jones says concerning
Austen’s time period, “The plight of the impecunious single woman was dire and almost
anything was to be preferred to the ridicule spinsters had to tolerate. They were the rejects, the
women left over after men had chosen their wives, each one a potential threat to the financial
health of the nation” (174). Not only does Austen desire a husband for support and love, but also
to meet her needs of acceptance in society.
Northanger Abbey, one of two novels published in 1818 after Austen’s death, also
contains a pleasing and joyful marriage that concludes the novel, and demonstrates Austen’s
need and desire for marriage. This novel’s heroine, Catherine Morland, cheerfully marries Henry
Tilney in the end of the novel, but again, not without much trouble first. Mr. John Thorpe tries to
captivate the heart of Catherine, and again Austen’s heroine turns away a suitably wealthy man
to reach for the desires of her heart, as Catherine, like Fanny, remains constant in her affections.
This constancy is comparable to Austen’s lasting feelings for Lefroy, and through her wishes to
not marry without love, as evidenced through her refusal of Bigg-Wither. Now that she has
tasted what love feels like, her desire for a marriage filled with love, whether it is filled with
money or not, is demonstrated through her characters. Now that she has tasted love with Lefroy,
she cannot force herself into a loveless marriage with Bigg-Wither. The biggest obstacle that
stands in the way of Catherine and Henry’s marriage is Henry’s father, General Tilney. He
opposes the match because Catherine has neither status nor money. Austen states, “There was
but one obstacle, in short, to be mentioned; but till that one was removed it must be impossible
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for them to sanction the engagement. Their tempers were mild, but their principles were steady;
and while his parent so expressly forbade the connection, they could not allow themselves to
encourage it” (Northanger 925). Again, a connection is made to Aunt Lefroy from Austen’s own
life, to one of her characters; in this case it is General Tilney. A miracle is then set in place
through the marriage of Henry’s older sister, Eleanor, who happens to be a dear friend to
Catherine. Austen writes, “The circumstance which chiefly availed was the marriage of his
daughter with a man of fortune and consequence, . . . an accession of dignity that threw him into
a fit of good humour, from which he did not recover till after Eleanor had obtained his
forgiveness of Henry, and his permission for him ‘to be a fool if he liked it’” (Northanger 926).
Even after giving his blessing, General Tilney still tells Mr. Tilney that he would be a fool to
marry Catherine, but he allows that he will accept it. Eleanor persuades General Tilney into
pardoning and giving his blessing to his son because Eleanor herself makes a very advantageous
marriage, which happens to be to a man whom she loves. Eleanor is then removed from
Northanger Abbey and all of its consequential hardships, “to the home of her choice and the man
of her choice” (926). Austen comments on Eleanor’s marriage by saying, “My own joy on the
occasion is very sincere. I know no one more entitled by unpretending merit, or better prepared
by habitual suffering, to receive and enjoy felicity” (926). Because of Eleanor’s love for Henry
and Catherine, she convinces her father to forgive Henry and to grant him his permission to
marry Catherine. Austen bestows upon her heroine what she herself did not have, a friend to
intervene on her behalf. Of Henry and Catherine’s marriage Austen exclaims:
Henry and Catherine were married, the bells rang and everybody smiled; and, as
this took place within a twelvemonth from the first day of their meeting, it will
not appear, after all the dreadful delays occasioned cruelty, that they were
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essentially hurt by it. To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twentysix and eighteen is to do pretty well (927).
Austen again writes of two joyful marriages to conclude her novel, which can be connected to
Austen’s own desires through Freud’s theories. Freudian expert Stephen Frosh states, “In all this,
words are crucial not only in psychoanalysis, . . . fairly dubbed ‘the talking cure’, but language is
introduced right into the heart of the deep mystery of the unconscious” (24). Austen’s writing is
her way of therapeutically expressing the needs, desires, and ultimately her own failure of
marriage through language, and in this sense is her own form of the talking cure.
Catherine Morland, like Fanny in Mansfield Park, escapes the consequences of an
unhappy marriage as she shies away from the attentions of Mr. John Thorpe, just as Austen
rejects Biggs-Wither. To exemplify Catherine’s frustrations of Mr. Thorpe, one situation may be
explained. Thorpe tricked Catherine into believing that Mr. Tilney and his sister had forgotten
about Catherine and had left just the two of them, for a walk that the three of them were
supposed to take together. He then convinces her to go with him, only to ride past Tilney and his
sister on their way to pick up Catherine, much to her dismay. Catherine is very upset with Mr.
Thorpe and apologizes to Mr. Tilney the minute she gets a chance saying, “I begged Mr. Thorpe
so earnestly to stop; I called out to him as soon as ever I saw you . . . . And, if Mr. Thorpe would
only have stopped, I would have jumped out and run after you” (Northanger 855). She further
and further looks away from Thorpe and begins to look closer and closer upon Tilney as she falls
in love with a kind, gentle, and deserving man, unlike Thorpe. However, Austen in her situation
with Bigg-Wither cannot make herself fall in love with him like Catherine does with Tilney.
Frosh explains the Freudian idea of repression as follows, “because repressed ideas live outside
consciousness they cannot easily be controlled, but instead are the source of many behaviours
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and experiences which do not have the character of being willed by the self” (24). Austen’s
desires and needs for marriage are the sources of her behaviors, resulting in her own refusal of
Bigg-Wither and in the blissful marriages of her heroines that end her novels.
In the third and final stage of Austen’s life, Austen begins to realize the very serious
nature of her situation as she continues to age and remains unmarried. She projects these feelings
of fear and despair because of her lack of marriage into her novels Emma and Persuasion. She
begins to see the direness of her situation as an old maid while also having to combat loneliness
and falls very seriously ill at this time as well. Austen comprehends that she has no prospects and
becomes aware that it is very unlikely she will have any prospects of marriage at all before she
dies. Emma, although jovial and buoyant, comments on her deep-rooted marriage desires, while
Persuasion in doing the same, also shows Austen’s slow decline and loss of hope for a marriage
as she nears the end of her life.
Emma, published in 1816, is Austen’s most cheerful and lighthearted novel, containing
an ending with multiple marriages as well, one of which is the marriage of her heroine Emma
Woodhouse to a man she loves, Mr. Knightley. Emma is married to her best friend, Knightley,
showing Austen’s feelings that one should deeply know the person you marry, and love them
tremendously. Again, the heroine of her novel just happens to fall in love with a quite wealthy
man, so not only do they have love, but also they have wealth. At the end of the novel, Knightley
proposes to Emma, but she is distressed about leaving her poor father, so Knightley graciously
offers to live with the two of them at Hartfield. Austen writes:
This proposal of his, this plan of marrying and continuing at Hartfield—the more
she contemplated it the more pleasing it became. His seemed to lessen, her own
advantages to increase, their mutual good to outweigh every drawback. Such a
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companion for herself in the periods of anxiety and cheerlessness before her!
Sucha a partner in all those duties and cares to which time must be giving increase
of melancholy! (Emma 796).
Emma is thrilled at the prospect of remaining in her home to care for her father and to gain a
husband all at the same time. Benjamin Wolman, concerning Freudian slips states, “slips of the
pen may follow the same pattern as slips of the tongue. A writer may make a slip of the pen to let
the reader know of something on the writer’s mind” (23). What is on Austen’s mind is marriage,
blissful, loving, comfortable, all-encompassing marriage, and she repeats this idea over and over
again, using her heroines as representatives.
Austen also chooses to insert some of her own feelings about women who remain single
during her own time period through Emma. Emma states, “it is poverty only which makes
celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must
be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! The proper sport of boys and girls” (Emma 626). Emma
says this early in the novel, but as time passes she realizes the she actually does desire a husband
because she desires love. Hazel Jones states, “A woman with money who chooses to stay single
will always be respected, because she has the means to support herself and maintain her position
in society” (174). Austen shows the opposite of this statement through Emma’s change of heart.
Emma doesn’t need a husband to support her monetarily, just as Austen doesn’t either, but she
needs the companionship, love, and support afforded by a husband, just as Austen does, and
eventually marries Mr. Knightley because he is her dearest friend and she has grown to love and
need him.
Persuasion, the second novel published in 1818 after Austen’s death, is the last novel that
Austen completes in her lifetime, contains Austen’s concern for marriage, and also results in a
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triumphant marriage of the heroine in the end. This novel contrasts quite heavily with the
cheerfulness of Emma, and gives more insight into the distress of Austen’s life. Persuasion’s
heroine is Miss Anne Eliot, and through Anne, displays Austen’s last plea for marriage.
Persuasion as a whole expresses Austen’s feelings of her final failure of matrimony, and is
perhaps Austen’s most somber novel, having an almost mournful tone. This tone also may be
attributed to her steady decline in health as she neared the end of her life. Freud states, “Every
psychical act begins as an unconscious one, and it may either remain so or go on developing into
consciousness, according as it meets with resistance or not” (Freud qtd. in Woman 14). Austen’s
yearning for marriage remains unconscious as she is met with resistance in love time and time
again, and as a result of this, she continues to write about what she wishes she could have.
Throughout the course of the novel, Anne begins to lament and resent her easily persuaded mind
of her youth in her refusal to Captain Wentworth’s proposal of marriage. In the novel Anne
comments to Captain Harville of women in general, saying, “We certainly do not forget you so
soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves”
(Persuasion 1038). She goes on to say, “All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very
enviable one: you need no covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is
gone!” (Persuasion 1039). She is speaking in general, but also specifically of Captain
Wentworth and herself. She knows she loved him but was persuaded not to marry him because
of his lack of fortune, and now that he has a fortune, she fears he is lost from her forever.
Likewise, Austen fears that love is lost to her forever, still laments over the loss of Lefroy, and
realizes that it is almost impossible that she will ever marry as she is now in her late thirties and
can feel her health declining.
Chase 17
Jones comments on William Hayley’s affirmations on unmarried women as she states,
“Any woman who claimed to find her ‘single blessedness’ comfortable and desirable was, he
asserted, ‘acrimonious’ and guilty of pronouncing ‘the severest satires against her own heart’”
(Hayley qtd. in Jones 195). Hayley in his proclamation says that any woman who claims to be
happy about her unmarried state is going against “her own heart” (195). Austen wants to have a
husband and wants to be happy, but as she continually cannot reach that state of being, she gives
her characters everything she lacks. At the conclusion of Persuasion, Anne is reunited with her
long-time love, Captain Wentworth and the two are married. Austen declares, “Anne was
tenderness itself, and she had the full worth of it in Captain Wentworth’s affection. His
profession was all that could ever make her friends wish that tenderness less, the dread of a
future war all that could dim her sunshine. She gloried in being a sailor’s wife” (Persuasion
1047). Dobie claims that Freud “concluded that the unconscious plays a major role in what we
do, feel, and say, although we are not aware of its presence or operations” (51). Whether Austen
did or did not realize all of the connections she was drawing between her life and the life of her
characters we likely will never know. Facts about her life are even difficult to discover since
there is no known diary and according to Janet Yount, “biographers are hampered by Cassandra
Austen’s destruction of portions of her sister’s correspondence,” for whatever reason, as her
sister was her main recipient of letters (75). Speaking of the unconscious, Freud declared, “The
nucleus of the Ucs. Consists of instinctual representatives which seek to discharge their cathexis;
that is to say, it consists of wishful impulses . . .” (Freud qtd. in Frosh 23). Austen’s method of
repressing her own longing for a loving marriage is to write of happy heroines gaining all that
she cannot. R. J. Bocock states, “the unconscious will operate to keep repressed that material
Chase 18
which a person has learned to repress . . .” (Bocock 470). Austen’s last attempt to give a heroine
what she herself wished for in her own life is shown through Anne Eliot.
Unlike Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy, Mrs. Elinor Ferrars, Mrs. Fanny Bertram, Mrs. Catherine
Tilney, Mrs. Emma Knightley, and Mrs. Anne Wentworth, Miss Jane Austen never married.
According to Jones, “Twenty-five per cent of gentlemen’s daughters in Jane Austen’s lifetime
never married, either through choice or, more commonly, lack of opportunity. Females
outnumbered males throughout the eighteenth century, and the gap widened gradually until, in
1851, there was a surplus of 365,000 women over men in England and Wales” (173). Jane
Austen died a lonely maid, with only the companionship and aid of her dear sister Cassandra.
She wrote of happiness and marriage while she herself was often miserable and alone, but she
wrote of how it ought to have been, what she felt she and her sister deserved. She gave each of
her characters what she, and so many other women of the time could not have… a happy ending.
Chase 19
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. “Emma.” Jane Austen: The Complete Novels. Ed. Claire Booss. New York:
Gramercy Books, 1981. 587-816. Print.
---. “Mansfield Park.” Jane Austen: The Complete Novels. Ed. Claire Booss. New York:
Gramercy Books, 1981. 363-586. Print.
---. “Northanger Abbey.” Jane Austen: The Complete Novels. Ed. Claire Booss. New York:
Gramercy Books, 1981. 817-930. Print.
---. “Persuasion.” Jane Austen: The Complete Novels. Ed. Claire Booss. New York: Gramercy
Books, 1981. 931-1050. Print.
---. “Pride and Prejudice.” Jane Austen: The Complete Novels. Ed. Claire Booss. New York:
Gramercy Books, 1981. 179-362. Print.
---. “Sense and Sensibility.” Jane Austen: The Complete Novels. Ed. Claire Booss. New York:
Gramercy Books, 1981. 3-178. Print.
Bocock, R. J. “Freud and the Centrality of Instincts in Psychoanalytic Sociology.” The British
Journal of Sociology 28.4 (1977): 467-80. JSTOR. Web. 19 March 2011.
Dobie, Ann B. Theory Into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. 2nd ed. Boston:
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Print.
Frosh, Stephen. The Politics of Psychoanalysis: An Introduction to Freudian and PostFreudian Theory. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987. Print.
Garbitelli, Mary Beth and Douglas Kries. “Virtue and Romance: Allan Bloom on Jane Austen
and Aristotelian Ethics.” Modern Age 52.1 (2010): 25-36. Academic Search Premier.
Web. 27 January 2011.
Chase 20
Halperin, John. “Jane Austen’s Lovers.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 25.4 (1985):
719-36. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 February 2011.
Jones, Hazel. Jane Austen and Marriage. London: Continuum Books, 2009. Print.
Le Faye, Deidre. Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels. London: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2002.
Print.
Shields, Carol. Jane Austen. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 2001. Print.
Whitcomb, Claire. “Plainly Jane.” Victoria 15.6 (2001): 32-33. Academic Search Premier.
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Wolman, Benjamin B. The Unconscious Mind: The Meaning of Freudian Psychology. New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Print.
Yount, Janet Aikins. “Jane Austen Scholarship: ‘The Richness of the Present Age.’”
Eighteenth-Century Life 34.1 (2010): 73-113. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25
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