Jane Austen Men

Rereading Jane Austen's novels has made me aware that Jane Austen's male leads are not the romantic heroes they are portrayed to be in the film adaptations. Neither are they the romantic heroes of her close contemporaries: they are not Vincentio Vivaldi, nor are they Lord Ruthven or Heathcliff.

No, Austen's men are deeply flawed. We love them because the heroines love them, for none of them have any extraordinary goodness or tragedy to recommend them. Edward Ferrars is a dilettante—he has neither "abilities nor disposition" to make something of himself, and he really would have starved in the gutter after his mother cut him off if Colonel Brandon had not offered him a living. Colonel Brandon, himself, falls in love with a seventeen-year-old at the ripe old age of thirty-six. And Marianne doesn't love him. Fitzwilliam Darcy's pride softens a bit to win Elizabeth's good opinion, yet even the epilogue shows that he still never forgives or respects her silly relations as a truly kind man should. And what he said about Elizabeth's family really was very, very mean. Charles Bingley seems likely to forget Jane again should they ever spend a week apart. Edmund Bertram, well, marries his cousin, and I never can forgive him for being so taken in with someone so fake. He also switches allegiance pretty quickly to Fanny for all his speeches about his enduring love for Mary Crawford. George Knightley rules over Emma like a schoolmaster, and he performs some of the same matchmaking activities that he scolds Emma for. Henry Tilney, while equipt with an admirable wit, wastes it on an ignorant girl who can only stare at him in awe rather than picking a woman who can actually appreciate and participate. Captain Wentworth, I think, comes closest to the romantic ideal with his undying devotion but manly resentment. The penultimate chapter of Persuasion, however, reveals that he could have written to and married Anne in 1808—and spared them both "six years of separation and suffering"— had he not been "too proud to ask again." As I said, I'm glad that the heroines gained the men they loved—except for Marianne, of course—but I don't understand why we say "Jane Austen Men" and mean "male perfection".

All in all, Elizabeth Gaskell's heroes are more heroic. For example, Roger Hamley is more perfectly suited to Molly, and his unlikely release from his ill-advised engagement to her stepsister has more romance and less reality in it.