Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Jane Austen understood true sexiness

By Mary Ann Cook

I've been trying to figure out why I am obsessed, like the rest of the English-speaking world, by Janeamania, an affliction whereby victims are compelled to see, hear or read the works of Jane Austen. I've seen Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility and Emma and am still trying to figure out how that last one became the 1995 movie Clueless. But mostly, I can't wait to rent the video Pride and Prejudice for another dose of wallowing in the fictional English countryside of the early 1800s.

I find myself seeking out the only friend I have who talks and acts like a Jane Austen character. A piano teacher of "little pups," which is her designation for the preschoolers she teaches, she is an ultra-ladylike, formal sort. She is the one person I can imagine who could walk right into the Hampshire countryside of the Regency period and be utterly at home.

This Austen sound-alike describes her elderly, failing car that continually betrays her as "odious" or "heinous." She uses epithets for her car that Elizabeth Bennet would use in describing Willoughby, or do I have my villains and books garbled?

It's easy to do because these unsuitable suitors have names that inevitably start with "W." Though charming chaps, they tend to play fast and loose with the heroine's sister, only to discard her the moment her hopes for marriage are at their highest. The sister then calls for the smelling salts or takes to her bed to become so ill that her very existence is in jeopardy. This may smack of over-reaction, but look closer: She now has little hope of being rescued from the 18th-century version of the Black Hole, that gaping maw of desperation known as spinsterhood.

The way we view the spinster has become more positive after two centuries. Economics don't dictate that a husband must be found for every unmarried female. We no longer feel that a husband is essential to a full, productive life. However, subtle traces of that dependence remain to this day.

When my friend describes her daughter, she uses her full name, which I interpret as a form of protection, as though this unmarried woman needs a built-in bulwark. Of course, her mother also needs to use her full name to differentiate her from the countless others of that name who I might be inclined to confuse her with. I have never heard her use just her first name, unprotected. I have never heard her use the interjection "la!," either, but I expect it to spill from her lips any day now. I am sitting by patiently in the meantime.

Why do we yearn to go back to the English class system of two centuries ago when our ancestors fought with their very lives to escape that selfsame system? The gentility, for one thing: The emotional reserve depicted is most appealing to us today, when dirty laundry is the linen of choice for daytime TV. There's something ultra-sexy in emotions that lie beneath the surface, not quite revealed, not quite acknowledged.

We would, however, prefer the gentility without the strapped financial straits and lack of options for women and second-born sons that went with that period--the very conditions Jane Austen was satirizing. The injustices of male primogeniture is a prime Austen target, probably a motivating force for her writing.

The women in Jane Austen's tales are rooted at the cottage window, longing for some male to canter up to rescue them, whether from the threat of singleness and economic oppression or simply boredom is unclear. After all, nothing much happens in her world: The pace is set by the deliberate, measured clip-clop of the carriage horses' hooves. It takes all day and several chapters to go but 30 miles. In our world of channel surfing and email, we expect instant gratification and fast-changing images. So why do we willingly stay with this poky time, even crave it?

For one, the romanticism is very appealing. A hunk in boots carrying you through a storm--who wouldn't melt? And though nothing much happens in the outerscape in an Austen novel, plenty is going on in the innerscape. That internal agonizing deals with crucial issues, such as choosing a life partner. The inner world churns with conflict and indecision, a veritable cauldron of chaos. Will the hero tip his hat? Will the heroine tip her hand?

Another factor that attests to the staying power of Austen is her immensely satisfying conclusions: Everyone gets what he or she deserves by the final pages. And since she uses the twin wheels of drollery and velvet-sheathed barbs to move us along, the journey is a delightful one.

But the overriding reason for Austen's enduring popularity can be laid at the door of her theme, that tagline that underlies each of her ventures. To paraphrase Mr. Bennet: "What are we here for if not to make fun of our neighbors, and in turn have them make sport of us?" She gives us what centuries of philosophy and religion haven't quite pinpointed yet--one of the true reasons for living.

Mary Ann Cook is a Los Gatos resident.