We’ve all asked ourselves this. Did love ever catch Jane by surprise, like it did Elizabeth? Did she secretly pine, like Fanny, or did she experience Anne’s years of regret over a rejected proposal? As her readers, don’t we all hope Austen felt this emotion that she wrote about so movingly?
And I know. This has been written about before, but still I’m fascinated by this topic, and I just had to dig into the research and see what I could uncover.
Austen’s Philosophy on Love
Austen’s heroines married for love, but marriage at the time was an economic decision, and Austen’s family lacked money. Did Jane agree with her heroines that marriage was for love, or was she more practical?
An 1814 letter to her niece Fanny gives us a clue. Fanny asked her aunt’s opinion of a suitor, and Austen, after listing the suitor’s favorable qualities, advised, “If his deficiencies of manner strike you more than all his good qualities, give him up at once.” This is still good advice, isn’t it? We all need an aunt like this. Austen then concluded, “Nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound without Love.” Yes! There is the Austen we expected—with a philosophy much closer to Elizabeth’s than Charlotte’s. (Even though this is what we expected, it’s still a relief. Austen was a practical women with no dowry, and none of us want to think life would have pushed her into becoming a Mrs. Collins.)
Austen and Tom Lefroy
Jane Austen was beautiful! (I wasn’t sure, since that picture Cassandra drew of her depicts her as a little grumpy.)
Jane and Cassandra’s cousin, Eliza de Feuillide, describes the sisters in a letter in 1791 as “two of the prettiest girls in England…perfect beauties and of course gain hearts by dozens.” I like reading this, that both sisters were enjoying their youth.
In 1795, when Jane was 20, she met Tom Lefroy, a young Irishman who was visiting his aunt and uncle for the holidays at Ashe, near Austen’s home in Steventon. Lefroy was only in town for a few weeks before he returned to studying law in London, but he and Austen met frequently at balls and parties. Lefroy is often listed as Austen’s great love. This evidence is based on two surviving letters to Cassandra that mention Lefroy. (Cassandra burned most of Austen’s letters after her death, a common practice that still makes all of us wonder, what else did Jane say??)
In the first letter, Jane writes to her sister about an upcoming ball: “I look forward with great impatience to it, as 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 Coat.”
The white coat is an allusion to Fielding’s Tom Jones, a novel Austen’s family enjoyed. There’s a lot of speculation here: Was Jane expecting a marriage proposal?! I hate to kill the excitement, but the light tone makes me think it was more likely the offer of a dance.
The very next day, Jane writes: “At length the Day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, & when you receive this it will be over—My tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea.”
What to make of this letter? Did Lefroy really break her heart, the cad? It’s all guesswork, but they only knew each other a few weeks, and they were both poor. A match wasn’t realistic. I think Jane knew that, and this is her typical, cavalier style that means she’ll miss him, but with dry eyes.
What did Lefroy think of Austen? Years later, he said that he had loved her with “a boyish love.” Well, we’ve all known that at age 20, haven’t we? Perhaps Austen would have accepted him if he’d asked, but it doesn’t seem like she expected him to ask, or that a three week, youthful dalliance left her heartbroken. Lefroy, for his part, became engaged a year later to Mary Paul, the sister of a friend. He eventually became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Wow. He could have married a women without a dowry, after all. Your loss, Lefroy.
What did Austen do after Lefroy left? She produced what is known as her First Trilogy: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey. I now think Lefroy was a near miss—thank goodness they were both too poor to make a match. We might never have had Pride and Prejudice. No man is that hot.
I imagined myself tackling this issue all in one post, but Jane was too witty and attractive to contain. I still have TWO more love affairs to discuss. I’ll save those for next time.
Thanks to Gianna Thomas for writing in a comment that she wondered if Jane was ever in love. Me too, Gianna.
What do you think? Did Lefroy leave a greater impression on Austen’s heart than I gave him credit for? And how would the world have been different if she’d become Jane Lefroy and moved to Ireland?
Here are the next two posts on this topic: Was Jane Ever in Love? (Part 2: The Mysterious, Seaside Romance) and Was Jane Ever in Love (Part 3: The Marriage Proposal).
The following are a couple of sites I used to write this post: Jane Austen in Love and Why Jane Austen Never Married.
And here are a few other posts in case you feel like reading more:
Jane Bennet Married DOWN: A Peek at Social Class in Pride and Prejudice
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